...the water had been cold. Ice-cold and freezing, and he'd been sinking slowly. The world around him had been silence and stillness. He was dying but not because of the water - he had been dying before he had fallen into the mountain tarn.
And he had not minded. Not...really. The water had been cold but he felt warm, warm and lazy as he never was, warm like the blood flowing into the water around him in twisty fading ribbons of red before seguing into a haze of pink-tinted water.
Images floated languidly across his mind. A black wolf with one golden eye - a fight - a moonflower blooming beneath a huge silver disk - his pack, a mountain, stone and water and snow, a gate...........
It had all faded to blackness.
And then he was yanked back out of that comforting, enveloping darkness into blazing hot sunlight brighter than anything he'd ever seen, water that was warm and salty rather than icy and bleak, and he wasn't drifting-sinking like a stone but sputtering and thrashing, splashing, struggling for the surface and for air, air, precious air....!
Kiba broke the surface of the water with a great splash, panting for air as he blinked yellow-gold eyes and looked all about him. The sunlight sparkled off a blue-green ocean surface, and he could feel his body being softly buffeted back and forth by gentle waves - waves that whispered onto white-sand beaches with lullaby-music sounds rather than storm-strong crashes.
His body was whole and hale, if soaked and bedraggled, with none of the wounds and hurts he vaguely remembered having taken in the fight with the black wolf. He was in splendid condition and swimming in the strong instinctive wolf-paddle (WHY humans called it doggy-paddle when it was clearly wolves who had come up with it) to the shore was no challenge.
He padded onto the beach, head up and nostrils flaring at the veritable symphony of new sights, sounds and most especially scents now bombarding him. The salt-scent of the ocean permeated the air, but underneath it were strong ribboning trails of tar, wood and rope, and the scent of men very strongly running through. The sand smelled, and there were so many different plant-smells Kiba was frankly reeling.
He sneezed and shook himself off vigorously. He was alive and he was unwounded. Wolflike, he thrust such extraneous concerns such as 'how did I get here', 'where IS here', 'who else is here' and 'where WAS I?' to the back of his mind; focusing instead on something much more important.