Waterlily loved her new body. While her old one had been small and quick and soft, this one was something else entirely. Her limbs were powerful, her tail stronger and more controllable than it had ever been before. She was larger too, and had more strength than she'd ever had as an eevee.

Because she wasn't an eevee anymore. She knew that in her bones. She was something else, a creature who leapt into the river without fear and to whom the water felt like an old friend.

She was only minorly surprised when she found she could breath without breaching the surface. She was even less surprised to find that the water that had seemed so furious from above was calm and clear beneath, flowing around her like the wind on a warm day.

She couldn't stop to enjoy it. She had a goal, a single shining objective in her mind. The reason she possessed this form at all. Him.

She swam with the current, paws and tail working together to propel her forwards. She swam through the water with more grace than she'd ever had on land, eyes opened wide and searching.

It felt like an eternity before she spotted the small, dark shape tumbling through the water ahead of her, eyes closed and body limp.

She swam for him, moving so quickly she nearly passed him. While she didn't need air anymore, he certainly did, and he had been under water for far too long.

She sank her teeth into the mass of fur around his neck and pulled him up, towards the distant light that was the surface. Her powerful tail propelled them upwards, and bubbles flowed from his mouth in the moment before they breached the surface.

He gasped, convulsing as she clung to him, unwilling to let him go. He coughed up a lungful of water, shaking, and then breathed. The sound of him taking that life saving breath was one she knew she would have done anything to hear.

They floated like that for a moment, Waterlily letting the river carry them further downstream. He breathed for several long moments, and she was content to wait, to touch him for the very first time. Then he twisted in her grasp and she changed her grip so he could see her. His leaf-green eyes met hers, and when he smiled, it was the most wonderful thing in the world.