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Jamal let her go, as he knew that it was time to maybe let her have time to herself. Her parting phrase made him wonder...don't ever change...he didn't intend on it, but it seemed so hard with the s**t they as islanders had to go through. They had to make sacrifices and live in ways that no normal human should have to.

...but he'd try.

The tiger man eventually hauled himself out of the river, dripping dry a bit before using his senses to direct him back "home".

Emerwyn couldn't argue with the coyote-man's logic. She really needed the water now, too. And the food. The foliage was best around the river, too.

She dropped to her knees hard, kneeling directly over the cool waters.

Emerwyn flashed a genuine smile at him in thanks.
Then, she turned back to her thirst, taking in huge handfuls. After a while, when she decided she wasn't getting enough, she plunged her whole face into the water, drinking and cleaning herself.
Dirt cleared itself once more from her swollen wounds, opening them again, if only slightly.


She brought her face up out of the water to shake her hair out.

But she didn't come out. She was sitting up straight, but her head was still completely submerged. Emerwyn brought her hands up frantically to her face, and moved down to her throat. She choked, and bubbles came up, forming around her face.
Farther away she moved from the river, but the water was all around her. She could see the trees through the depths. The entire jungle had become submerged, and she was being drowned! But where was Pyroth?

Pyroth himself was only too content to get his fur cooled by the water, and he could care less that now his tattered denims weighed about three times what they had. Out here, they would dry in time, hopefully cooling him as they did so.

He didn't watch Em too closely, his own attention divided slightly, but when he did turn his gaze to her, she seemed to be slowly sliding into the claws of some terror. His hackles stood on end in anxiety as he watched her illogical terror. It was terrifying how swiftly tranquility turned wild once more in this place.

Pyroth was torn, he had no clue what to do, wether to see if her lapse in clarity passed on it's own, or to interfere. After a moment or two, he realised that it was most likely best to try and snap her out of it lest she walk into the coils of a snake or some venemous insect.

He cautiously made his way over to Emerwyn, tenatively tapping her shoulder. "Are you okay, Em?"

He had most likely guessed the answer to that.

Pyroth had encountered his share of bad trips in his time, that horrible feeling where logic frittered to worthlessness and reality turned on you, out to do you in. Khan had been the one to help him once on a particularly bad drive.

However he himself had never been in a situation where he had to help someone else. His life had generally been a self centered one, so Em's current state left him floundering.

Taking her arm reassuringly, he tried to lead her away from the river a ways, feeling that it somehow might be related to this, his manners assertive. there, he turned his full attention to her, speaking slowly and clearly in the hope she might hear him, his once deep red, now amber gaze fixed on her own.

"You are fine Em. I'm okay, and so are you. Come on." he flicked his ears back somewhat and added "Don't let it win, remember?"

It really was unusual for him to give a damn about the welfare of anyone, but he didn't want to be left alone in this jungle and he was enjoying Em's company. Still, it was hard to think what to do when part of him wanted to paw at her to see if she was alright. He was not a coyote, that sort of thing was just not mannered.

Pyroth couldn't articulate how glad he was to have Em come back into the land of the properly aware, he too had been hopelessly adrift, worried that he might lose the only company he had out here and slide back into the manic and feral state.

No, thank you. he almost said aloud, but halted himself before he did.

Instead he carefully let go of Em's arm which he was still holding onto, aware now that she could maintain herself.

"What was it?" he asked, not wanting to make her relive the experience but to garner how to help her again if it should reoccur.

He remained oblivious to the scent of water, his nose tuned for hunting rather than resource detection. Besides, his head was a jumble of instincts, he doubted he could make head nor tail of the strance scent-colour information that flooded his senses.

Pyroth tilted his head slightly, a stray crimson bang getting in his veiw, he swept it aside and said, his tone curious "Really?" That wasn't how it had been for him, his vision hadn't been affected when he was overcome with instinct, he had distinctly felt the two sides of his mind competing. What Em described sounded more like a drug trip.

"Sounds kind of familiar, actually. Sure the doctor didn't slip you something to mess with your head?" he was tempted to ask to see her pupils and see if they were dialated, but for all he knew the doctor could have used a drug with other symptoms.

He looked heavenwards and sniffed, oh yes, there it was, strong enough to be smelled over the scents of the forest, a rolling grey sort of smell. "A /lot/ of rain."

Pyroth nodded, he hadn't actually thought of that, the implications of wandering staff, and worse still, possibly armed guards wandering the island put him on edge a little. He had somehow deluded himself a bit that he was out of reach of any further changes, that the lab was finished, but if this was a setup then there was every chance they were just being encouraged to flex their metaphorical muscle so to speak.

"Here, I'd say anything at all is possible, and if it /is/ a setup, they are testing us, trying to see if our survival capibilities are improved."

He snarled to himself, his hackles raising, his eyes narrowed at an invisible enemy "I swear, if that is true and some pallid lab aide tries to infect me with any more of that serum, I'll show him his jugular."

I'm good at that sort of thing.

He calmed himself again as he returned to the present, his hackles sinking, his expression returning to normal.

"It sounds like the kind of thing they'd do, doesn't it?"