Not long after he snapped his fingers, I heard the sound of two more men on the docks beginning to move forwards. There was a brief pause where they stopped making noise before I felt the impact on my upside-down hull. The men on the dock had jumped off and added their weight to the rest of the people that were using me as a flotation device.

The air trapped under my upside-down frame allowed me to hold up a good amount of weight, but it had its limits. As the two newcomers tried to keep their footing on the unstable surface of my wet hull, I could feel myself begin to slowly sink under the water. At first it was only a minor piece of information, a small part of my brain tracking the movement of ripples against my bottom. I was still somewhat disoriented from being flipped upside down, and the implications didn’t really sink in until I was fully submerged.

One thing that had changed with my transformation into a boat was the loss of my human instincts. I didn’t need to eat, sleep, or drink, and while I did occasionally doze off to pass the time, I was glad I didn’t have to deal with a sense of hunger that I could never satisfy. I would have said that I didn’t need to breathe, given my obvious lack of lungs, but that wasn’t quite true.

The moment I was completely submerged I felt an old instinct rear its head, repurposed for my current situation but no less mentally demanding for it. The wooden hull that was my chest and ribcage felt like it was being crushed, like I needed to somehow fill my lungs with air this very second. Despite my rational brain knowing that I wouldn’t be harmed by being temporarily underwater, my emotional reaction was telling me that this was a matter of life or death.

I panicked. Any plan I had for keeping my existence secret flew out my mind as I was filled with the instinctual need to struggle for survival. While I couldn't do much, I began to flail my oars, waving them back and forth as I tried to move myself free of the weight pinning me down. Undirected and submerged as they were, I didn’t have much success. I managed to rock myself back and forth a bit, but most of my passengers were experienced sailors, able to keep their feet in harsher conditions than I could simulate.

I would have continued in that state for a while if I hadn’t been interrupted by an outside force. What shocked me out of my state of panic was the sharp tug of my mooring line being pulled taut. At some point or another, this group of drunks had loosened it from the dock cleat, giving them some extra length to use for their impromptu survival lesson. That still left me somewhat anchored in place, and now that line was holding me up, keeping me from sinking deeper beneath the surface. As I came back to my senses, I realized I wasn't that far down. I could still feel the weight of the people standing on top of me which meant I was less than five feet under the surface. It was deep enough that I was practically invisible at this time of night but not so deep that I was at risk of getting buried on the bottom of the bay.

I still was feeling pressured by that drowning sensation, and desperately focused my attention on my sense of hearing, doing my best to block out as much unpleasantness as I could. The magic of the [Listen] enchantment really revealed itself in this moment, as despite having several feet of water separating me and Carter I could hear his voice as clear as always.

“You can’t always assume that you’ll have someone else to help, or a piece of flotsam to keep you afloat. But no one can take away your Skills, and you’ll almost always have your gear on you. Novice sailors try and keep a whistle handy to help us find them if they go overboard. I have [Advanced Swimming] and [Survival] to help me out, along with a knife. Cookie’s probably one of the best prepared of the sailors I know. His [Cleanse] Skill means he never has to worry about running out of clean water to drink.”

“So take your time and think it over, but I want you to tell us right now what skills or items you have that would help you get home safely? Any spells that might come in handy? Be as creative as you can. I heard tell of one frost mage who froze himself up a boat made out of ice the one time he got into trouble.”

Lirillin sputtered at the challenge, combined with the shock of losing the boat to stay afloat. From the sound of his splashing, it seemed he hadn’t realized the boat was still close enough to stand on if he stretched out, and had gone for a flailing doggy paddle to keep his head above water.

“I’m an enchanter, not a wizard. Given the right materials and enough time I could probably come up with a pair of water walking boots or a coat pin that transmutes water into wine, or even an emergency teleportation device, but it’s not so simple as just casting a spell to solve my problems.” It sounded like Carter wanted to say something, but Lirillin was in fine spirits as he continued to talk. “And just because I can, theoretically, make those items doesn’t mean I have the materials needed to do so, or the gold to buy them. You’ve given me a couple of ideas I can work on, but it will be weeks before I’d have anything to show for them. Besides. I’ve already dealt with this issue. The whole point of enchanting the Ash Breeze is to remove as much risk from travelling as possible, with minimal investment required on my part. It doesn’t matter if I can’t row well, or don’t have a proper navigator or compass, if my boat can take care of it for me.”

“The same boat that’s underwater right now?” Carter asked dryly. He waited a moment for his point to sink into Lirillin’s drunken mind. “I won’t pretend to understand your style of magic, nor what makes the lighthouse such a good place for you to work. I am grateful for the extra work you do into keeping it running, as well as the jobs you do around town. You’re not a half bad person to have a drink with, when you aren’t counting cards, and we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you that could be avoided with a little thought on your part. At the very least, you should grab a cork handy from the emporium.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, if not your expression of it.” Lirillin answered, somewhat slowly, sensing the mood change in the conversation. “I can’t say that I enjoy spending time in the bay at this time of night, but it would be hard to argue that this won’t stick in my mind.”

Carter chuckled lightly. “Think of it as a tradition of sorts. Besides, don’t you usually just show up at the bar to get Experience? This should be even better for you than just having a few drinks and sitting around all night. Experience is about experience! As the saying goes, anyways.”

Lirillin sniffed in disdain. “Your take on the underlying mechanisms is obtuse, at best. Researchers have determined that constructive essence exchange depends on Intent, Involvement, and Impact, along with the possibilities for another dozen factors that are still being argued over in academia. Jumping in the lake might have higher Impact and Intent factors, but the smaller group of participants means that *glug* *cough* *cough*”

I was somewhat disappointed when Lirillin was cut off by someone splashing him in the face, but I could understand that drunken sailors probably weren’t the best audience for a lecture on magical metaphysics. As the group above me quickly devolved into an impromptu water fight I began to think over the information I had learned. While it made sense on a surface level to say that Experience depended on having experiences, on going out and doing things, I could see why and how that relationship could be broken down further.

Involvement likely dealt with how many people were involved with a given event or experience, I figured there had to be a limiting factor, because otherwise there would be too many ways to take advantage of it. Those limiting factors were likely where the involvement and impact came into play.

Impact in particular sounded like it scaled inversely with Involvement size. After all, the more people who were involved, the less impact any one person could do to have an impact on the outcome. Intent might work similarly, but I was less sure about that. It sounded like it was talking about how intentional an experience might be. I could see how heading out to find something interesting might mean more than having something happen to you accidentally, but I wasn’t as confident about my interpretation as I was the other two factors that Lirillin had listed. I had a suspicion that Intent wasn’t actually the best descriptor, and had been chosen over a more accurate one for alliteration purposes.

It gave me a rough base of knowledge that I could refine with my own experience, pun intended. Already I could see where that large chunk of Experience had come from. Reminiscing about the family I left behind might not have been involved or intentional, but it had been impactful, as I wrestled with emotions that I had kept buried for decades. The resolutions I came to that night were the foundation for all the decisions I had made afterwards. Somehow the meaning involved in that had been enough to create the Experience out of thin air. I would definitely be paying close attention to Lirillin if he could share valuable insights like this offhand.

As I thought things over, I felt myself begin to rise once more. Lirillin and his friends were still splashing and wrestling with each other, and their play fighting had moved away enough that they were no longer forcing me downwards. Between the tension from the mooring line and a little wiggling I was able to reorient myself upright once more, and it was with an overwhelming sense of relief that I broke the surface.

I was still filled to the brim with water, leaving me feeling uncomfortable, but not being completely submerged let me relax the grip I had kept on my mind to keep from panicking. As I slowly calmed down I let myself simply listen to the sounds of the group of drunken friends playing in the water.