RAINY DAY IN AN AMPHIBIOUS HOUSE.

         The amphibious house may be found in a wide variety of habitats throughout North Themis, with most structures living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems.  Little is known of the territorial behavior of these buildings, but some have been know to defend home ranges.  These are usually feeding, breeding or sheltering sites.
          An amphibious house typically starts out as sunken hut or underwater settlement, but some have developed several adaptations to bypass this.  The youngest structures generally undergo metamorphosis from a basic, gilled building to a larger, air-breathing structure with fully developed lungs suspended from the first, second, or third floor.  After metamorphosis, many rooms and areas become redundant and are absorbed through a controlled restructuring known as eviction or resident removal.
          The amphibious house has a soft scaffolding and thin skin, lacks claws, defensive armor or spines and seems relatively helpless. Nevertheless it has evolved various defense mechanisms to keep itself alive.  When an amphibious house is attacked, such as in a storm or sky contraction, a distress or fright call is emitted, often resembling the crying of a child, adolescent, or incomplete adult.

          A crooked, crooked, crooked house rises from a lily pad.  Cringes. Sinks.  Starts a collapse.  Kelp and seaweed sweep up to the second floor.  Crawdads and prawns crawl up the staircase.  Nurses run in with their skin swollen, their eyes weaker than wastes of space.
          I can't remember what sound the house made when they pulled the lungs out.  My stomach is cramped and sharp at the corners.  I shouldn't be able to feel it like this. What if the blood is still looking for a lesson in the undertow?  
          I can hear the breath of the house breaking through a blue outline, there's nothing else but residue to it.  There's no pause, no pull along, nowhere to put the water away.  Even the first gills are giving in.
          Jillison told me this would happen, the house would hyperventilate and then the instincts would take over.   She was right.  It shouldn't be this cold.  I shouldn't be this cold.
          On the second floor, I can hear the storm outside splitting in two, another drowning to crowd the clouds over the house.   My eyes are as pale as prison cups.  There's nothing to watch and a wave of accidents to wade through.
           If there's any sky still surviving I can't tell.  If the suns are shivering in their cage, I can't tell.
          The staircase sinks into the current, the scraps are gray and gnawed through and swept up to my waist.  The house is shrieking like it's over already.
          I don't know how to stop the walls from howling.
          I don't know what they mean when they say it is a two-headed storm, that home isn't always where the moat won't show.
         All I can see is what the rain lets me see.  Weakness, sleepiness, numbness.  The reflection of a house relearning to breathe, desperate and drenched and disappearing back into debris.