Hello, everyone! I'm back with another chapter!

In this one, I wanted to focus more on getting the message through to Calvin and Hobbes that they need to be more careful. Because the whole adventure so far has sort of seemed very passive, like they're on their own... but there's a helicopter a few kilometers away ready to airlift them out if anything happens. Hence this chapter.

Enjoy!

A wet, almost icy feeling lapped at Calvin's cheek as he gently stirred, cracking his eyelids open from a restless sleep. The cold, early morning breeze hit him at once, and he shivered. From what he could tell through his bleary vision, the tip of the sun had just barely ascended over the horizon point. Everything seemed bathed in the soft but fiery glow of the dawn's first rays.

Suddenly, the wet feeling touched him again, sweeping around his head, which rested on the soft sand. The cries of seagulls sounded in the air, as not-so-distant waves crashed onto shore. Blinking to get the fog out of his vision, he sleepily propped himself upright and let out a yawn… a yawn that stopped halfway when he got a good look at the waves that had turned what used to be dry, fine sand last night to a moist, cool mattress by the rising tide.

"Hobbes!" he shouted, looking over at the prone form of his best friend, still sound asleep on the ground a few feet away. Another, larger wave covered his feet, and pushed the waterline to where the tiger lay.

"Hobbes, wake up, you snoring carpet!" he yelled, and the tiger stirred a little. Tired, both from lack of sleep and from Hobbes' incapacity to wake up, he stumbled over and gave the tiger a small kick as an incentive.

"Zz- hrrk?!" Hobbes snorted as his eyes snapped open. Immediately, he felt another wave dampen his fur, and shot up, scrambling a few feet away from the water. "Calvin?"

"The water rose," Calvin told him, looking past him a ways down the beach. "And it looks like the Compsognathus carcasses got washed away.

"Compsa- what now?" Hobbes mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"The dinosaurs that attacked us last night," Calvin told him, perplexed. "From Jurassic Park 2!"

"Yeah, well, you're the dinosaur expert, not me," Hobbes told him, looking around. "But I thought the carcasses were all over the place. Some of 'em had to have stayed!"

"Well, about that, after you fell asleep, I decided to group 'em all a ways away from us so that we wouldn't attract any dangerous night critters," Calvin explained. "I guess I put them too close to the shore."

"So, it's your doing then," Hobbes pointed out.

"Alright, let's not play the pointing fingers game," Calvin half-grumbled, to which Hobbes released a slight snicker. "And besides, neither of us knew that the tides would come in this far!"

"Well, then I suppose we should relocate, what say you?" Hobbes proposed.

"A good idea as any," Calvin nodded, and looked around for his pair of pants and sewing kit. "But I guess that now, we've gotta kill a few dodos or something for supper…"

He trailed off, looking at the small rock that he had placed his half-finished pants and sewing tools on. Wrapped around the rock was his fishbone, attached to the bundle of plant fiber that he was using as material, but his pants were nowhere to be seen. As he looked on, a wave washed over the rock, suggesting what had happened.

"Calvin, what's up?" Hobbes asked.

"My pants are gone," Calvin said, scanning the waves.

"Your-? Oh," the tiger realized. "I guess they washed away. You can always start a new pa-

"I see em!" the teen exclaimed, one hand over his forehead. "That patch in the water, right there… I can still go and get them!"

"Uh, I dunno," Hobbes told him. "Maybe it's better to cut your losses. What if there's something dangerous out there?"

"Oh relax, Hobbes," Calvin told him. "It's just a quick incursion, nothing life-threatening!"

"But-"

"Look, it's Right. There! Maybe I won't even have to leave the shallows."

And with that Calvin ran down to the shore and splashed through the first few waves.

"Calvin, wait-! oh, no," Hobbes sighed, and watched his friend swim off, making a beeline for the pants.

As Calvin swam his way out to his goal, he mentally chuckled at thinking of the tiger's worry. So what if the pants were twenty yards out? The tide was high, meaning that the shallows were much further out. To verify his statement, he let his legs sink down until they touched the sand, which were maybe four feet below him. Grinning, he started to kick back up when suddenly, a sting of pain came from his foot.

For a second, his breath hitched as flashes of him being dragged down to the depths course through his mind… but nothing happened. Lying down so that he could bring up his foot, he examined a small, bleeding gash that had, he decided, been created by a pointy rock. Relieved, he continued to swim further and further for a while, the pants coming closer and closer, until finally, he lurched forward and caught them with his left hand.

Cheering, he turned to see… well, for a second, he couldn't see Hobbes at all, before he looked a bit to the right to witness the tiger's waving form, who had attempted to stand up on two legs so as to attract his friend's attention, perhaps twice the distance he had initially assumed the pants were away.

No matter, he thought to himself, and, grasping his prize in one hand, he began to swim in a diagonal line to the right, back to where the tiger stood, waving at him as best he could. He took a second to wave back, and as he did so, he noticed a change in Hobbes' behavior.

Instead of springing up, waving with a paw, and then inevitably falling down again before repeating the motion, Hobbes had stopped yelling and stood on all fours, scrutinizing… him? The waves?

Suddenly, the tiger's fur visibly stood on end, and, turning back to Calvin, he began goading him as fast as he could while shouting… something.

A shiver ran down his spine and through his entire nervous system as he turned around, and to his horror, glimpsed an ebon dorsal fin, sticking out of the water far off in the distance but rapidly closing! Gasping, he ignored the salt water that accidentally entered his throat and began furiously swimming back to shore.

Frantically, he kicked and raced through the water as fast as he could, fear coursing through him as if all of his blood had turned to pure adrenaline. Tempted to look back, he was able to shun the thought and keep his body moving. It became a rhythm- Paddle right, kick feet. Paddle left, kick feet. Paddle Right, kick feet. And on it went for what seemed like hours, with the knowledge that the longer he took, the closer the shark got.

Then, as the faint sound of Hobbes' voice reached him across the horrific sounds of the water, he couldn't stand it any longer and quickly glanced back. The sight made him fear like nothing else ever hand, for not forty feet away was the fin, shearing through the water like a sharp knife. Behind it, a massive tail fin churned a trail of white froth as it propelled the gargantuan form ever further. For a second, he froze, his mind unable to comprehend to image in front of him. Soon a mouthful of dagger-like teeth would shear off his arm, spraying blood and causing him to sink. Then, he would be dragged down to the depths, his breath leaving him in a muffled sc-

"Calvin!" Hobbes' voice rang over the waves, jolting him out of his unmovable state and urging him to swim faster. "GO!"

He had to get there… he had to get there, for Hobbes!

With a final surge of energy, he pushed forward and felt his feet connect with ground as a sudden large, booming splash sounded behind him. The next thing he knew, a gigantic wave caught him and deposited him into the shallows in a swirl of brown water and debris.

"Calvin!"

Sputtering and coughing, he looked up at Hobbes, who reached him in a second to help him out. "Are you alright?"

"I, I… I don't-" Calvin stammered when a sudden splash behind him made him look back.

The shark had lurched out onto the shallows and was now stuck, its glossy surface moving to the right and to the left in an attempt to free itself. As the two looked at the behemoth, they noted the dorsal fin alone, which was as tall as a fully grown person. It must have been the length of a school bus, with enormous gills spurting out jets of water. And for a millisecond, both of them saw its open mouth, filled to the brim with teeth that could crack through the strongest of armor and cleave a great white shark in half.

Suddenly, as it began to slide backwards, into the deep, it shifted and Calvin stared into one of its shining, oily eyes, which stared back at him with a primal hunger so fierce, that it made him freeze up all over again.

The next second, it wriggled out of its trap, and, turning, disappeared back beneath the waves.

Breathing like a pair of mechanical bellows, Calvin slowly turned his shell-shocked gaze down at his foot, where the gash that he had gotten was still bleeding profusely, turning the water around his foot just the slightest touch of pink before it was washed away. Then, looking at his hands, he realized that he had lost hold of his half-finished pants in the struggle.

"C'mon, Calvin," Hobbes appeared in front of him, and allowed his friend to latch onto him. Walking out of the water, he carried his best friend onto the sand, where he slumped down, thankful to be alive.

For almost fifteen minutes, Calvin did nothing but lie down and breathe, while Hobbes watched over him and helped him calm down as best as he could.

Finally, Calvin looked over at Hobbes and, in a sore voice, asked, "What kind of messed up world is this?!"

"...I don't know, Calvin," Hobbes shook his head. "I just don't know."

Thirty minutes later, Hobbes was walking alongside Calvin as they started to make their way towards the nearest beacon of light in the sky, which they had decided to go to the night before. He was still drying up from wading in the shallows when the Megalodon had attacked, and despised the crusty, rough feeling that the saltwater gave to his fur.

Beside him walked Calvin, the near-victim of said attack. He could tell that the teen was still recovering from the experience, although the speed of that recovery surprised him. When Calvin got up after catching his breath, Hobbes had asked him whether he still wanted to go to one of the beacons or not, fully expecting the teen to ask to stay for another day. To his surprise, Calvin had walked over to a rock, untangled his makeshift sewing tools from around it, and said, "I'm ready… let's go."

The sun was a couple hours away from reaching its zenith as he reflected on the recent memory, and he once again looked over at his best friend. He could almost see the inner turmoil in him, and he suspected that Calvin felt bad at having almost died just because he swam out to retrieve his pants.

In truth, Hobbes had felt inclined to be angry at Calvin, because he had almost lost him… but it wasn't his fault. Neither of them were accustomed to a wilderness such as this, with hungry carnivorous death-lizards and sharks that came from Jaws.

But he knew that both of them had learned the lesson that that encounter had tried to teach them. Even the smallest, most innocent acts had the potential to be deadly. Never again would they do something so rash.

"Y'know, now that our planned food source is gone, maybe we should find something else to cook for tonight sometime soon," he told Calvin to break the silence.

"Probably," Calvin nodded, his face downcast, not allowing for much else in terms of conversation.

They continued to walk for another few minutes, Calvin sullen and cold. He felt bad. He felt bad for almost having Hobbes lose him, and he felt bad for almost losing Hobbes. If he had just stayed ashore and didn't take that risk, then everything would have been fine! But he did take that risk and almost paid for it dearly.

And for what? A half-sewn pair of pants that he didn't even manage to retrieve. Without fully noticing it, he sighed.

"Calvin," Hobbes said, causing him to look over. "It's not your fault."

"...What, you mean me swimming out into shark-central?" Calvin scoffed.

"You didn't know that," Hobbes told him. "I don't blame you… and you shouldn't blame yourself."

"Well…" he sighed again. "I know, but you don't know how bad I feel right now! I mean, you almost lost me because of my stupidity! How aren't you angry?"

"Because I know that you didn't mean to," Hobbes told him. "You'd never purposefully let me lose you... So you made a mistake. So what? You're human. Humans make mistakes all the time… it's whether you learn from your mistakes or not that matters."

"Yeah… I guess," Calvin nodded, his spirits slightly higher. "...Nice philosophical comm-"

"Of course, us tigers never make any mistakes at all," Hobbes added, causing his best friend to laugh.

"What do you mean by that?" Calvin asked him, skeptical. "The last time I checked, you guys never invented fire, or explored the world by inventing boats and spears and farming, or went to the moon or created empires or built giant rock triangles in the Sahara desert!"

"But I could still best you hand to hand," Hobbes grinned.

"You don't have hands!"

"...good point."

:D