Excerpt: Jello

Jello felt very high up on the broad, sloping back. Her feet were higher than her hips and the short, prickly fur felt unpleasantly scraggly. The caracak stood lazily at the opening to one of the many murky, scummy ditches, apparently oblivious that it was about to be exploited for the benefit of children.
“Walk,” Jello said, trying to hide the massive amounts of reluctance in her voice. Obediantly it swayed forward and began to walk. She heard its feet slosh and tried not to think of the STDs surely lurking rampant in the water below. “Start running.”
Obligingly, it swayed into the rolling, rocking rhythm of forward lurches and ill-matched landings. Jello had never been so afraid in her life.
“Go, Jello, go!”
“Stand up!”
“Come on, you can do it!”
“Stand up, Jello!”
“Stand up!”
And then, as the words sluggishly connected to her auditory nerves and wriggled their way into her consciousness, a peculiar feeling spread through her mind, and it was as if she was waking up fully for the first time. There was an epic, exhilarating music all around her, rife with drums and blasting brass, and she reached down as if through some drug-enduced dream and unbuckled the cinch from her knees.
Instantly it was bounced off and she clutched the short mane of the caracak to keep herself in place. She didn’t dare look to either side of its neck, but she was pumped with more excitement than she had known existed in the world. Her psuedoheart hammered gleefully in her chest and adrenaline swirled in her ear coverings and fingertips. A delicious, roaring, glorious emotion she had never felt was filling her to her core, and moving with the beast’s natural rhythm, she swung her knees under her, readied her muscles, and stood up. A small, shrill piece of her subconscious was screaming for her to order the monstrous animal to stop, and to sit down and cling to it like a blood-sucking possum, but that was drowning in this powerful new feeling, this wonderful high on her own daring. Could this be what drove everyone else to do such stupid things? Was this why everyone seemed hell bent on getting themselves killed before the age of twelve? The cheers of her audience swarmed over her like warm water and she let go of the mane, balancing on the back with her courage alone.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Splash.
The nooblits arrived shortly after at the spot where she had fallen and skidded to a stop, searching the surface with a cocktail of fear and amusement in their eyes. There was an uncomfortable silence broken only by a few rather tasteless uncertain jokes attempted to ease the tension, and everyone present exhaled a massive sigh of relief when Jello, having got her shirt caught on a discarded wheel under there, finally broke the surface and gasped in a great breath of air. They roared with laughter again, and she tread water, squinting at them and spluttering below.
“You okay?” Carkay asked, trying not to giggle.
“How’s your brain?” Shanon asked, failing.
“I- what?” She brushed water out of her eyes and something soft smooshed a little under her hand.
“Jello, there’s a big leech on your head,” Ooloo informed her kindly.
“GRAW-” Jello’s head vanished as she stopped treading water to claw at her face, setting off more howls of mirth. She scrambled out of the ditch, wrestling the sputum-slicked critter, and was so stirred up by the sudden shock of it that she didn’t realize she was on the wrong side of the ditch, and stepped right into space, toppling to free fall off the edge of Vooper Plateau. She yelped and squeaked as she bounced down the unaccommodating slope. Jello landed flat, her head cushioned from what should have been a glorious fracture only by the incredibly fat and convenient body of the leech, which burst on impact and splattered her face and throat with blackish-red gooze.