Plop, plop, plop.
The man was walking with a stilted gait through the muck. The murk was still warmed from the long summer season, but as the intermittent chills began to thicken the mud and thick sludge he trod through, the adhesive substance was gaining more and more of a tendency to adhere itself to his fetlocks. They weren't too terribly long, but with a longer than average coat, he had a tendency to pick up bits and pieces of his environment whenever he traveled somewhere.
And currently, his environment was trying to stick to him like cement glue.
The brown man gave a startled squeal as he stepped on a hidden rock beneath the muck's surface, his hoof scraping the moss-slicked and rain-smoothed surface roughly as he went tumbling forwards. Pain flared through the lower ends of the limb as he fell, and he ripped his leg up from the water and held the twisted ankle beneath his chest, not that it saved him from losing his balance. He landed with a rough splash in the murk, the mud and grimy water drenching his face as it splashed up with his fall, copper eyes screwing shut as the liquid coated him. His nostrils were above the surface, thank Vespera, but he still felt all of the underside of his body and quite a bit of his sides soundly submerged, to say nothing of the muck that had splashed up onto him.
His ears were wilted, and eyes facing in no particular direction in a deadpan stare of annoyance.
Oh for Vespera's sake, seriously?!?
A small part of his brain whispered that maybe he ought to just stay here and accept his fate as part of the terrain, better to just give up now than have to deal with the frustrating task of trying to wash the muck from his mane and coat. At least this way he wouldn't have to move either.
He figured he could make a good log. Maybe in time he'd blend in well enough that he could trip up passerby and then he'd have a companion for his misery. Misery loves company.
Closing his eyes with a heavy sigh through his nose, the man set about getting his hooves back underneath him from where he'd gone sprawling. It took more than few hop-like pushes to drag his chest free of the murk and push himself onto his haunches, but using his good leg he managed to attain a sitting position, getting a few deep breaths from the exertion of clawing his way free of the thick murk before assessing the damage.
He flexed the twisted hoof a little, wincing at the small flare of pain as he did so. It didn't feel like he'd sprained or seriously damaged anything, just jerked the joint into a way it wasn't supposed to go and it had rightly protested. He tentatively put his weight back on it, the joint protesting with a burning ache but not enough to deter him, he'd just walk it off. (Or sleep it off, once he found whatever he had gotten up to go looking for. What was he even doing up again? Oh, right, food. As per usual.)
Now that he had his forelegs figured out, it only took a little more pulling to get his back end up and out of the muck, the man feeling his whole body give a twitching as he felt thick rivulets of cold swamp water begin to run down his flanks. Ugh, that was unpleasant to say the least. But he wasn't freezing, he supposed, just uncomfortable.
After giving into the momentary urge to shake himself like some kind of dog, the man gave his injured hoof another small flex, testing how it coped with his weight by taking a few hesitant steps. Not as bad as before, even though it had only been a few moments. He could definitely just walk it off. So he set back off through the swamps, looking for something to eat. Nothing spectacular really, he wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just whatever happened to strike his fancy as he walked.
@Israfel
OOC: He's not got the most interesting of lives. xD
