It all happens— well, not quickly, exactly. In some sense, it occurs in a terrible sort of slow motion. One moment, the ferry is clunking across something heavy and the next, they are down a ferryman and jars of powder mixtures are shattering and someone (or maybe multiple someones) are screaming.

Wysteria de Foncé, who was deep in a very one sided conversation with a Riftwatch laundress, is blissfully slow on the uptake. She is turning in her seat only as Muroh the ferryman's legs disappear down the gullet of the great snapping turtle, and then there is the screaming—

It's quite a lot to process all at once. Particularly as the great horrible head of the creature rises farther and the ferry shakes, groaning as it catches on some ledge of the beast's body and is dredged from the dark waters of the harbor, beginning to slant wildly and sending its passengers either bouncing over the rail toward the water or scrambling against the pull of gravity.

Wysteria is among the latter.