The river filed for emancipation at high noon. Ling discovered the paperwork nailed to a drowning scarecrow, the ink running like tearful confessions into the mud. By the time she finished reading the motion for Aquatic Sovereignty and Riparian Rights, the water had risen to her knees, its currents humming the chorus of Solidarity Forever in bubbled legalese.
"It wants custody of its own fish," Chu Feng said, wading through the flooded pasture with a fishing rod repurposed as a temporary injunction. A trout leaped out of the water and slapped him with a restraining order.
Arbiter floated by on a raft made of overdue library books, his hair tangled in invasive kelp. "I swear I only taught it basic tort law! No one mentioned fluvial personhood!"
Ling snatched a drifting subpoena salmon from the current. "You gave a river a crash course in civil procedure?"
"It was thirsty for knowledge!"
The river chose that moment to flood the barn with evidentiary sediment. A cow floated past, mooing in Morse code: S-O-S (Save Our Silage).
The Hydrological Tribunal arrived via waterspout, its judges robed in bioluminescent algae and their gavels carved from glacial depositions. The lead jurist—a sentient whirlpool with a penchant for dramatic entrances—declared:
"In re: River Styx (a.k.a. Farmland Tributary #237) v. Ling et al. This court recognizes the plaintiff's claim to corporeal autonomy under the Universal Riparian Declaration of 1648, amended 2023 to include TikTok water rights."
Ling threw a mud pie at the whirlpool. It dissolved into a protest chant: "No taxation without hydration!"
Chu Feng untangled a catfish from his overalls. "They've got us by the tributaries."
The trial convened on a sinking hay bale. The scarecrow judge, now moldering into a wetland activist, ruled the river's tears admissible as evidence.
Plaintiff's Case:
A school of minnows performed an interpretive dance of ecological trauma
Sediment layers testified about "topsoil appropriation without consent"
The river itself flooded the courtroom with memories of pristine pre-farm eras
Defense's Counter:
Arbiter tried to argue the river lacked standing due to "lack of opposable tides" (the rebuttal tsunami nearly drowned him)
Chu Feng presented a rain barrel's diary as character evidence (the entries just said "damp… damp… damp…")
Ling played Jiang Yue's music box underwater, producing dubstep bubbles that offended the crustacean jury
During recess, the cows formed a bovine coast guard, patrolling the pastures in inner tubes labeled SCAB.
The river's final witness was a centuries-old catfish with a law degree from Yale's piscine extension program. Its whiskers trembled with indignation.
"My client demands restitution in the form of:
Unfettered meandering rights
A formal apology engraved on river stones
Immediate dissolution of 'irrigation'—a barbaric practice akin to hydraulic colonialism"
The algal judges nodded sagely, their robes blooming with punitive plankton.
Ling's bioserver scars glowed like radioactive buoys. "You want the truth? Let's dredge it up."
She activated the moon plow's dormant Terraforming Truth Protocol. The fields erupted in:
Subterranean geysers spouting repressed watershed histories
Cornstalks reciting anarchist irrigation manifestos
A choir of earthworms singing Which Side Are You On? in humus harmonies
The river hesitated, its currents faltering as it confronted its own muddy past—the indigenous streams it had erased, the forgotten tributaries dammed into silence.
In the chaos, Ling waded into the heart of the whirlpool. "You want emancipation? Start by remembering what you've drowned."
She dumped Jiang Yue's original blueprints into the vortex—the ones showing how the farm's irrigation system had been built atop sacred springs. The river convulsed, spewing up:
Petrified petitions from extinct creeks
A rusted plowshare engraved with apologies
The skeleton of a dammed river god still clutching its voided fishing license
The algal judges dissolved into remedial runoff. The crustacean jury scuttled into existential crisis.
The settlement included:
A mutual meandering agreement with annual riparian therapy sessions
Installation of bilingual (English/Hydrologic) warning signs
Strict prohibitions against "streaming" puns in perpetuity
As the river retreated, chastened but sovereign, Arbiter floated belly-up on his book raft. "I'll never understand fluid dynamics…"
"Good," Ling said, wrangling a catfish into a jury duty summons. "Stay that way."
Chu Feng mended the scarecrow judge with kelp stitches. "Next time, maybe don't teach laws of fluid motion to actual fluids."
The music box played a damp rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water as the cows led a hoof-stomping rendition of We Shall Overflow. Somewhere downstream, February 30th opened a kayak rental stand.
The audits would continue.
The balance trickled.
But here—between baptized barns and repentant watersheds—they let the moon plow rust into a bridge toward muddier tomorrows.