The river motif is a familiar one in folklore. In addition, your story feels intentionally vague in places, where greater specificity would ground the piece. Leaning into lived experience is where originality and developed, layered writing emerges. The linguistic anomalies in your piece are also telling.

This piece also falls short of our minimum recommended length of 750 words which would at least, in careful hands, have given the story a chance to breathe, develop the characters, and meet the general requirements of good fiction.