After spending time in the lake, your stomach starts to rumble very loudly. At first, you thought that you were going to fart and you try to ignore it(mainly because you don't want to pollute the water because you are still in the lake)but the longer you try to ignore it, the louder the sound becomes. Strangely, your stomach isn't filled with gas like you thought and you don't feel like burping either. At first, you couldn't think of any reason for why your stomach was behaving this way. Ever since you became a hippo, the only time you ever felt this way was when you wanted to burp or fart. But then, you tried to recall your life when you were a human. It was very hard to do that because although a hippo can form memories like humans do, you can only form detailed memories ever since you turned into a hippo. But you did recall that your stomach acted like this when you were hungry because before you were transformed you were going to a restaurant after reading that book in the library(this is the furthest memory you could recall before being transformed) so after that, you came up to your conclusion that you were hungry. You decide to find food in the area to satisfy your appetite. At first, you thought that finding food was the hardest part of living life in the forest because you think that hippos are carnivores(which means that they eat the meat of other animals) but you are very hungry at this point so you don't have energy to hunt so you decide to eat the grass that grows in your habitat. Surprisingly, they actually taste really good and there's also plenty of it just growing around so you can settle here instead of wasting energy on hunting for food every time you are hungry. You decide to take a small sip from the lake to quench your thirst(note: A hippo can drink more than 210 liters or 56 gallons of water a day but you're different from other hippos because you were a human, you live in a forest instead of a savanna, you live longer than an actual hippo, you can still understand human languages and your appetite is much much smaller which you could survive on despite the amount of water and food that you consume is way less than that of a real hippo). When you are finished, you decide to go back to the lake because you are bored( you still have human thoughts and feelings which is why you still feel boredom and understand human language despite being an animal) and you can't do things like watch TV or play computer games. The water always feel comfortable and relaxing and plus, the lake is just big and deep enough for you to "dive" and even walk underwater. Heck, you even read that hippos can sleep underwater although you never tried it yourself mainly because you think that it is false even now as a male adult hippo. From that point on, you decide to spend most of your time in the lake although you still have to go on land to find food which is again mainly grass. In fact, spending time there has (more or less) became a common activity in your day to day life. Although, it isn't so necessary that you can't live without it (even though there's a high chance that you might develop that feeling in the future considering how much time you spent there). But unlike a real hippo, you can stay on land for a quite long period of time. A real hippo will become dehydrated very quickly. In conclusion, the lake plays an important role in your life although not to the point where you can't live or survive without it (mainly because your anatomy is different but we talked about that already.