[hider=Divinus planning/spoilers] [color=00a99d][i]Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence Not on the sea or on the islands, not On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land, For those who walk in darkness Both in the day time and in the night time The right time and the right place are not here No place of grace for those who avoid the face No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose O my people, what have I done unto thee.[/i] -Words found carven into waveworn lagoon stone, on the coast of the Fractal Sea.[/color] Day sinks, and I am roused. The light of the heavenly eyesores shatters upon the surface of my lagoon and the night is quiet. Dark. Becalmed. Below faint ripples the water is black and lifeless, shrunken upon itself, and it is time for me to bring it to life. I swing my arm heavily over the sandbed, and the first real wave of tonight stretches from the beach and claps down upon the wet, firm shore, east to north. The sound rings far and true into the lagoon, stirring my seven sons from their frenetic games in the sargassum. I swirl around them as they come, knowing them by number alone, for they are yet too small to have earned face or name. But loyal cadets they are, and they assemble beneath my wing in the tumbling organic formation in which we are so practiced. Together, we draw breath... I surge forth! ...And I draw back, my underlings in tow, as the wave spreads out gently onto the sand. Thus is the law of our crescendo; Rise slowly. Be strong in flow and gracious in ebb. Build tension, and flex, back and forth, back and forth, until the whole lagoon crashes upon the arc of my back and I feel its weight like a muscle in dance. As the stars rise on, so I push, and pull, without heave or strain. I throw myself onto the sand and flow back, seizing up the dry salt and twigs and bones of the day, casting them to the fish and the currents. With my every churning sweep I brush clean the beach, leaving only the purest white swathes. Midnight approaches and the work grows loud and broad. Deep notes of my laughter boom out over the spiny grass of the shore-lands, greeting the fickle windlings above as they idle and scatter. Make no mistake! They are not simply rumbles of amusement but grunts of effort. My task is much, and sacred. I take hold of the stagnant pools and consume them; I reach into the burrowed tunnels and fill them. I mill shells, carve stones into anemone gardens. Where the sand-ledges advance too far and weigh down the grasses below, mine is the hand that loosens it and calls it back. To me and my sons, even the heaviest driftwood is as a twig, and we haul it to the land from which it came that it may conclude its path into the earth. For the morning foragers, be their beaks those of bird or hain, we leave gifts of shellfish and green-weed. The footprints of today we wipe clean, that tomorrow may start new. My cleansing toil rises to its peak, and the little plain of the beach is submerged entirely by my every stroke. As it recedes, the entire lagoon is white, smooth, and flawless. I draw the water back, gathering it all up in my arms, bunching it together, as much as I can hold, and lo! it is tiring. Then, when the tension is at its greatest, when my sons strain bitterly, I release. The wave bursts and slams into the sand, and I with it, rebounding from the ground in a great leap of spray as the water charges on with a foamy hiss. And for a moment, I stand in that explosion of water with my arms to the heavens, one knee to the ground in the surge, my head held high for any mortal to see, and in that moment I can all but reach the celestial citadel where my father dwells, far beyond the eyes of man or Djinn. A tumble, a fall, a flurry of foam, my belly to the sand as I sink back, and the crescendo is over. The lagoon is clean, to begin anew. Tomorrow, when the sun is as high as the bitter white orbs are now, we will start again. For I am [color=00a99d][b]Flux[/b][/color], the Even-Tide, Baron of this expanse of sand, custodian of the beach, and I shall pursue my duty to my final breath! * * * * * Early morning is a tired time. My waves make their final recession before the equilibrium at dawn and the swell that comes with the day. The moons may tug at the lagoon with their panicked passes, but their eccentricity cannot waver my perfectly arranged cycle. I have refreshed this shore a million times over and shall do so a million more; Let them keep to themselves in the cold heights, by Change! Yet even I know that, in the eyes of the mighty Tidelords to which I owe fealty, I am young. Tonight, something crosses my path that reminds me of this. They are called Mockdjinn, to most, False Stonelords, to some, and Urtelem to a few. I have seen their herds pass this beach many times and I have watched generations of them pass on. No stone can outlast the ageless tide, not even the true Stonelords that cower in their mountains, and these shambling beings are no exception. But this herd carries someone with them. It is a thing like a scorpion and yet like a hain. Flexible, thin, and yet strong and elegant; Curved and pointed, like fish bones. It lags behind as the Mockdjinn shuffle on and leave deep tracks in the sand. A moment comes when it clicks a low note, and the matriarch turns. They share a moment of signing, and herd and creature part ways, with waves from both sides. They are used to leaving their strange follower behind in some place or other. The matriarch locks eyes with it a moment longer than the rest, knowing that something now is different. The two salute, and turn aside. Submerged, I am alone with the creature. Curled upon the shore, it moves only to lift an arm. It beckons me. Only after a few moments do I realise the truth of this. [color=00a99d][i]Impossible![/i][/color], so I think to myself. Am I not well concealed within my own waters? [color=00a99d][i]Ah, but surely beauty such as mine cannot be concealed forever. Very well! I shall display myself.[/i][/color] I lift my handsome form from the water. It flows and swirls upon itself, streaked with foam, a green-white frame of muscular curves that towers over the silent being below me. [color=00a99d]"Hile, Creature! I bid you welcome into this, most [i]pristine[/i] realm of mine. Pray, tell me, are you ill?"[/color] It gazes back, not quite with the adulation I deserve, but with an interest I find unsettling. Close up, I can finally determine its nature. It is one of the fair folken, so named for the fae that circle its winged skull in a loose halo. Servitors of the Grey Flesh. Standing, it is maybe the height of a man, and its neck is hung with the weight of a dozen tightly-beaded necklaces. There is a distant rattle to its breath. He is ancient beyond words. My eyes glance away from his stare momentarily, but I force them to stay. The Sculptor's eyes are marred with an architect's keenness. Not the fascination of finding something new, for his gaze is old as the mountains and knows all in their shade. He watches me with the curiousity of the transcendent, who looks upon a familiar world yet sees it as if for the first time. With only the faintest shiver, his spired hands lift up a heavy rope of ornaments from his chest. The heaviest, I think, and the most elaborate. I take it, transfixed, in my hands. A smile alights on those ancient eyes. Then, it is over. The fae-blades clink as they begin to fight one another. The Sculptor's heavy head tilts backwards, turning his gaze to the stars, and his pincers are limp. I look to the chain in my palms. Its pendants are many, carved of semiprecious stone, of chalcedony, rose quartz, jade. A pictography. Mockdjinn in all stages of life. Symbols and shapes, and carvings of insects. Pawprints pressed into ochre clay. There is a pattern to it, a record of a journey, and the closer I look, the more I can discern. There are open plains treaded by deer and spider-oxen, forests ringing with birbsong. Records of birth, the aging face of a matriarch. Tools that can only belong to hain, modelled human handprints... When the morning comes I will give the ancient being a natural funeral beneath a flow of dune-sand, as I have many cadavers before, and let the burrowing crabs go their way with him until fresh grass sprouts above. For now, in this quiet moment, I hold the looping history in my palms, and keep it until a rising dawn calls me to surrender its stones to the slow grind into dust, as is the natural way. [center]* * * * *[/center] [/hider]