[hider=Finalised section 2]
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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 arranged cycle. I have refreshed this shore a million times over and shall do so a million more; By the Gale! Let them keep to themselves in the cold heights!

Yet even I know that, in the eyes of the mighty Tidelords to which I owe fealty, I am young. Tonight, someone crosses my path that reminds me of this.

The tribesfolk 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. I recognise familiarity. 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. I perceive, in her, a new knowing. Something now is different. Something, perhaps, which she has seen coming for some time, and for which she has watched. 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 at that moment. Am I not well concealed within my own waters? [color=00a99d][i]Ah, well. Beauty such as mine cannot be concealed forever. So be it! 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 pristine realm of mine. Pray, tell me, are you ill?"[/color]

It gazes back, not quite with the adulation I deserve for my toil, 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 exotic god, Yivvin. 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 spike flies 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 tread 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.[/hider]