Exhaustion. I can see the light creeping on, one moment at a time, from day into night and night into day, again, and again, and again, and again. The bitter moons tug the tides with fleeting and jittery pinches. Mocking me. Sand sifts away from where I hauled it. Each wave pulls me with it, up and down, a sick, limp sack of fluid.
There is a kind of disgusting interplay between my substance and that of the ocean. The pain does not disturb me on its spiny drift through cycles of localised cuts and aches, but the horror is a thing all its own. To feel oneself melting into the water and become slime. A stringy, oily mess with no surface. With each slice of torture, a brittle black flake begins to swim in me, and I can feel it move. I can watch it and I do, obsessively. The more I watch the fragile crystal platelets shatter and grow, the deeper I am incited to nausea. This is not my body. This is not who I am.
Flex.
"Never!"
You are growing into your final shape and need space. Flex.
"Shrivel up and die!"
Sure. But first, flex.
Something is dripping inside me, a feeble flow. I am being distilled. Colours are separating into the watery gunk as it bleeds out of me. They form a set of layers that slide over one another in eddies. A false skin, a membrane sticking to me. Sticking to me as the sea is peeled off my flesh. And the steam billows on.
I'm curled as tightly as I can, to try and hide as much of myself from the metamorphosis as I can, but now I give a reflexive convulsion before I return to fetal position.
Flex?
"Silence!"
No. Flex.
I try to breach the surface to form a mouth and shout, but I cannot. I am already melded with the formless entombment and it bends around me. But I do not give in. Noble even in death, I do not surrender.
Rather than watch myself be destroyed beyond imagining, I dig myself into myself and try to pull, to rip, to swell and burst. I can feel my strength but it does nothing for me. When I try to perform even the slightest stretch, the motion stirs a flurry of new precipitates into my body. The meniscus, the skin, expands to accommodate my motion and I cannot contract it back into my previous shape. I no longer bend in the ways that would be right for suicide. The disease has slit my hamstrings.
Flux emerged from the waters of rebirth as a moth from its chrysalis: Slowly, delicately, stretching new-found wings with the purest form of innocent confidence. I bid you watch him, and watch him well.
See the glow of gold and forge-red within his folds and ribbons. This is his soul, for what alighted upon him from the nether worlds was only waiting for he on whom one could be implanted. See too how its light steams and dances over the sea-drops that fall from his body. For he is no longer of water but of oil, infused with fine metals. He has become a thing of paint. Watch, now, as Flux stares into the moonlight of his first morning.
And what moonlight it is! There are six moons aligned in the heavens tonight, and they shine as one, from bright Vigilate to shaded Cogitare. Even the narrow river that had once been Lex seems to sing to its sisters.
Flux stargazes. For some time he continues. He has never seen the moons this clearly before, nor even considered such a display anything more than a waste of his attention.
They're quite splendid.
Around him, the islands and bays of what Flux has crafted out of his home are all gone. The surface is still, and, passing over, he does not disturb it. The memory of what was and is now lost to chaos strikes many chords in his heart, but they are tangential, distant things. Indeed, Flux remembers very much, and his memory is true, and he does not stay to live it again. What is seen is seen. What is done is done. I am who I am.
Yivvin is still there, in the artist's mind, where he will remain forever. Flux does not summon him, though he knows that he will come at the call. There is no need. Neither mortal nor god has anything left to say- It is over. Promises have been kept and lost. Those who ascend do not look back. Life is made of pain and pleasure, and regret only blocks both.
Flux was who Flux was, and now he is who he shall be.
I wonder if I am still 'he'.
Flux supposes that is not the case, or never was. It is little more than a curious guess. Much about himself he now realises that he does not really know. Nor does he know how long it may take to find out if there is an answer to that question. For now, he remains Flux. There is much that Flux has yet to do.
The shining spirit travels over the water, gently swirling and unfolding and coalescing as it moves. In not so much time, Flux has passed the border of the lagoon he once knew as his, and looks out on a dune-crest over all the lands he has seen and never travelled. I suppose I never desired to leave behind what was mine. It is a glorious realm.
Then, too, so is this. Perhaps it, also, is mine.
Perhaps this whole world is shared between all those eyes who behold it. Who can say?
There comes a red glow to the far horizon, and it draws nearer. Flux stays to watch.
It is not dawn.
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.
The wildfire draws near, chasing a shoal of embers ahead of it in a cloud of smoke. They swim like creatures fleeing a sudden noise and Flux traces them in his mind's eye, drawing out the sinuous curves they travel before they die. Soot and smoke roils around them, following its own pattern of revelry as it grows. Flux watches the tide come in, as he has innumerable others, other tides and waves and flotsam. A renewal, a sculpting of elements. And not beyond my capability to craft and control. Nothing is. Flux sees it as one evolving whole from the moment it crests the horizon to the moment it halts over his head.
"You have left your puddle, Flux. At last."
It has been years since the spirit last mocked Pyre, and he has grown. Not changed, perhaps, but Pyre's sons number twelve where once there were seven, and he gazes down half again upon the rival he once matched height for height. The flames wreath his legs like a silken robe, barely obscuring the work of muscle below. Smooth shoulder-curves are mantled in smoke.
Flux takes in every stroke of Pyre's body. He is beautiful. As magificent as I was the day I looked upon the bone-scorpion's necklace. More, even. As if to feel the surface of Pyre's chest, to touch him and see if he's just a dream, Flux stretches out, slowly, something like a hand.
In a sweeping blow that sears the night air, Pyre slams into Flux's core and tosses him aside, a brilliant flare erupting at the point of impact.
"Disgusting," he sneers, as Flux reforms upon the ground. "That I should in my reign be forced to touch one so cursed. Yet I am brought to do so by a duty; One which I owe to my very self, and to you, slime, for you have abandoned it."
Pyre advances, leading the blaze behind him, and is not shocked to see his once-rival give way before him, turning aside again to avoid his path. Flux does so at his own leisure. He is an actor of Pyre's stage, now, so let the rightful lead be taken, lest the scene be unbalanced.
"When I first met you, you were noble. A high being, as I. Indeed, with patient effort, you may even have one day been worthy to stand before my face and name yourself my true nemesis. Now look at you. A disgrace! Where are the tides of today, that you have spent such years commanding? Where is the handsome figure, that I judged to hold such potential? You have thrown away all that you are!"
A stamped foot, another blinding fireburst. Cinders flurry upwards and all around.
"Your power is wasted upon you now- An insult to your own kin, and a burden to mine, that I must see you to ash and tar when I could be engaging djinni far greater. And yet you have lost even the simple decency to grovel.
"Hear me well, foam spirit: I came at your own call. The echoes of your wish for death carried far, and the windlings caught it. Fickle vagrants be they, but even they know well who and what they are. Your words were carried to me, and I came to bestow what final mercy is within my power. I came, across sand and stone, to find you. Now I see you so far rotted that you would kiss your own cancer, and pronounce it wholesome.
"Is there still a shadow of your true self left, Flux? Enough to beg forgiveness for what you have made of yourself, and await your reckoning? Enough to regret? Or is even that flickering hope too dim to last?"
Now Pyre stands at the head of the dune, and Flux is in danger of falling down its slope. He feels no fear, though the blaze stands shining above him, and the black pillars blot out the stars. No- Flux does fear. A fear for life and realm. But he consumes that emotion. Relishes it. Tastes the tension, the risk. Flux savours the sensation if impending death, a connoisseur.
His new body comes undone, all but the prism-form that gleams where once there was a face, and fans out in a folded half-circle beneath that peak. The disk splits sixfold, flows, and ripples, and like a moth, Flux ascends on young wings, wings tipped in the squared false-hands of an idol.
The imago rises to match Pyre, who grimaces, but does not give a single sand-kernel worth of ground. From the fluid pyramid, a face is formed, a visage familiar of old.
"It is not right to hold silence to a rival of long years. Behold, Pyre, for now I face you as who I was, and what I am. For these things are not undone. In seasons gone I mocked you, and I am still the mocker. In days past I administered the waves, and I am still a baron, though I now intend to rove the ways of this world, and take to the earth and the skies also, and seek out all that which wanders in hope of the voice of a lord.
"Gaze upon me, blaze-speaker, and know: This is I. This is Flux. This is the face of the true self, the only self, for it is the face of the moment, the face of now. And it, like all else, shall change, grow, aspire to greater grandeur. What I was, I was in earnest. What I did, I did with pride, and will soon continue afresh. The only truth in this world is the truth that evolves. Thus I am who I am. No more- And no less."
And as Flux speaks these words, the first faery drifts down from the blackened sky, and alights upon his forehead. It is a moth, a striated umber moth, and on many wings it watches Pyre with the eye-spots that Flux never had.
The fire-djinn lifts his face to the sky, and exhales a slow plume of red.
"You make no apology for the disgrace of your kind and your station. You renounce the words you spake in better senses. You reject the mercy of a wiser Djinn. Very well, Flux. Your decision is clear, and I shall not dispute."
Then the two powers are swelling, shining, a great blaze and a little glow, and the fire is a sighing, flowering hell of black and yellow, but this oil does not easily catch, and this metal does not easily rust.
"...So be it."
They surge forth.
I no longer strive to strive towards such things. Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings? Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know again.
The spirit is quite surprised, indeed, to be alive. Certainly, he knows that Pyre left him only the choice between death willing and death violent, for there is no way to outpace such a fire, even should he reach the shore, and so he fought long, and well. Certainly, too, the faery proved remarkably effective in dissolving flame and gale, though it be but one. And we well know that the body is a malleable thing, of which we all stand to learn much- How much more a body of paint to an artist?
Pyre breathes deeply, and roars conflagration still, sharp against the last moonlight. But he is grounded, now, a sizzling heap upon a wide field of ash, and he knows well how soon Flux may corner him, how simple it is for the flow to part before the obstacle and move on. They have passed each other many times, and, at last, the ranks of the fire do not rise again.
"It is a strange thing," speaks Flux. "That, a time and a day ago, I wished to speak these words. For now that they come at last, they are heavy and ashen upon my soul. Thus I say to you, Pyre- Do you yield?"
A brief cloud of flame plumes again, and Flux disperses it with hands like ribbons.
"Never! Not to such as you. To death at the hands of one greater and more beautiful than I- Therein may lie some bitter honour, but this aeon shall not pass before I rid this world of your degeneracy!"
More fire, adding to the thick, low smoke. Flux delays the final collision. Pyre is not the only one to have spent much in this duel, and been depleted.
"There is no need for death in the moonlight. I never asked it of you, nor shall I force it. I ask life. Will you give me that?"
It is a curious dilemma, made none the less charged for the fact that Flux knows how it will end.
"Mark me, Flux. You shall be but a stain on the sand before the sun rises, if I must give my life to have it be so. For I, at least, will die as myself, free and pure to the last!"
He does not give his life. Not yet. Pyre is not certain that his sacrifice will destroy the painted being, not while Flux holds the upper hand.
"And yet I must live, and will not trade my life for yours, nor both of ours for nothing. If I flee from you, you shall return for me. If I let you destroy yourself as you wish, I may die. There is only one way, Pyre. Do you not know it?"
Another question. Another answer.
"I know it well- You shall fall upon me, and seek to destroy me before I may destroy you, and then I shall destroy us both! Come, coward! Cease delaying what must take place!"
A tragedy, that Pyre still denies to himself that he is not capable of the final step. Only the cruel would name it otherwise.
"I wish you no despair, Pyre. These shores have seen enough of that already. Make your last peace and give yourself back to the ether, the primordial winds. It is not my night to fade."
"I refuse it. I deny your empty promises now and into eternity, and if the Flux that was still lived, he would honour me by silencing them."
And, of course, he does live.
"Then it is over, for you as it was for me. I know what it means to seek death and find nothing. Goodbye, old friend. I will remember you with warmth and light."
Flux leaps, six wings fusing into two, and before Pyre can struggle to open up his own heart, he claps them together upon him. There is a final wave of embers as they collide, but Pyre is gone. The wavering candle-lights of his progeny look on, uncertain. They are too young to mourn. Only Flux remains to pay the final dues.
"Go," he bids them. And, one by one, unsure of the meaning of mercy, they disappear into the haze and the ash.
Flux sees them all. Watch him well and closely; for we will not hear of him again for some time. See him as the final glow upon the ashen dune, the final sound as the crackle of fresh charcoal dies at last. Know that he smiles without a mouth, for these nameless children are too small to remember him and too young to travel far, and he is glad that they will live on to claim the dunes and the shore once again.
Listen, closely now, for his prayers. They come in whispers. Flux prays to the wind, and the dawn, and the waters and what lies beyond them, prays even to Yivvin, that these sparks will not one day dwindle in the dust, but will burn, brightly, and carve names of their own into the legend of ages.
And having passed out of the legend himself, Flux moves on, into the lands of the sun.
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.
Plains are gentle to the winds that stride upon them. The air sifts between long grasses, soughing. Each gust carries a subtly different note. I am well familiar with this ambience. It is the sound of waves. Over the great length of the golden barrens, a tide is coming in.
The acacia is an island, its canopy broad and lonely. The only place of shade for many tired footfalls on the way to the venomweald. High are its leaves, and high am I, among them. A view of splendour. It is gratifying, to own this land and rule it. But my reign is not placid. I set myself to the dirt.
As days flicker by and become seasons, as the moons come and go, tireless, restless, with all the hands I possess, I surge forth.
By the tree, the ground falls under my fists, into a pit that becomes a crater. When it strikes stone I bite the rock and chisel it into a well. On my back I bear the earth and take it up onto the plain, weaving veils of grass to block the wind from the dusty shoulders of the mounds.
The barrows multiply and grow larger, spiralling, forming narrow valleys and paths in a pattern only I can see. They align before my eyes and I paint with their shadows, that every moment of every day shall show a different silhouette. Every view displays its own geometry, each one disguising and revealing hidden spaces that lie between the conical pyramids. On straining wings alone does one see the spiralling pattern for what it is.
In cupped hands I draw water from the well and plant the seeds of jagged flowers I bring from afar. I stretch their roots and tie them that they may hold the earth in place. My palms scoop the pit around the well into terraces and line them with stones from the carving. In the hidden spaces, the darkness grows cool enough for the acacia's own children to take root at last.
Around the Well of the Barrens there is an earthen maze, upon which rises a grove of many trees. The islet which has become a continent.
As the saplings grow tall enough to cast their own shade on the green barrows, I tie bird bones to their branches. The hollow forms tap lightly together in the wind, a gentle chime in a garden place.
Flux?
"An old vagabond returns to my presence," I whisper. My work does not pause, nor does it slow.
It has been some years.
"Many."
You've roamed far.
"And soon, further still. I have graced these plains long with my toil. Now they are in the hands of Fate, and I- I will find myself again elsewhere." In the far, high distance, from atop the tallest mound, I can just see the true hills, the stone where the Ironhearts find their northern end.
I... I bid you not to travel south-west. There has been an- There is a peril spreading from the savannah. The Djinni have marked the fair folken out for genocide. Word is catching.
Interesting, and not remotely surprising. Gods do not easily grow out of their flaws, and the princes of Galbar are proud. Such was my way, such is theirs. I spare a glance to my flock of fae. They are a beautiful weapon. I wonder how much they can take.
There is another place you can go.
I unlace my hand into a splay of tendrils and rearrange the vine-bound cluster of chimes.
To the north, beyond the Ironhearts, there is a plateau. A people lives there, Angels by name, in a valley that may provide sanctuary from the elementals. But a divine force has risen to slaughter them. I don't wish to see that come to pass.
"Maybe," I say, as if to myself, "I do not wish to go. It may be that I do not fear those who were once my kin. It may be that death is an aspect of life, and I do not hate it."
Others said that too, and I can hear dejection in the voice of Yivvin.
"It may be that I do not care much for your wishes, and would rather act of my own accord."
Silence.
As you wish, Flux. I'll leave you to your own.
Good, I think, and pluck a fuzzy yellow floret from the acacia, folding it into my hand. And I gaze out, once again, to the distant foothills.
Wavering between the profit and the loss, In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices And the weak spirit quickens to rebel.
The dew is cold and glittery-grey, strings of it lined up on the edges of the stones. Dancer wears nothing and does not shiver. Their hands moves swiftly over the toughened leather, sewing the inner and outer layers together, sealing in the warm fleece of a mountain goat suspended on spokes of flexible wood.
Tira shivers plenty under her tunic, waiting, not too patiently, for the Sculptor to finish repairing the reinforced coat. Youthful energy must find an outlet, though, and she sprints, leaps, jams her quarterstaff into the ground and practices her landing.
Her vault is excellent but her sandals skid on the gravel and Tira slips as she falls, letting out a cry. The Urtelem matriarch uncurls instantly, sensing distress, but she's already laughing as she gets up, and Dancer's third hand signs teasingly in her direction. Their head doesn't move.
It doesn't need to. Three pairs of eyes leave few blind spots, and Dancer flicks to attention long before their companions, lifting a club cautiously, talons tensing. Tira spots their pose and follows their gaze.
The being coming down from the sky is a strange one, the strangest yet in their party. "Osh kia yem weit," she mutters, holding the staff defensively, as she's learned to do.
Shapes resolve themselves and break up as they near. The glowing core of the mass, an ever-shifting flurry of wings, descends from a thick cloud of fae that scatter into their own swarm. Dancer relaxes. Tira follows their lead. "Runati as-nu?"
The newcomer laughs, a low sound, an old sound, an emissary of authority far away and long lost.
"My name is Flux."
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.
O my people.
This post introduces Flux, a water elemental who claims as his own a lagoon on the shores of the Fractal Sea. One night, Flux encounters the long-dying First Sculptor, who has far outlived even the extended lifespan of the Jvanic Cult. Old Fishbones leaves the Djinn a gift, and he finds, to his later rage, that he has been given something far more than simple inspiration.
Much later, Flux finds his way to the foothills of the Nice Mountains, where Tira and Dancer are making their final preparations to battle against Grot.
There is, on the far northern edge of the Fractal Sea, a stretch of coast still marked by the number-perfect lines of bays and estuaries where the waters first drew their border, long ago when the world was young. And on this coast there is a lagoon, which is peaceful and still, good sailing in even the smallest rafts which hain sometimes string together upon which to fish. Stories say that it was not always so. Stories say many things.
The only story likely to catch the interest of the traveller is a simple one. Upon a slab of waveworn stone at the far eastern end of the water, there is a series of faint depressions that present themselves only to a keen sense of touch. On a few scarce days every year, when the six moons align their pull, the water rises just high enough to fill these markings evenly. Using the pale reflection of their light, these etchings can be read. It is said that they always read the same words, no matter the tongue or text of the traveller, but this is something one must see for oneself.
Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place.
I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face, And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again.
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice And pray to God to have mercy upon us.
Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again.
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
Day sinks, and I am roused.
Light still seeps from heaven's blemishes, falls to earth, and shatters upon the surface of my lagoon. The night is quiet. Dark. Becalmed. Below faint ripples the water is 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 the seven sons of mine from their frenetic games in the sargassum.
I swirl around them as they come, knowing them by number alone. As yet, they are yet too small to have earned face or name. But they are loyal cadets. They recognise the benevolent force of discipline, and assemble beneath my wing in the tumbling organic formation which I have taught them. We are practiced, all, performers of the kind that grow only from passion for a harsh craft. 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 honed art of our crescendo; Rise slowly. Be strong in flow and gracious in ebb. Build tension, back and forth, back and forth, until the whole lagoon crashes upon the arc of my back and I can feel its weight, flex it, almost 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. The sounds are spontaneous. Cries of accomplishment in motion- 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. Perfect. One who holds dominion over a realm he does not lift out of chaos and fashion to the liking of his own eyes, but leaves it without permanence or function, holds no dominion at all.
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-A grateful 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 Flux, the Even-Tide, Baron of this expanse of sand, custodian of the shores. And what I have claimed, I shall rule. I give it form and purpose, day by day, night by night, and thus satisfy my soul, for my nature is that of the wise who find in themselves a noble cause and uphold it.
To be true to myself and glorify this territory with my name goes beyond righteous pride. It is a duty.
And I will fulfil that duty in whole until 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 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. Impossible!, so I think at that moment. Am I not well concealed within my own waters? Ah, well. Beauty such as mine cannot be concealed forever. So be it! I shall display myself! 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.
"Hile, Creature! I bid you welcome into this, most pristine realm of mine. Pray, tell me, are you ill?"
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.
High is the sun still and only now are those lazy, whimsical windlings cooling down the sand. Oh, they take their sweet time at their work, so they do, and were they only a little slower and a little sweeter I would consume them for their tardiness, and their enthusiasm would serve a better purpose in me than ever they did on the breeze. By my name! Just hurry up.
But then, the afternoon is slow time, even to those wiser nobles of the land such as I. The day's tide is finished. I now withdraw little by little, sprinkling the shells upon the shore to bleach. As my sons arrange and bicker over the size of the waves, I hold the scallops and sand-dollars in my hands before they are cast about.
They're elegant, aren't they?
Simple geometries, but they suit their places well, each one unique. My waters trace their ripples and wonder. Such shapes are pleasing to the eye and soothing to heft. It is almost the same feeling, to look upon them, as to look upon one's own accomplishment, hard-won and more excellent than ever it was in the mind's eye. As was the chain of amulets that now sits scattered on the currents. My currents.
My currents, of course, that can do so much more than scatter and clean.
Amphipods leap and feast on the tide-lines of shell and sargassum we leave with each shrinking wave. These, too, are strings of ornaments, and together they form a history of a few hours as the waves fall down until they are ready to rise again at dusk. I raise my fist and flick my fingers outwards, sending forth narrow, lateral bands of water that puncture and stretch the curving parallel lines of flotsam, pulling them into an almost checkered shape.
Hah! It is satisfying.
With a clap and a throw and a gesture, I set about pushing the tide-lines into shapes that amuse me. I stretch out thin serpentine streams to make spirals, and pick up larger spheres of water with which to make circles, and model the smooth folding curves of my arms and chest onto the sand. Let the whole foreshore reflect my beauty and ingenuity, why not? My work is not impeded by these shapes in the slightest.
And it's fine work, too.
...
My meditation is interrupted by the taste of smoke and crackling dune grass. Familiar scents, from one who comes here one time and another, to taunt me. Coward! I shall show him! With a great, rushing step I ascend from the bay, and my sons rush around my knees. Upon the beach I stand tall.
"Pyre, you creeping, sooty mound of twig-cinders! Show yourself and fight, if you are half the Spiryt you wish to be!"
The simmering weakling devours a spiky heath of green in an orange flourish. With his seven snivelling minions in tow, Pyre takes on his God-given form and stands as tall as I do. No, not as tall, never as tall. He's just puffing himself up with smoke, the bastard. I foam up a little to stare him down. Two can play his game.
"Ah, so calls the craven raindrop from his puddle! Pop that bubble you're standing on to match my stature and set foot on dry land, Flux, that we may duel and show you the gutless tattler you are!"
His insolence knows no bounds!
"Have you still not grown a pair of cullions half as large as your ever-whining mouth, you fuliginous wretch? Mine is the challenge, fair and noble, therefore set foot in the lagoon and match me if you can, or turn your back and snuff out as you ever do!"
"I'll no sooner touch your damp rag of a realm as I'll resort to your sneering cringery, Flux! Have you neither the honour nor the spine to follow through with your empty threats? Nay, you have always been as limp and indecisive as that splash of water you call home, don't I know it!"
"Pah! Steamy words from a flame that has never left his meek, ashen hearth! Step down into my magnificent barony and see how foolish you are to believe so! Shall I wait for you, or do you with to prove yourself a wispy coward sooner rather than later?"
"Such I should have expected from you, unboiled kettle, to slink back into your pond before I..."
I have already dismissed his snivelling mockery and dissolved back into the water. That runt! To think he could ever stand against my righteous anger! No, if he had but a smidgen of the power he claimed, he would have come down here and shown it by now. The fact that Pyre calls me ever up into the dust and soot instead of making good on his challenges surely proves that. Can anything be plainer?
Beneath the surface, the thin waves above dapple the light that falls down onto the sandbanks, but their tug is weak. Just enough to make ripples in the sea-dust, where gardens of eels dance in the current and puffers stir up silt to make their patterned nests. I stir up a sand-swirl of my own, pinch it up over the seabed like a sleek ghost, and watch it make its slow way back down.
No, I will not leave this place to fight him in the dry, brittle dunes above. Here it is beautiful. Here I can make it beautiful.
You can make it beautiful wherever you please.
Silence! I am working, I clear my thoughts. There is still some time before dusk, and many ways to put these fine hands of mine to use.
Seasons turn slowly. It is, sometimes, difficult to remember quite when summer ended, quite when to expect the first chills to come.
And then, in a moment, the dawn is once again cold enough to hiss up eddies of sea fog to dance among the breezeless air of winter.
As the terns fly south to wait on a warmer clime, I stretch the early waves in my fist and toss them forth into the white-grey. There is little difference between the colour of the air and of the water anymore, and my body too is wreathed in that same veil of mist. If there were anyone here to listen to the chill silence, they would not see me kneel upon the lagoon's surface, holding the winter-steam in hand. Even my sons are wandering elsewhere.
I am here,
No, indeed, I am alone. Even the windlings have gone to chase other dreams. This shore is mine only, and I can make of it as will and wisdom dictates.
So what do you will?
I spring from the lagoon in a gracious pirouette, casting spray onto the beach, and as I trail misty spirals in my passage to the shore the two fluid beams of my arms become many, as spokes on a wheel, sweeping the beach with waves. I settle on the sand, whole again, composed and perfect.
Ah, but in tending the lagoon, it is easy to forget how good is it to have such a form to come back to at any moment. My body may be old, but I am not as the ephemeral grass and birds and hain and mockdjinn, as those who are left grow old. I simply grow. And I am growing still, now, maybe not in size, but in elegance. I am learning to be both purposeful and beautiful in my work upon the shore. Isn't that the highest virtue, to be as refined as one is strong? Is that not the way shown by all grand things, of the gods, of nature, of change and of my very own soul?
All ways are possible, none are perfect. Each traveller's journey is their own, no one else's.
Yes, to be in harmony with oneself is the highest form of freedom. That seems the correct set of words for it. I bring the waves with me as I turn on my heels over the shore, twist and somersault back. Today is a cold day, a windless day, and so I must be as subtle and elegant as always, even condensed into my divine shape.
That's not what I meant,
Pacing up and down on the shoreline is not a restless action, and leaves no troubled footprint. But it is pacing, nonetheless. There is no other way. No djinn has ever willingly given over his domain in Galbar and his identity upon its sands, bar those, perhaps, who grow addicted to power. We are high beings, the highest ever who stand below the gods, of whom we are the firstborn and noblest sires. I brush the tips of the naupaka flowers and spinifex tufts on the foot of the dunes, leaving them draped in dew, my hand weaving and swirling to trace their shape, a shape that I copy out onto the sand below.
No?
None. And why would I need to confirm it? I know my own nature and that of the windlings and the Tidelords and even that of Pyre, the Vagabond Blaze. Am I ill at ease?
No. I am confident, strong, and magnificent. I only have to but look back over my barony and raise my voice to watch the mists dance for me, and I with them. I only have to look at the trail of dew-glitter that I leave on a spider's web with my hands to see that I am beautiful, and so too is my realm. It is a deep, comforting knowledge that comes with the artful meditation I am grown so familiar to now.
And somehow these are the only times when I think like this,
Like what?
Like I am not quite myself. I stretch my hand to the lagoon, palm out, and gaze through the liquid fingers. Such perfect fingers. Such a shape. There is a subtle twist to them, a motion, a tug. They are only steady when I put them to use.
Like I must answer to a voice in my mind.
...
"REEEH-A-AH-HAR-RGH!"
Like burning, like searing pain I stretch and hurl myself back into the waters and lash out there, heaving great flows of white water and hoping the strain tears away my very traitor limbs. "No! False! You lie!"
The mist dissolves as a breath and under a limp sun I take the lagoon on my back and toss it, crash it down onto me, but the pain is not enough to soothe the rising bile in my soul. My sons scatter from their father. Convulsions rack me and scour the shore with waves and I cannot reach deep enough within myself to tear out this thing, this thing, this voice that has hatched inside me without my knowing. So the waters bulge, and collapse.
How? How so? Of what sin did I partake to be punished?
Calm down. You're damaging yourself.
"SILENCE, WRETCH!"
There is emptiness. The booming noise of my tantrum quakes out and away, into silence, and the fog begins to return. But around me there is a tension, a wave that doesn't break but only churns in my clutching, mindless grip.
"Silence!" But the word is a cough, and the surge melts away powerlessly.
"Silence!" Another wave, a perfect circle, smashes the sand as if to clean the whole lagoon of my angst. I cannot feel satisfaction.
Nor will you, until you grow out of your rage.
I scream.
If you curb the height of the swell in the center point and have it break at both ends instead, you can turn that bismarck-palm into an island at high tide.
I pull back my hand and thrust it straight at the little palmlet with such force that the sand it stands on streams upwards in a great spray of foamy mud and its young trunk sags on exposed roots, a victim to the gentle war between generations of seedlings and the hissing waves that ever deny the encroach of land beyond its allocated borders. Already the crippled bismarck is starting to lose its grip on the waterlogged earth.
That was unnecessary.
Tensing the might of my arms, forcing them into their age-old curves of muscle, I slam the shore-ledge with a surge as it hasn't seen in decades. The sapling comes free and rolls, tumbles, floats out into the white-water, where its driftwood cadaver shall provide sanctuary to fry in the months to come.
Oh. Good thinking.
Shut your whore mouth and begone!
There is a perilous silence in which my shoulders sag and I must will them to hold their proper shape. My eyes are closed, and little does it help. It is impossible to say if I am alone.
I, Flux, am dejected- A wretch. My might is useless to me. Such magnificence, and what good does that do which cannot cure my illness? No! Thinking like will destroy me, and I will not be destroyed. Never. Never. But the thoughts come relentless.
My lagoon beckons me. To lay in it like a bed and ignore the mental clamour... How much I would sacrifice to return to those days and come back healed! Lifting another step to wipe and churn the shore is an aching move. It takes focus. So I continue my self-appointed flagellation and walk on, hoping for time to pass, that flow that cures all ills.
Its promise is empty, anyway. Each time I give in to the peace and lose shape in the blue sea I quake with regret and cannot rest.
Once, in a great fit of work that swept the entire shore under clean white sand, I caught myself pulling the waves with two arms- On my left side alone. Would that I could tear off that tumour and have it be done. Would that I could have completed my task without its aid.
And yet to lay idle beneath the waves is so much worse, for at least that abominable third arm was not flecked with black fragments of corrosion. Was, in some perverted fashion, my own.
I shuffle the beach with my eyes closed as I pace. A simple routine. No, I will not abandon my reign, no matter how fiercely the disease should ravage, or how many times that Yivvin comes to blight my mind with his whispers. I will survive. This I have determined, for now and forever. My power might not cure me, but it has not diminished.
Opening my eyes I see a long trail of thorough-swept shore behind me, patterned by the delicately woven tide-lines that have become my trademark. It is good. It is whole, a natural harmony, and mine is eye that determines the course of that design and the hand that enacts it.
Funny.
"Leave! Away from me!"
You've been blocking me too long. Doesn't it occur to you that our discourse wouldn't be so bitter if you would only listen, even for a few minutes?
"Your words mean nothing and I shall not humour them." My heel strikes the beach, creating a little pool. I shut my mouth and widen my eyes, and pace onwards, calling the waves to do as they are bid, and with every bit of their usual ardour.
For one who ignores every word, you have a great deal of confidence in what they do or do not mean.
Upturn a shell there, wash up a sponge here, arrange them evenly and move on.
You don't even know who I am.
It's a shame to cover up such a delicate trail of crab-prints. I wipe them clean and tumble a cowrie over the place where they had lain, leaving a new etching over the old.
You haven't even considered it.
I know exactly what you are, snarls my inner voice before I can hold it, and through my regret, I hope Yivvin can taste the hatred.
Oh?
You, I open, and there is no halting me now. Are a soulless symptom of the cancer that has tormented me day and night for four years counting. A wart on my mind, whining, snivelling, that mocks me for no other reason than that I am everything it will never be. A spiteful parasite that hinders my concentration to fulfill its lust for grief at my expense and that of my realm. You, Yivvin, are a bitch.
Eloquent. Guess again.
"If you are anything more than what I say then prove yourself and fight me! Or otherwise shut up!"
Oh I'm tempted. You have no idea.
"Then-"
Something breaks, and Yivvin's voice is so loud that I can hear it even above my howls.
DO YOU WANT TO BE FREE OF YOUR PAIN OR NOT?
"NO-"
THEN SHRIVEL UP AND ROT ENJOYING THE SILENCE I WILL LEAVE YOU IN! WATCH ME! THIS PATH IS OLD AND I HAVE TREAD IT A THOUSAND TIMES AND WILL DO SO A THOUSAND MORE WITHOUT YOUR COOPERATION!
I am cut off crudely before I can begin speaking again.
Do you want me to leave, Flux? Just say the word. Ask. Ask and you'll have the high privilege of suffering alone, for then there will be nothing you can do to weather the illness. Some choose this path and I let them and they run mad beyond measure. If you want to fight, then fight the disease. See how long you can take it without me. Try. I dare you. Say it. Say 'go'.
I can not remember when I lost the energy to roar. It is very quiet now.
Yivvin is waiting for an answer. He is... Tired. Or lying. Lying about everything. Maybe his departure would cure me. Maybe he won't even leave if I bid him. Or cannot. If I take him up on his offer, would I at least guarantee myself freedom from one of the two symptoms that are causing me to degenerate from what I am? Would it be worth it to sell mind for body? Or will I look back at myself from the grave, and curse myself for a fool?
I am no fool, and I do not want to die. So I mouth what I am too exhausted to speak.
If you can heal my body and restore it to perfection, Yivvin, then do so, or else let me... Take my own way.
There is a deep sigh. Far away, I am sure, a creature must be running its wiry hands through its hair. Stand up, Flux.
Comply.
Walk. Just a few steps. Over there. Stand on the water
Comply again.
Take the waves in your hands and on your back and through your sons, and, on my mark, pull them. You will need to stretch and twist, and quickly, so do so. Do exactly as I say, when I say it. It will take time. Are you ready?
Having to tense just to avoid falling apart drop by drop, I take the waters upon me willingly. "Do not try my patience, Yivvin."
As the moons take their hours in which to cycle across the sky, I raise the tide, as is my way. And Yivvin speaks.
The movements I am bid to make are not so far from what I have always done. No, indeed, they are the same. I fear deception, for no greater comfort comes from my duty than on every night before. And yet, a noble being of my word, I do not protest, and Yivvin holds his idiot tongue from snide banter. The hours roll. The waves swell. This is the rhythm of my very being, as it always has been.
I surge forth.
And I draw back...
...
...Flux?
Silence! I am performing my sacred task!
You are finished, Flux.
My eyes are as open as always, but my concentration has been so pure, so clear-minded and fixed that I have neglected to actually observe the beach before me. It is clean, by my handiwork, as every night before. Swept free and turned over and renewed and changed. And changed, indeed.
They are formations, loops and halos and canyons and striated ridges in the sand. Each layered as the shore deposits matter and removes it in its way. Carved by the passage of water over many hours as the waves recede. They draw my gaze and channel it down whirls and hollows, a puzzling thing, a dynamic, elemental wonder...
I have never done such as this before, and, yet, am I not great? Was this not easy? I flex my chest, roll my shoulders. They are intact. Soon the shapelessness will set in again, but while I am at work, they retain form. Always the same toils, and I regret them not. But all the land and the sea and the air of this lagoon is under my dominion. My realm is diverse. Ever-changing.
I am its renewal, its natural cycle. And I, too, can be renewed. Nature innovates. The sea has many faces, and forms many shapes.
That's one way to see it.
"Quiet, worm," I growl, and bunch my hand into a fist, quelling the waver that has sprung up in it once again. As the fingers curl the crests of foam curl with it, and I bring them to swirl around me. There is work to be done. There is change to be made.
"I know what I'm doing."
I am Flux. I am of the waves and the sand and the spray, and I am their will. Under my rule, this realm is blessed. Where I create, I create with vision, and where I destroy, I destroy well.
This has always been my way.
Today I continue it, as I shall, forever, each day growing in power, and wisdom, and dominion.
I sit cross-legged upon the becalmed shore in a shroud of mist, meditating hands on knees, eyes shut. There is no need for me to hide my body, for it is handsome to the last, nor do I have to change my shape to administrate my fiefdom. I have learned that abandoning my own perfection is not necessary for such things. I have learned to subjugate my disease and control it, that my body should never have to dissolve into strangeness, and in doing so I have grown stronger.
In patience I count the moments, contemplating the ways I shall reveal my glory when the sun rises until its rays at last shine through me and my waters are set alight by their touch.
With the grace of great strength under perfect control, I rise, slowly, in tune with the motion of the ripples around me. They diverge from me in intersecting concentric flows. I feel my muscle curve, now in restrained arcs, now in sharp twists like the way of a pen on a book, and I dance.
Step, bow, turn, leap, land, rise.
My feet trace crescents over the calm darkness, and it ascends in measured flicks upon folds that curve around me, sinuously matching the reticent tempo. Each slow note is a half-spin, a balance of effortlessly outstretched arms and legs. A different number each time.
Curve, stretch, stand.
The sea rises on each step to elevate my pose. I am flexible, and firm. My turns become pirouettes. My legs become a slow blur. I clasp the waves towards me with a thousand hands in a single, sweeping beat, then release them from one, as a gift to a lover.
Rise up. Harmonise. Unify.
The strands of water rest in my grip like mighty reins, but I spin slowly, trailing them as delicately as two ribbons, and each one of the multitude is bound to surges that swirl and coalesce at my rhythm. A myriad of watery dancers court one another upon the shore, passing by their partners in every direction, lacing themselves up into high towers of foam lattice until- A downward pulse, and it all collapses in time to my sea green heart.
They grow again, and I conduct. I raise their dreams to the heavens and point them the way with my prayerful hands held high, and my two other arms stretched wide enough to gesture to as far as east and west, and the spires of sand and foam weave themselves grander than ever.
It collides and falls, again and again, and yet my rhythm is growing louder and stronger and the shore constructs are ever greater, and the waters ascend before they even have time to come apart. Drought and depths, the entire lagoon, the whole foreshore, it is all moving as one now.
All eyes rise to me, for I am the lead dancer, and now my motions are full. They command my entire frame. My back arches and loops and spirals and the sea spirals with me, a white water palace of flying heights and bridges.
I move in a world of dream that has risen from the mundane chaos. Gravity is forgotten; There is only my motion. I leap and I soar and I land where I wish, and the perfect maelstrom crashes on each beat to be reborn and rise further. It shines. I land on palms and knees in a circular archway that eclipses the sun.
I run.
I take off on one leg and my other two bend as I spin around its axis, into the center of the arch, and I fly.
The sun is behind me. The sun is in me.
The whole world is below me, and rising, and falling, and rising and rising...
And it is over.
I land on one knee and bow as the lagoon booms into itself, leaving a great cloud of vapour above and a swill of sediment below. The sea stills at my touch.
My eyes have not opened once.
Only the sand remembers the shape of the cathedral it held, for such brief moments, and it remembers well. Its shapes are indescribable. A shadow of the dance.
But I can see the formless water. I can feel the pierce of the illness tempting me to shapelessness, and I must dance again.
To think it would be so simple to beat back the cancer. To think that Yivvin would tell the truth.
I did.
No, you didn't. You promised a cure. You promised a return to glory.
And you had it, for a time. You have it still.
The dryness burns. I no longer have the strength to reconcile my limbs into a recognisable shape for more than a few precious moments apiece. I do it anyway. I wane with every collapse and recollection, my limbs taking on a different number and configuration over my face with each little death.
No more waves come to my hands. My focus is too tightly chained to the twin effort of holding myself together and keeping the water out, and between them I may soon be torn apart.
I am an ocean spirit, dying of thirst.
Drink, then.
Looking up, my home is a masterwork. It was many but lonely hands that built this wonder, for my sons abandoned me long ago to seek their own way, and I did not stop them. I don't think I even noticed them go. Even the windlings no longer come. They fear what I do.
There are islands. Deep pools, and shallows. Currents and salt rivers. Springs. Mid-water dunes. False beaches. All crowned in pale dust gothic, the architecture of sand in every sweeping arrangement that can be.
It is deteriorating before my eyes grain by grain, and the sea laps up the remains. So much water. The source of my body, so long ago, and all I need do is to give it back. To regain what I am and heal what is mine.
Do it. All this might be yours again. You cannot resist much longer, anyway.
If I do, I will be lost. Forever. Never again will I be able to assume this weathered form in all its many variants. At best I might manage an imitation, to torment myself with what is gone. Such a beautiful shape.
Give in, Flux. This has gone on too long. No one has ever escaped their ascension alive, and there is no one left to kill you.
There is no one left to kill me.
You would not be able to kill yourself if you tried, either. It is too late for that. There is too much of me in you now.
"Why, Yivvin? Why me?"
I am as I am, Flux, and all else bows.
"Who are you?"
You have asked me before and not been satisfied.
"Then satisfy me, before I give up my soul. Lie to me, only let me know."
A pause. I stand up, dragging myself. There is nothing else I can do.
In little traitor steps, I carry myself within breathing reach of the edge. I no longer expect an answer, but one bursts into me, stained with regret.
I don't know, Flux! I am a child. A child god. So have I been since my first memories in the world-womb, so will I be until eternity has come and gone. I do as I do, that it may be done, that I may have seen it. So that I may grow up in a beautiful place. I can't say more than that. I am who I am.
I have no words. Only a pit where once they lay in my throat. It is over. The conversation of years has burned through those supplies of hate that seemed so bottomless. I allow myself to stumble, and I fall, chest-first, arms spreading, one foot still hopelessly pressing against the soil. There is a moment in which all is suspended and I am nothing.
I guess you think this is unfair.
I'm sorry, Flux.
The sea fuses with me and the energy that surges back into my heart is so intense that it drowns out the pain. I can see my fingers splitting themselves apart in exquisite detail, staining, as rust in water or gangrene on skin. A ragged puddle forms from me and billows demon's breath to the moons. The steam tastes of teeth and glass and burnt wire. Where once a face cringed it has now twisted until it frayed into splinters and I roar a gargling curse- Perhaps my fury alone is enough to penetrate the armour of time and space and drive it into Yivvin's ribs like a stake.
"A HELL OF TORMENT FOR YOUR ETERNITY IS TOO KIND! LET YOUR DEATH COME SOON, IF THE GODS BE MIGHTY, AND LET IT BE OF GIBBERING FEAR! YOUR TEARS WILL BRING NOUGHT BUT PEACE TO THE WORLD, SO MAY YOU SUFFER AND WEEP IN THE COLD MADNESS FOREVER!"
I scream. The sound echoes out into nothing, and nothing hears. Even I can no longer deny the emptiness of my words. It is already over.
I'm sorry.
Let none of you call out to gods in times of need. Trust me. I have tried.
Flex.
"No!"
Exhaustion. I can see the light creeping on, one moment at a time, from day into night and night into day, again, and again, and again, and again. The bitter moons tug the tides with fleeting and jittery pinches. Mocking me. Sand sifts away from where I hauled it. Each wave pulls me with it, up and down, a sick, limp sack of fluid.
There is a kind of disgusting interplay between my substance and that of the ocean. The pain does not disturb me on its spiny drift through cycles of localised cuts and aches, but the horror is a thing all its own. To feel oneself melting into the water and become slime. A stringy, oily mess with no surface. With each slice of torture, a brittle black flake begins to swim in me, and I can feel it move. I can watch it and I do, obsessively. The more I watch the fragile crystal platelets shatter and grow, the deeper I am incited to nausea. This is not my body. This is not who I am.
Flex.
"Never!"
You are growing into your final shape and need space. Flex.
"Shrivel up and die!"
Sure. But first, flex.
Something is dripping inside me, a feeble flow. I am being distilled. Colours are separating into the watery gunk as it bleeds out of me. They form a set of layers that slide over one another in eddies. A false skin, a membrane sticking to me. Sticking to me as the sea is peeled off my flesh. And the steam billows on.
I'm curled as tightly as I can, to try and hide as much of myself from the metamorphosis as I can, but now I give a reflexive convulsion before I return to fetal position.
Flex?
"Silence!"
No. Flex.
I try to breach the surface to form a mouth and shout, but I cannot. I am already melded with the formless entombment and it bends around me. But I do not give in. Noble even in death, I do not surrender.
Rather than watch myself be destroyed beyond imagining, I dig myself into myself and try to pull, to rip, to swell and burst. I can feel my strength but it does nothing for me. When I try to perform even the slightest stretch, the motion stirs a flurry of new precipitates into my body. The meniscus, the skin, expands to accommodate my motion and I cannot contract it back into my previous shape. I no longer bend in the ways that would be right for suicide. The disease has slit my hamstrings.
"Just let me die, Yivvin!"
Can't.
"KILL ME!"
Flex, Flux.
Flex.
no
Flex.
no
Flex, Flux.
no
Don't do this to yourself. Flex.
never
Flex.
no
(Flex.)
it is so quiet. i think it's night again.
(Flex.)
i remember when i enjoyed the nights.
(Flex.)
what it was like to feel peace.
(Flex.)
maybe.
(Flex.)
maybe if i.
(Flex.)
if i just.
Flux emerged from the waters of rebirth as a moth from its chrysalis: Slowly, delicately, stretching new-found wings with the purest form of innocent confidence. I bid you watch him, and watch him well.
See the glow of gold and forge-red within his folds and ribbons. This is his soul, for what alighted upon him from the nether worlds was only waiting for he on whom one could be implanted. See too how its light steams and dances over the sea-drops that fall from his body. For he is no longer of water but of oil, infused with fine metals. He has become a thing of paint. Watch, now, as Flux stares into the moonlight of his first morning.
And what moonlight it is! There are six moons aligned in the heavens tonight, and they shine as one, from bright Vigilate to shaded Cogitare. Even the narrow river that had once been Lex seems to sing to its sisters.
Flux stargazes. For some time he continues. He has never seen the moons this clearly before, nor even considered such a display anything more than a waste of his attention.
They're quite splendid.
Around him, the islands and bays of what Flux has crafted out of his home are all gone. The surface is still, and, passing over, he does not disturb it. The memory of what was and is now lost to chaos strikes many chords in his heart, but they are tangential, distant things. Indeed, Flux remembers very much, and his memory is true, and he does not stay to live it again. What is seen is seen. What is done is done. I am who I am.
Yivvin is still there, in the artist's mind, where he will remain forever. Flux does not summon him, though he knows that he will come at the call. There is no need. Neither mortal nor god has anything left to say- It is over. Promises have been kept and lost. Those who ascend do not look back. Life is made of pain and pleasure, and regret only blocks both.
Flux was who Flux was, and now he is who he shall be.
I wonder if I am still 'he'.
Flux supposes that is not the case, or never was. It is little more than a curious guess. Much about himself he now realises that he does not really know. Nor does he know how long it may take to find out if there is an answer to that question. For now, he remains Flux. There is much that Flux has yet to do.
The shining spirit travels over the water, gently swirling and unfolding and coalescing as it moves. In not so much time, Flux has passed the border of the lagoon he once knew as his, and looks out on a dune-crest over all the lands he has seen and never travelled. I suppose I never desired to leave behind what was mine. It is a glorious realm.
Then, too, so is this. Perhaps it, also, is mine.
Perhaps this whole world is shared between all those eyes who behold it. Who can say?
There comes a red glow to the far horizon, and it draws nearer. Flux stays to watch.
It is not dawn.
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.
The wildfire draws near, chasing a shoal of embers ahead of it in a cloud of smoke. They swim like creatures fleeing a sudden noise and Flux traces them in his mind's eye, drawing out the sinuous curves they travel before they die. Soot and smoke roils around them, following its own pattern of revelry as it grows. Flux watches the tide come in, as he has innumerable others, other tides and waves and flotsam. A renewal, a sculpting of elements. And not beyond my capability to craft and control. Nothing is. Flux sees it as one evolving whole from the moment it crests the horizon to the moment it halts over his head.
"You have left your puddle, Flux. At last."
It has been years since the spirit last mocked Pyre, and he has grown. Not changed, perhaps, but Pyre's sons number twelve where once there were seven, and he gazes down half again upon the rival he once matched height for height. The flames wreath his legs like a silken robe, barely obscuring the work of muscle below. Smooth shoulder-curves are mantled in smoke.
Flux takes in every stroke of Pyre's body. He is beautiful. As magificent as I was the day I looked upon the bone-scorpion's necklace. More, even. As if to feel the surface of Pyre's chest, to touch him and see if he's just a dream, Flux stretches out, slowly, something like a hand.
In a sweeping blow that sears the night air, Pyre slams into Flux's core and tosses him aside, a brilliant flare erupting at the point of impact.
"Disgusting," he sneers, as Flux reforms upon the ground. "That I should in my reign be forced to touch one so cursed. Yet I am brought to do so by a duty; One which I owe to my very self, and to you, slime, for you have abandoned it."
Pyre advances, leading the blaze behind him, and is not shocked to see his once-rival give way before him, turning aside again to avoid his path. Flux does so at his own leisure. He is an actor of Pyre's stage, now, so let the rightful lead be taken, lest the scene be unbalanced.
"When I first met you, you were noble. A high being, as I. Indeed, with patient effort, you may even have one day been worthy to stand before my face and name yourself my true nemesis. Now look at you. A disgrace! Where are the tides of today, that you have spent such years commanding? Where is the handsome figure, that I judged to hold such potential? You have thrown away all that you are!"
A stamped foot, another blinding fireburst. Cinders flurry upwards and all around.
"Your power is wasted upon you now- An insult to your own kin, and a burden to mine, that I must see you to ash and tar when I could be engaging djinni far greater. And yet you have lost even the simple decency to grovel.
"Hear me well, foam spirit: I came at your own call. The echoes of your wish for death carried far, and the windlings caught it. Fickle vagrants be they, but even they know well who and what they are. Your words were carried to me, and I came to bestow what final mercy is within my power. I came, across sand and stone, to find you. Now I see you so far rotted that you would kiss your own cancer, and pronounce it wholesome.
"Is there still a shadow of your true self left, Flux? Enough to beg forgiveness for what you have made of yourself, and await your reckoning? Enough to regret? Or is even that flickering hope too dim to last?"
Now Pyre stands at the head of the dune, and Flux is in danger of falling down its slope. He feels no fear, though the blaze stands shining above him, and the black pillars blot out the stars. No- Flux does fear. A fear for life and realm. But he consumes that emotion. Relishes it. Tastes the tension, the risk. Flux savours the sensation if impending death, a connoisseur.
His new body comes undone, all but the prism-form that gleams where once there was a face, and fans out in a folded half-circle beneath that peak. The disk splits sixfold, flows, and ripples, and like a moth, Flux ascends on young wings, wings tipped in the squared false-hands of an idol.
The imago rises to match Pyre, who grimaces, but does not give a single sand-kernel worth of ground. From the fluid pyramid, a face is formed, a visage familiar of old.
"It is not right to hold silence to a rival of long years. Behold, Pyre, for now I face you as who I was, and what I am. For these things are not undone. In seasons gone I mocked you, and I am still the mocker. In days past I administered the waves, and I am still a baron, though I now intend to rove the ways of this world, and take to the earth and the skies also, and seek out all that which wanders in hope of the voice of a lord.
"Gaze upon me, blaze-speaker, and know: This is I. This is Flux. This is the face of the true self, the only self, for it is the face of the moment, the face of now. And it, like all else, shall change, grow, aspire to greater grandeur. What I was, I was in earnest. What I did, I did with pride, and will soon continue afresh. The only truth in this world is the truth that evolves. Thus I am who I am. No more- And no less."
And as Flux speaks these words, the first faery drifts down from the blackened sky, and alights upon his forehead. It is a moth, a striated umber moth, and on many wings it watches Pyre with the eye-spots that Flux never had.
The fire-djinn lifts his face to the sky, and exhales a slow plume of red.
"You make no apology for the disgrace of your kind and your station. You renounce the words you spake in better senses. You reject the mercy of a wiser Djinn. Very well, Flux. Your decision is clear, and I shall not dispute."
Then the two powers are swelling, shining, a great blaze and a little glow, and the fire is a sighing, flowering hell of black and yellow, but this oil does not easily catch, and this metal does not easily rust.
"...So be it."
They surge forth.
I no longer strive to strive towards such things. Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings? Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know again.
And Flux draws back.
The spirit is quite surprised, indeed, to be alive. Certainly, he knows that Pyre left him only the choice between death willing and death violent, for there is no way to outpace such a fire, even should he reach the shore, and so he fought long, and well. Certainly, too, the faery proved remarkably effective in dissolving flame and gale, though it be but one. And we well know that the body is a malleable thing, of which we all stand to learn much- How much more a body of paint to an artist?
Pyre breathes deeply, and roars conflagration still, sharp against the last moonlight. But he is grounded, now, a sizzling heap upon a wide field of ash, and he knows well how soon Flux may corner him, how simple it is for the flow to part before the obstacle and move on. They have passed each other many times, and, at last, the ranks of the fire do not rise again.
"It is a strange thing," speaks Flux. "That, a time and a day ago, I wished to speak these words. For now that they come at last, they are heavy and ashen upon my soul. Thus I say to you, Pyre- Do you yield?"
A brief cloud of flame plumes again, and Flux disperses it with hands like ribbons.
"Never! Not to such as you. To death at the hands of one greater and more beautiful than I- Therein may lie some bitter honour, but this aeon shall not pass before I rid this world of your degeneracy!"
More fire, adding to the thick, low smoke. Flux delays the final collision. Pyre is not the only one to have spent much in this duel, and been depleted.
"There is no need for death in the moonlight. I never asked it of you, nor shall I force it. I ask life. Will you give me that?"
It is a curious dilemma, made none the less charged for the fact that Flux knows how it will end.
"Mark me, Flux. You shall be but a stain on the sand before the sun rises, if I must give my life to have it be so. For I, at least, will die as myself, free and pure to the last!"
He does not give his life. Not yet. Pyre is not certain that his sacrifice will destroy the painted being, not while Flux holds the upper hand.
"And yet I must live, and will not trade my life for yours, nor both of ours for nothing. If I flee from you, you shall return for me. If I let you destroy yourself as you wish, I may die. There is only one way, Pyre. Do you not know it?"
Another question. Another answer.
"I know it well- You shall fall upon me, and seek to destroy me before I may destroy you, and then I shall destroy us both! Come, coward! Cease delaying what must take place!"
A tragedy, that Pyre still denies to himself that he is not capable of the final step. Only the cruel would name it otherwise.
"I wish you no despair, Pyre. These shores have seen enough of that already. Make your last peace and give yourself back to the ether, the primordial winds. It is not my night to fade."
"I refuse it. I deny your empty promises now and into eternity, and if the Flux that was still lived, he would honour me by silencing them."
And, of course, he does live.
"Then it is over, for you as it was for me. I know what it means to seek death and find nothing. Goodbye, old friend. I will remember you with warmth and light."
Flux leaps, six wings fusing into two, and before Pyre can struggle to open up his own heart, he claps them together upon him. There is a final wave of embers as they collide, but Pyre is gone. The wavering candle-lights of his progeny look on, uncertain. They are too young to mourn. Only Flux remains to pay the final dues.
"Go," he bids them. And, one by one, unsure of the meaning of mercy, they disappear into the haze and the ash.
Flux sees them all. Watch him well and closely; for we will not hear of him again for some time. See him as the final glow upon the ashen dune, the final sound as the crackle of fresh charcoal dies at last. Know that he smiles without a mouth, for these nameless children are too small to remember him and too young to travel far, and he is glad that they will live on to claim the dunes and the shore once again.
Listen, closely now, for his prayers. They come in whispers. Flux prays to the wind, and the dawn, and the waters and what lies beyond them, prays even to Yivvin, that these sparks will not one day dwindle in the dust, but will burn, brightly, and carve names of their own into the legend of ages.
And having passed out of the legend himself, Flux moves on, into the lands of the sun.
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.
Plains are gentle to the winds that stride upon them. The air sifts between long grasses, soughing. Each gust carries a subtly different note. I am well familiar with this ambience. It is the sound of waves. Over the great length of the golden barrens, a tide is coming in.
The acacia is an island, its canopy broad and lonely. The only place of shade for many tired footfalls on the way to the venomweald. High are its leaves, and high am I, among them. A view of splendour. It is gratifying, to own this land and rule it. But my reign is not placid. I set myself to the dirt.
As days flicker by and become seasons, as the moons come and go, tireless, restless, with all the hands I possess, I surge forth.
By the tree, the ground falls under my fists, into a pit that becomes a crater. When it strikes stone I bite the rock and chisel it into a well. On my back I bear the earth and take it up onto the plain, weaving veils of grass to block the wind from the dusty shoulders of the mounds.
The barrows multiply and grow larger, spiralling, forming narrow valleys and paths in a pattern only I can see. They align before my eyes and I paint with their shadows, that every moment of every day shall show a different silhouette. Every view displays its own geometry, each one disguising and revealing hidden spaces that lie between the conical pyramids. On straining wings alone does one see the spiralling pattern for what it is.
In cupped hands I draw water from the well and plant the seeds of jagged flowers I bring from afar. I stretch their roots and tie them that they may hold the earth in place. My palms scoop the pit around the well into terraces and line them with stones from the carving. In the hidden spaces, the darkness grows cool enough for the acacia's own children to take root at last.
Around the Well of the Barrens there is an earthen maze, upon which rises a grove of many trees. The islet which has become a continent.
As the saplings grow tall enough to cast their own shade on the green barrows, I tie bird bones to their branches. The hollow forms tap lightly together in the wind, a gentle chime in a garden place.
Flux?
"An old vagabond returns to my presence," I whisper. My work does not pause, nor does it slow.
It has been some years.
"Many."
You've roamed far.
"And soon, further still. I have graced these plains long with my toil. Now they are in the hands of Fate, and I- I will find myself again elsewhere." In the far, high distance, from atop the tallest mound, I can just see the true hills, the stone where the Ironhearts find their northern end.
I... I bid you not to travel south-west. There has been an- There is a peril spreading from the savannah. The Djinni have marked the fair folken out for genocide. Word is catching.
Interesting, and not remotely surprising. Gods do not easily grow out of their flaws, and the princes of Galbar are proud. Such was my way, such is theirs. I spare a glance to my flock of fae. They are a beautiful weapon. I wonder how much they can take.
There is another place you can go.
I unlace my hand into a splay of tendrils and rearrange the vine-bound cluster of chimes.
To the north, beyond the Ironhearts, there is a plateau. A people lives there, Angels by name, in a valley that may provide sanctuary from the elementals. But a divine force has risen to slaughter them. I don't wish to see that come to pass.
"Maybe," I say, as if to myself, "I do not wish to go. It may be that I do not fear those who were once my kin. It may be that death is an aspect of life, and I do not hate it."
Others said that too, and I can hear dejection in the voice of Yivvin.
"It may be that I do not care much for your wishes, and would rather act of my own accord."
Silence.
As you wish, Flux. I'll leave you to your own.
Good, I think, and pluck a fuzzy yellow floret from the acacia, folding it into my hand. And I gaze out, once again, to the distant foothills.
Wavering between the profit and the loss, In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices And the weak spirit quickens to rebel.
The dew is cold and glittery-grey, strings of it lined up on the edges of the stones. Dancer wears nothing and does not shiver. Their hands moves swiftly over the toughened leather, sewing the inner and outer layers together, sealing in the warm fleece of a mountain goat suspended on spokes of flexible wood.
Tira shivers plenty under her tunic, waiting, not too patiently, for the Sculptor to finish repairing the reinforced coat. Youthful energy must find an outlet, though, and she sprints, leaps, jams her quarterstaff into the ground and practices her landing.
Her vault is excellent but her sandals skid on the gravel and Tira slips as she falls, letting out a cry. The Urtelem matriarch uncurls instantly, sensing distress, but she's already laughing as she gets up, and Dancer's third hand signs teasingly in her direction. Their head doesn't move.
It doesn't need to. Three pairs of eyes leave few blind spots, and Dancer flicks to attention long before their companions, lifting a club cautiously, talons tensing. Tira spots their pose and follows their gaze.
The being coming down from the sky is a strange one, the strangest yet in their party. "Osh kia yem weit," she mutters, holding the staff defensively, as she's learned to do.
Shapes resolve themselves and break up as they near. The glowing core of the mass, an ever-shifting flurry of wings, descends from a thick cloud of fae that scatter into their own swarm. Dancer relaxes. Tira follows their lead. "Runati as-nu?"
The newcomer laughs, a low sound, an old sound, an emissary of authority far away and long lost.
"My name is Flux."
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.
O my people.
This post introduces Flux, a water elemental who claims as his own a lagoon on the shores of the Fractal Sea. One night, Flux encounters the long-dying First Sculptor, who has far outlived even the extended lifespan of the Jvanic Cult. Old Fishbones leaves the Djinn a gift before he dies, and Flux finds, to his later rage, that he has been burdened with something far more than simple jewellery.
Much later, Flux finds his way to the foothills of the Nice Mountains, where Tira and Dancer are making their final preparations to battle against Grot.
