[color=a0410d] "Bliss" was the word that came to mind under this occasion - that of subtle grains pressed endearingly against his cheek, and the playful humor of the tides as they licked his toes. Somehow the world felt safer at this level, with the weight of father cosmos spread across your back and the alluring embrace of mother nature under your belly; like it was meant to be - like the heights at which men stood were too high even for themselves...like "up there", they'd lost sight of reality, of the universe itself. It was almost a pity that more people didn't embrace the security of proper altitude... ...But then again, he distinctly recalled a dislike for having to share - was that him, or some foreign soul uncaring...? ...Waves rose and sank to the guttural time of the Great Mother's wrath - lightning sneered and growled...the air reeked of a mad, churning desperation. Isaac, who stood the nest and was thus hurled into the sea? Or Etenbryte, who bolted up and down and up again with his bucket as he found himself ever closer to the realities of the Old Lord's touch? No...greed didn't suit the pale-faced boy or the wheezing veteran, as it wouldn't suit one-armed Jackson, beer-bellied Tully, wide-eyed Mereyn, two-tongued Icroft or even that wise old "Taffer". Perhaps it was that swaggering scum 'Sir' Weslyn, then? [/color]"Hmmm..." [color=a0410d]...No, on second thought, he wasn't "greedy" - just an unscrupulous old bastard with a penchant for the debasing and cruel. And the rest would have to wait, because some foul leather had just scoffed Ifor's chin, readily disrupting his mellow grin. His eye opened, but adapted rather slowly to the environment within - probably a result of the sand it happened to be buried in. Could you even survive such chop with a wrenched arm? Perhaps, perhaps - even if he had, well, you can only count on eluding the Black for so long: If they did find him, alive, somehow, he'd make sure to send him a second invitation to hell. Speaking of which...[/color]"Who dud that..." [color=a0410d]The weary roundabout grunted, leaving the soft sanctuary of the beach as he rose - bones aching, the crunch of sugar-like grains gritted between his teeth. His height stood at its usual deformity, yet his limp posture remained untouched - it had only been a little storm, after all...nothing like getting sucked into a maelstrom. A tinge of poetry caught his eye as he spied the sea-blue sands under their patron's glistening face, the flask offered by the lichen to its rightful place, the ragged vixen at her desperate pace - the glistening night yet-uneffaced, the expectation of dawn lacking its trace...the vast and unfathomable scope of the horizon's endless, enviable embrace. There were others around them, of course, but they seemed quite comfortable where they were sleeping - no use weeping, or peeping, or yet rummaging through the valuables of those outspoken dead. Not now, not yet; First must come justice, so before ALL else could even BEGIN to be said:[/color] "...Who dud it; Who scuffed muh head?"