[center][h2]The [color=fff79a]L[/color][color=6ecff6]a[/color][color=fff79a]ekt[/color][color=6ecff6]e[/color][color=fff79a]ars[/color], and [color=steelblue]Mamang.[/color][/h2] [h3]XVI[/h3][/center] The isle-of-air that guarded the confluence of the gods was smaller than its kin in the open seas beyond the walls of Termina and Orsus. It was the first of the greater basins to come under assault, yet in a way it was the only one to escape unscathed: by fate or foresight, the Earthheart’s mountains had already marked with blessed stone the limit of the waters beyond that sacred isle, and the well-salted sea began to crack its fearsome enchantment not with an all-covering flood, but in a ring of towering waterfalls roaring through the gaps in the wall. Their clamour rose and fell with the tide, and caked the once-seabed far below with thick salt, thinly clothed with vast pools of shallow brine. In those days, the vast ocean was alight with colour. Every crashing air-wall that shook Galbar with its fall left behind innumerable swarms of godfish, lighting the blue darkness with clouds of swirling embers as bright as the dawn. Fattened by the curse-breaking feast, the godfish had spawned, filling the sea with billions of their [abbr=/frʌɪ/noun; plural noun: fry; young fish, especially when newly hatched.]fry[/abbr] even as the last of the ruinous chasms were wholly consumed. The juvenile swarms scattered wide, scrounging for fresh godlight, scavenging for the least scrap of heavenly sustenance. Their beaks were toothed lances, and their glowing tangerine bodies were fiery darts, raining down a starved and desperate assault on any magic they could find. They invaded the wall of the Tlacan Sea, chewing away its lethargic ooze, leaving radial chasms of clear blue in their wake, and dying in heaps, unable to stomach the teeth of time. When they reached the seething coast of the Hivelands, they fed well, for a time, chewing and tearing at stray tendrils of divine hyphae that infested every living alg and polyp on the shore, only to find their needle bones and blessed scales useless against the ravenous vermin that crawled in their veins and consumed their tender brains and guts. They gawped and gulped at the cloud of muck that billowed from the groaning curse of the machine lord, and even survived, leading short and miserable lives at the edge of that marine wasteland, cleansing the waters around them long enough to be snapped up in the end by some other creature from bluer waters. Some broke through, and were lost in the chaos of the waters beyond- who knows what became of those godfish, ripped up by the elemental storms of Harmony even as they warred to calm its power? Most didn’t make it nearly so far: the lush seas that starved them simply swallowed them whole. The wandering whale journeyed at leisure across the Inner Ocean, where whole schools of the over-populated godfish were breaking their teeth on the wave-weathered rock of the Dancing Isles. Silver flashes shot them to pieces, packs of tuna and mackerel biting them apart and spitting out the chunks, swallowing anything soft enough to swallow. Clusters of amphipods and shrimp gnawed anything left to drift. Where the godfish spasmed and faltered, too exhausted by their futile attack on the enchanted stone to swim straight, crabs stretched up in squabbling crowds to grab them from the rock, picking the luminous meat off their bones without a care. There were few birds in the southern chain of the islands, for the stone sank and rose every day. Fierce rivers of seawater poured down the flank of the island as it rose, washing away any grit and shell that may otherwise have been ground into sand, and the rock was soon carved into spectacular chasms, tunnels, pools and blades. The whole island was green with smooth, curly algae, and in its ten-thousand perfect blue pools were bright anemones, limpets, and tight clusters of tiny white winkles. In the caves and kelp, the clever arms of a big octopus teased after crabs and over-confident fish caught in pools by the tide. The whale had already had its fill. For weeks its veins had been almost glowing with the fire of recycled godlight, its monstrous gut churning a heavy mass of glittering metal bones. Much the same was true of every other great shark and sailfish that prowled the open ocean, at least until the damage wrought on their bellies by those thorny skeletons became too much to bear. But the whale- ah! It had not felt this healthy in decades! Sore memory led it to avoid that place where the curse of ruin had nearly slain it, but the new generation weaned on this sudden glut would never learn the danger of the isle-of-air, or need to. In the coming centuries silt would bury even the tumbled ring of bones that marked where each wall had been broken. It would be, perhaps, the last great wave of calving that Galbar would ever see. The sea was fertile, but the whales spawned in the north were vast, far beyond the scale of their natural prey, and their number had swiftly peaked. Now came the age of hunger. Hunger and fear. [center][h3]XVII[/h3] With [@Kho][/center] In those days, the vast ocean was alight with colour. The wandering whale had come upon a war. That swirling blaze of pulsing turquoise-yellow-violet had been familiar once. The whale had taken them, sometimes whole schools, much as it would take lampfish and squid; they were too clever and fast for most whales, and so perfect prey for a beast of its speed. They had been familiar once, but no more. The dance of the dancerfish was fierce and frenetic, their mass flickering lightspeed signals within itself as it flexed, swirled, twisted, and burst apart, their sleek groups leaving behind bitter angry streaks of divine light, like tears. Bolts of fire blasted apart the dancer battalions. Here, finally, the strongest of godfish had found fitting prey. The fiercest among them had bullied and cannibalised their path to maturity among their over-spawned sisters, and spat out their teeth, revealing themselves for what they had been long ago, when their maker had bled them dry of the weak blood of mortality: swordfish- huge thin marlins- clad in opaline armour, formed like javelins. The whale’s presence disturbed the laektear formation only for a moment. In that time the godfish had drawn fresh blood, slashing scales into the water with their needle-point skulls before escaping the wings of the larger dancerfish, those sinuous adults who might hope to tear bites from their fins in defense of their tiny brethren. The bodies were left to sink. The jaws of the godfish were atrophying. Destruction alone was their fill, as they had been commanded. The wandering whale circled this unending dance of violence with its good ear, observing fire and rhythm. It could not draw blood of its own, for a wide-winged laektear of good size might choke it, and an adult godfish would be even worse. It watched the scene with such fascination that its stalker had no difficulty drawing near. Deaf on one side, by the time the whale noticed a stir in the waters, it was far too close. A nudge- just a nudge. The laektear giant re-ignited its darkened lights as the whale panicked and made distance, flicking its tail up to beat the water with a sudden crash. Its gills fanned calmly. Its teeth, sated for now on a long banquet of mummified shark and whale carcasses, had been worn down by huge bones, and would soon shed. For a while it would feed solely on the catch of its gill-rakers, those neat rows of featherlike filaments that were its own kind of baleen. And then… The whale observed the laektear, and the laektear observed the war. Like the bull, it could not swallow that chaos without destroying its own, and it had grown too vast to easily pick off even the adult godfish. An orca might be more its size, if it took the mood to hunt- or a flipper of something larger. The bull’s black pupils met again with its huge, shining turquoise eyes. They twinkled lustrously and the golden-red birthmark on its forehead seemed to vacillate between motion and stillness, and even that great hungering dancer seemed to vacillate between the motion of the strike and the stillness of observation. Its radiance grew and its colours multiplied as it watched, and the motion of the strike became a swirling cadence. It flowed with the invisible tides, its great fins swooshed and cut through them, redirected them in unseen transient whirlpools. Its tail flickered, its body twisted - its head rose as its tail fell, its fins spread out like wings and its eyes grew bright then dimmed. It now sped up, then slowly let up; when it had slowed to almost stillness it abruptly jolted and caused the depths to surge and thrash with the sudden great pace and when the motion had reached impossible crescendos it paused suddenly, frozen for breathless seconds as though captured in a painting, before flowing slowly once more. It was after this had gone on for a while and no strike seemed imminent that the whale understood: it danced, did the laektear-mother. Not fleeing, yet always moving away from it, the whale held a certain distance from the laektear, arcing around it, never towards it. Tensing as the dancer surged, relaxing as it drifted, rising to breathe when the dancer dived, hiding in the depths as it whirled the surface. In the darkening midnight waters, the whale knew, without a word or a thought, that no matter how long they circled and chased the distance between them would never truly close, nor would it widen. The quarry was not the target, nor was the laektear its stalker. There was a focal point, but it did not lie in one another. The laektear led the dance. The center lay between them. Blue water darkened to midnight-black, and the laektear’s wings grew ever brighter, alone and sovereign like the sun in an empty sky, in which the whale was but a lightless cloud. The waters around it rushed like wind as it whirled, and both beasts were silent within it. In that long silence, the whale’s heart began to yearn for a familiar passion- there was something absent, yet still here, somehow- a pattern- a pace- a rhythm- a [i]voice-[/i] As the whale watched, the laektear-mother thrashed theatrically and turned on its back, and its body went limp and bubbles trailed upward from its mouth - like tears. And those tears danced as the laektear-mother sank limply - only its tail moved and trembled. And once it had sunk a far enough distance, once again it rose before him - slow though, its motions not of laektear but resembling, oddly, whale - and it opened its great mouth so that the water before it was displaced all at once and surged in. It closed its mouth for the briefest seconds then once more unlatched the vastness of that dire, chasmal maw. [indent][i]If of the lion tribe it had been, surely it would have been roaring. If of the clan of wolf or canine, its bark, surely, would fell mountains. But if whale, a glorious giant, then its song of beauty splendid would have matched its dance of sunset; would have matched [abbr=The laektear’s last dance was a rendition of Rosalind’s falling into the sea and the birthing of the dancerfish]its dance of drowning, dance of weeping, dance of birthing[/abbr]. In the dark, forgotten records of the waters and the fishes - which no mortal mind remembers, which no mortal mind has written - danced the [abbr=that is, Rosalind]weeper of the laektears[/abbr] [abbr=Rosalind, unbeknownst to Mamang or any whale, heard Mamang’s song when she fell into the sea the first time]to the song of whales unknowing -[/abbr] to the song, that is, of the bull, whose great whalesong, as time passes, more and more becomes the sound that echoes all across the oceans: [b]is[/b] the singing of the oceans, [b]is[/b] the music of the waters. Aye it would have been forgotten, never spoken, danced, or sung of - but for one awed, silent witness: yes, that giant of the waters, yes, that mother of the laektears. So that all the world may witness and the whales and fish, in great bliss, may arise in enthralled union and proclaim one great truth, which is: song and dance were made for water, made for bulls and cows of water, made for fishes in whose cadence are thus woven motions born of divine tears and god’s emotions. They who dance in the above-world, they who sing through air, not water, are the infants of the songcraft, are as fry - or less - to motion. This the great truth and conviction, this the wisdom in the fish-dance, this the tale that is remembered only by the laektear mother - by the laektear mother and, now, by the half-deaf whale that wandered.[/i][/indent] To all this, and more yet, was he - was the half-deaf whale - a witness. The whale knew not from where the knowing came, nor where nor how it rested in its heart. The whale knew not knowing. The whale knew only seeing, and truly it had seen, and in that memory of seeing lay the story, fixed in beauty ‘til the whale’s final day. Yea, in the long course of that night it had seen, and would not forget, how [i]meaning[/i] could erupt from movements only - only motions! [indent]And the motions made a [i]pattern[/i] And the pattern had a [i]pace![/i] And the pace carried a [i]rhythm[/i] And that rhythm was a [i]dance![/i] And the dance was born of [i]music[/i] And with light that music [i]shone![/i] And the light lit up the waters [i]And the waters filled with song![/i] ‘twas the pulsing beat that echoed Through the waters of the world That remembered what was witnessed As the laektear-mother twirled And the dark forgotten records Were illumined by the dawn In the eyes of one old whale On that solemn, silent morn For the Truth was everlasting And their memory was long The whale and the laektear Sharing dance and sharing song That song of birthing-waters Song of drowning, song like tears The story of a goddess Falling down into her fears Where fevered feet were kicking Where the footless dancers swam And whalesong rang loudly Beating, [i]mahm-mahm-mahm-mahm-mahm[/i] And the memory of sadness Washed away by fins and light Had become a tidal ballad In the waters of the night Thus the Truth of water-cadence In that twirling, shining tail Taught the music of the ocean To a humble half-deaf whale.[/indent] [hr] [hider=dancin's what makes me whole] We first explore the ecology of the magic fish that are now in the sea. As Sala's godfish consume the anomalous chasms left in the ocean by Ruina, they breed, and rapidly out-populate this abundance of divine energy. For maybe a few months, the ocean is filled by a swarm of starving, stunted sub-adult godfish looking for divine energy to feed on. They try a variety of different sources and deal a little damage to some of them, but they're mostly much more hazardous to a fish than the anomalies were, and can't support the same numbers. The excess godfish die off or are eaten by predators, and their population reaches a stable level. There's one great source of nourishment for godfish though: Rosalind's dancerfish, now called laektears. While they can reach monstrous sizes, most of them are small, and the godfish are one of the few predators wily enough to 'prey' on them (kill them and harvest their energy). Hopefully that helps keep giant dancerfish from dominating the oceans completely. Mamang watches a dancerfish-godfish hunt scene like he's Attenborough, but soon encounters one of the monsters: the giant laektear-mother who saved Rosalind in her encounter with the Exile. He's in terrible danger and knows it, but wait! what's this! the dancerfish wants to dance! (it's already eaten enough mummified whale for a lifetime and has lost all its teeth anyway. for now.) The two big fish circle around for a while as the laektear-mother patiently teaches the whale. Thanks to their curious ability to communicate through light and dance, the laektear-mother tells Mamang the story of Rosalind, of her fall to Galbar, her struggle in the waters, and of the whalesong she heard when she fell, which was, of course, Mamang's own. There are other special truths hidden in the dance, but you'll have to read the poems for yourself! 0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 2,446 whale points harvested with the assistance of the dancerfish. [b]Total whale points: 10,997[/b] [/hider]