[center][b][/b][/center] [b][color=6ecff6][center]The low-hanging moon puts its ear to Orst's air—[/center][/color][/b] The unseen moon cast madness with its loathsome stare. This was known. The oracle Tirir quivered atop a stone table, laid there by her fellow Earth Riders, the Skogatti of the Moving Island. Lying under the open sky, she saw the unseeable pinprick hole and uttered nothing-words in nothing-tongues that did not exist, each futile to describe what she [i]saw[/i]. It was a blisteringly hot midnight. Two maidservants tended to her while a third stoked a campfire to cook their game. They'd constructed a roof of leaves the size of men to prevent her deep blue fur from bleaching and save her eyes from the same sunlight. It did not save them from [b][color=000000]that moon[/color][/b]. It scraped across the sky, across her haunted view, and never left; even a moon wouldn't be visible at day, not without a vibrant surface or size great enough to count. But that "black" dot... as camouflaged as any true black moon would be in a starless sky, Tirir couldn't ignore [b][color=000000]it[/color][/b] while her spiritual stupor lasted. And the moment her stupor lapsed, so would her ability to see that accursed moon. [b][color=000000]Visions of a catastrophe on Port Solt plagued her. The rise of a titanic Oblin. Waves crashing against the flank of Vari Ikna—the Moving Island—as it exits its slumber [i]and[/i] the Inner Sea. She runs to her father to alert her clan to both giants. Their home will be no more.[/color][/b] [b][color=6ecff6][center]—eavesdropping, soon to gossip.[/center][/color][/b] Insanity ceased, and Tirir's murmurs ditched frenzy for focused speech. "Need... talk to..." The maidservants patted her head and wiped the fever sweat from her brow. "The island rises... it moves..." "Sure it will," one said, picking up a wooden bowl. "Now here, drink some water-" "No!" Tirir slapped the bowl out of her hand and jumped to her feet. Her head spun. The bowl clattered down beside the startled servants; night vision revealed claw marks and that servant's blood marked its bottom. Were her claws so eager to cut? That could not be among her worries right now, she told herself. She started running south to the tribe's home. "I must tell my father!" The maidservants reared back, agape and afraid to learn that she was lucid—and that the fact that'd left her mouth was truth. The one stood up and shouted, "The chieftain is northwest, at the shore!" Tirir planted her feet in the dirt. The rest of her body fell forwards into a tumble, though she righted herself facing the three, frowning. "What? That makes no sense. He should be at the... no, he [i]must[/i] be at the speaker's cave. I saw him there." And when she said 'saw', she meant her vision: Telling him there about the great Oblin attack, and everyone evacuating from the Moving Island before it may perform its namesake and carry them off to a place unknown. "He heads north to talk deals with two locals from Port Solt who want the Salt-Hide off their hides." She gestured with her wounded hand to the other direction. Tirir's jaw and ears dropped. That shore lay miles away. To get there and back would take too long. She had to think fast; it was fortunate she was a fast thinker. "Head back to the heart of the island and spread word: I awakened and my warning is urgent." They nodded. They started collecting the bowl and other things they'd brought, some baskets drawing her eyes to a tent one began to disassemble. Tirir took a hold of that one's tail, yanking her close languidly, then shoved her in the direction of home. "It is [i]urgent[/i]! Move!" She had no skill with tooth, nail, or martial art, and little strength for a Skogatti, but her importance—and more importantly, her screeching yet hideously growling tone—made up for it. They abandoned the miniature camp they'd set up around this table. The fire earned no quick extinguishing by water. Very soon afterwards, she booked it for the northwest shore on all fours. Purple bark and leaves and crimson fruit frenzied her view. She leapt over a ditch and, with a good kick, rebounded off a 4 foot wide stump, shooting herself through a patch of thorny bushes—no prickly nonsense, as the thorns all tugged at her dark blue fur and skin, but her naturally tough flesh tugged harder and ripped out the thorns in her scramble to recover. Her scant cloth carried some thorns away with her. [i]Clacks[/i] and [i]clinks[/i] she abandoned: she might've lost a few pearls or trinkets. They were of no concern. New ones could be found or made. This home was unique and singular. To lose [i]that[/i] would be devastating. It was her duty to her people to prevent that. The Skogatti definition of "shore" is a little loose. Silhouettes slipped off like a hood, and suddenly she was no longer surrounded by trees or foliage. Tirir skidded to a stop at a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean's surface, a nocturnal mirror. Some of the reflections of visible moons looked... wrong. Too different cycle-wise from when she'd been struck by her anti-eureka. A terrible thought came to Tirir: [i]When was "when"? How long have I been incapacitated?[/i] She took a whiff of the salty air. Her father's incense staff had a particular smell; her nose pointed her towards the east. She loped after the smell. Her hands already ached from traveling this far on all fours. If she had muscle, she could easily overcome the pain. She had grit instead. And desperation. Thankfully, it didn't take a very long beeline before she clambered on shaky limbs into a clearing where her beefy, bespangled father and his less conspicuous retinue camped. He recognized who she was and stood immediately. His commanding voice cracked, he seemed that overjoyed. "Tirir, you have awakened! What have you seen?" She collapsed near their firepit, then pulled herself onto a log, panting. He knelt beside her and waited a full minute for her to recover. She stood in a shadow from the fire cast by his great form and cape. He readjusted to better see her face. Only now did it hit her how much the light hurt. Once she'd caught her breath, she told him, "Vari Ikna will rise once more and rove! I saw it. And the reason will be a grand Oblin that will pierce-..." The heavens. A hellish haze glanced off the peak of a new monument, lighting them up as if by daylight; the forest's purples and reds became orange. Tirir flipped over to watch as it filled the sky and formed an image she'd been fearing for all of... all of... "How long was I out?" She looked back to her father. His face was grim, fixated on the beast and its halo of hellfire. "Father?" "Months, Tirir." She stared at him blankly. "For months you have half-slumbered. Our other shamans could not piece together all the fragments that you said; they were too many and spread too wide in topic. Nothing they pieced together made sense." Her eyes pried themselves open. That could not be! It had never lasted more than a week, never. The most dire incidents and losses punctuated days-long excursions into the field her mind wandered when she foresaw those events—and she always had time to prevent them. She had no idea how she could sculpt the future now to avert that beast. She stiffened, as did her hackles. "We must... we must return home! Before there is no home to return to!" Her father nodded. "We go home!" He waved his hand at the fire; the wisps of ectoplasm marked where spirits forced a bucket up three feet into the air, pushed it over the fire, and poured out water to smother it. The brightness of the area did not drop at all. With a yip, the chieftain took off. They followed. Tirir ran side by side with him. They didn't even make it back to the stone table in time for the island to start moving. A shockwave from Port Solt brushed through each inch of canopy lit, blasting countless giant fruits off their branches. A flash of the future: Cascading branches and fruit falling from the trees and striking her father dead, stabbing him with jagged wood and impaling his back and neck. She hadn't the energy to delay its passing or move her father out of the way. No alert would be both fast and complex enough to warn him adequately. Perhaps her dumbest decision in years, Tirir rushed to the side faster than feasible for her slim frame and shoulder-charged him out of the way. Most of the branches missed her, but a fruit crashed right onto her noggin and split. Weak already, she went out cold. [hr] Tirir awoke for the second time that night. Apparently she needed to make up for all the mornings she hadn't woken from her catatonic state. It was day. She had to sit up to make sure this truly was day and not doom. She groggily scanned the place she'd been carried. Blue-furred skogatti walked or loitered. Wind carried the salt-stench of the ocean in from her left. The rock formations here were complex; she was in a cove. Simple huts, wall shelters, and numerous cave entrances abounded. This was the home of the Cliff Climber clan, who had recently moved in—at her father's allowance, a most gracious man that he was—and made their living in the nooks where cliff sides changed angle, catching glidefins and wall-crawlers with nets. This place wasn't too far from the northwest shore. It was not home. But these people deserved her attention all the same, because her family ruled all the tribe's folk. Tirir felt an odd [i]lifting[/i] that urged her onto her feet. She stood. Somehow it exacerbated her light-headedness. Ignoring it, she started walking towards the edge of the village, feeling uneasy. Half a minute after the "lifting", she felt something of a burden. No. Literal weight, increasing. Her legs gave out and she got compressed into the ground by an inertia she hadn't realized she'd been beholden to. Everyone else stopped to keep their balance, not casually but as though they knew this weighty feeling was coming. They, before the tribe's oracle? What did they know? Her gaze gravitated to the unfamiliar horizon. She expected to see Green Peak, the oasis at the tip of the island southwest from the Moving Island. What she got instead proved to be total displacement, not in time but in space. The island was moving, no doubt about it. She began searching the village for her father. When she couldn't find him, she headed out despite the protests of medicine men and women and their apprentices. She felt a great need to walk home... wherever Vari Ikna was ferrying it.