[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019ad9be-b7e5-7611-bde4-b08d49ad3ce9.webp[/img][/center]

This time, Sarhush responded a bit more softly, [color=#9E5020]"You are heard. You have asked for a name, and I shall grant it."[/color]

He stood there for a minute, ruminating over the task and taking in all that was before him. Then the rain began, and droplets of accursed wetness fell upon the god's brow. His teeth gnashed and ground at one another, unseen behind his scowl.

[color=#9E5020]"I style you Sirna,"[/color] he soon proclaimed. Perhaps Sarhush's divine perception was sharper than any--even he himself--could ever know, and with a mere glance he could sense the [i]true[/i] name of a being. Or perhaps Sirna's earlier revelation of their name, closer to the time of their arrival on this world, was a mere premonition of the divine proclamation that Lord Sarhush would utter thereafter. OR perhaps it was mere coincidence, for Sarhush did seem to fancy names that began with an 'S'.

Whatever the case, the rain was deeply bothersome on many levels. It pattered upon the shoulders of Sarhush, who seemed unmoved by its weight even as he seethed inside like a silent, hissing coal buried beneath wet snow. He listened to Sirna while that other god answered the gift of a name with some words punctuated by an almost insulting suggestion:

[color=#e1ceff]"[b]If I may offer my thoughts...You have a vision for this world. A clear one. A great one, perhaps. But you seem in a rush to shape it to your will. The mortals may do well with some breathing room[/b],’ continued Sirna. ‘[b]Are you not interested in seeing what they will bring to fruition on their own, given time?[/b]"[/color] 

[i]Ha! Breathing room. Time and room enough in the emptiness of our sleep,'[/i] was what Sarhush thought, but his parting words spoken aloud were sharper still.

[color=#9E5020]"For these mortals...breathing room?"[/color] He snorted, not cruelly but with the dismissive certainty of someone humoring a child. [color=#9E5020]"The world you walk through,”[/color] he gestured broadly, to the distant forest fires that still barely smoldered in the rain, to the fields of ash and charcoals, to the pens that held sheep and cattle, the stone tools, the trails already beginning to be cut into the earth by the sheer movement of so many feet, [color=#9E5020]"...exists only because I have shaped it so. You think that I move too quickly, that I might perhaps fell the trees and set their timber to dry before burning them all. I think that I move perhaps too slowly, for there is so much work to be done, and so many misguided beasts and gods making the task harder!

"You recognize my great vision, so you must realize too why this work must be done. Is time so worthless that you would set it aside to spoil? Whether nature is conquered and civilization rises by my hand, or through the hands of those that I have directed, the outcome will be the same. All mortal works are the same as my own works. Their accomplishments testaments and additions to my own glory and teaching."[/color]

His eyes shone like embers.

[color=#9E5020]"They may grow, yes, and in time complete works of their own. But this will be facilitated by my guidance, and under my command. Without the Mes, they would still be as beasts. Without a leader, they would lie in the mud, dreaming forever."[/color]

Then Sarhush looked to the newsprung fungi, and his lip curled. [color=#9E5020]"As you perhaps intend. But it is no matter. You cultivate dreams while I cultivate deeds. Let us see which takes firmer root!"[/color]

Sirna was gone. Sarhush did not particularly care what that one thought or how much it had heard. The work remained.

He now allowed his displeasure at the rain to be seen, and he stepped back beneath the protective shelter of a rocky overhand to escape that shiver-inducing wetness that reminded him of the sea.

This rain was a terrible and egregious thing. It halted his fires, and worse, in Sarhush's great foresight he could see that this rain would doom the world. Even as small rivulets formed in the earth by his feet, he could see the water carrying away specks of dirt, eroding them and bearing them to the sea. As the rain continued, the waters would only ever rise, and eventually the sea would drink the whole of the land underfoot and all his work would be undone. He would not allow it!

As he shivered beneath the overhang, he looked down and beheld his own nakedness. It reminded him of a beast. All around him, the ur-humans too were shivering with their bare skin exposed to the wind and cold rain. No more!

[color=#9E5020]"To cover one's self is to rise above the like of beasts,"[/color] he declared.

"What does that even mean?" one of the cavemen asked.

Another, overcome by modesty now for the first time, covered what bits of her nakedness she could with her hands.

Sarhush stomped out into the rain, towards the pen where he had trapped his cattle. He dragged one forth and slaughtered it with his stone axe; the hungry humans gathered around to feast, but he waved them off as he began meticulously parting hide from flesh. When he had skinned the animal, he wrapped the still-bloody pelt about himself, and considered the task done for the moment. To the humans, he tossed the remaining scraps of hide that he'd skinned from the bull.

There was one strip of hide that seemed different from all the rest. It was covered in strange geometric patterns that no mortal could have imagined or woven, and it was supple and yet untearing, thin and yet warm and waterproof, and it always seemed the perfect size to wrap around the body of its wearer. This was the Me of Clothing, and he gifted it to these followers.

There remained the bloody meat and carcass of the bull. Some of the hungrier ur-humans were circling around the thing like vultures, more concerned with eating than with crafting clothes even now that they had grown to understand that their nakedness diminished them in Sarhush's eyes. That weakness and lack of discipline was disgusting, but hunger was powerful. Sarhush himself felt it, so he claimed a bite of the bull's flesh.

Rain wept over the bleeding carcass, and the soggy meat was vile.

An orange glow emanated from a nearby cave where some of the other ur-humans had taken shelter. Here, a particularly industrious one had gathered some of the timber and sticks that had evaded the great blaze they'd started at their god's request, and he had somehow dried these woods scraps enough to start a crude fire with some implements. Sarhush shouldered the human who'd started that fire aside, though he did offer at least a grunt of praise.

The warmth revived Sarhush's muscles and drove off the damp, but it did something even better to the meat that he held above the fire to dry. The heat and smoke transformed the cut of flesh, cured it, improved it. This fit perfectly into his vision of Civilization. Thus was created the Me of Cooking, which took the form of a strange earthen vessel whose bowels ever emanated heat. He set the firepot down that the mortals could wonder at it and know what it meant to cook their food over fire rather than eat it raw and unrefined as beasts.

Still, Sarhush was crowned by worry and trouble. How would something like cooking even work underwater, once the rain had consumed the world? How was [i]he[/i] to survive going down there again into the cold and briny dark, where he could not even breathe? 

Lost in thought, he looked up, and suddenly noticed a small crack in the back of this little cave in the hillside. Something compelled him to investigate it; he seized a burning branch from the bonfire even as the ur-humans held their skewers of meat above the flames to roast; there was plenty of fire left for them to cook and stay warm, but this little torch would help Sarhush see in the back of that dark crevice. He approached it, found it narrow but traversable even for a being of his bulk, and began to crawl deep into the stony bowels of the earth.

[hider=Actions]
Sarhush names Sirna, and then proceeds to philosophize.

The obnoxious rain triggers him into making Mes of Cooking and Clothing that he gifts to the humans around him (0 conviction in-domain lucid actions).

The rain really, really bothers him because he's convinced it will not stop and will drown the whole world. Also because he hates water in general.

In the end, he starts spelunking down into the caverns below Ashuru; who knows what he's up to now? Probably something terrible.[/hider]