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 fry 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.
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 voice-
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.
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 its dance of drowning, dance of weeping, dance of birthing.
In the dark, forgotten records of the waters and the fishes - which no mortal mind remembers, which no mortal mind has written - danced the weeper of the laektears to the song of whales unknowing - 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: is the singing of the oceans, is 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.
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 meaning could erupt from movements only - only motions!
And the motions made a pattern And the pattern had a pace! And the pace carried a rhythm And that rhythm was a dance! And the dance was born of music And with light that music shone! And the light lit up the waters And the waters filled with song!
‘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, mahm-mahm-mahm-mahm-mahm
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.
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.
Darkness. Cold. Sprays of brine stinging their scratches. Wood splintering under the force of gale and storm.
The roar of lightning threw the panic on their faces into nightmarish light.
Darkness.
"Lu? Lu!"
"I'm- I'm holding-"
"Svietla!"
"She's heavy!"
"Hold on, Lu! I've got you!"
The world dipped and tossed, throwing them sideways, against the wood, against one another. Black water heaved and swallowed them. They emerged with their nails sunk deeply into the wood, gasping for breath.
"Hold on-"
Mamang.
XII
Strange encounters had been had in the cool waters of the north and central sea. The whale had grown mostly accustomed to being just about the longest thing in the ocean, excepting the cows of its own kind, whose usual quietness veiled that they were noticeably larger than the bulls that guarded and pursued them. Their presence was familiar, their soft calls warm in the whale's heart. There were also the loners, the giant rorquals of the north, who with their mere presence reminded the wandering bull that it had been a young bull once, timid amongst its uncles.
Yet something had cast a shadow upon the whales. It had come and gone, slow of pace and still possessed of a terrific speed, and the whale had watched it walk. Its shadow was wider and darker than any cloud, and a sonorous moan accompanied the lift and fall of its movement. Three gargantuan striders dipped their feet into the sea and raised them up once more, landing on a plane of brilliant red, like stirred rocks might land on the seafloor.
By this time, the whale had been exposed to quite enough sorcery. The sound of bending limbs scratched the inside of its skull, bleeding in memories of the foul curse at the south end of the world. To fly and walk and not swim was in defiance of good water and good gravity, and the whale reviled the alien...
Yet the glow of red was calming, and the sound of the colossi was smooth and paced, like whalesong. Watching the feet plunge and rise on their sorcerous bridge, heaving out bubbles as they descended and raining down rivers as they rose, the bull's trepidation was soothed, as it had been on that long ago day, when red light on the shore marked the end of the blood and noise and chaos...
Some whales followed the striders, rushing to keep pace for a while, singing back to the sound. They even dived under the very shadow of those beings, turning on their side to admire the glow, like an even cloud of sunlit krill, yet also harder than rock. The wandering bull did not join them long. It had seen plenty of wonders in its wanders. This was not its first taste of magic, and its memories were painful.
But sweet was the sight of the Arbiter's light, and welcome was her presence. The travellers passed one another in peace: one party unknowing, the other well at ease.
...
(Shortly afterward, the wandering bull swallowed a sardine run the distracted whales had been pursuing for two days.)
XIII
Scrsh, scrch, krunrungrunsh. A hook nose rummaged in the silt.
The bottom-feeder hucked back a throatful of muddy garbage and beheld the familiar silhouette with a louse-bitten eye.
Bmp mp. ... ... ... ... Bmp bmp bmp nn np.
Friend!
The pockmarked and barnacle-laden cow was an ancient, now, veteran of many summers and well satisfied, though her life was reaching its ebb. The whale had found her along much the same shores it had met her long ago, where the seas had recovered and bloomed and subsided, and her offspring now roamed alone. There was no longer any need for it to scrounge the seabed for a meal, only another hard and welcomed memory of rare company in its most difficult hour.
Still, they parted ways shortly, and were not fated to meet again. Our story turns once more to strange encounters.
The coasts of Galbar- a certain well-planned continent naturally exempted- were touched at their birth by the hand of Chance, and hide many secrets, uncovered often by the diligent and certainly by the lucky. White beaches and black cliffs, sea-arches, columns, hidden reefs and huge caves...
Sea-caves and blue holes deep enough to hide whales. Coves wave-carved with sea tunnels that stretch far enough to hide many things indeed.
It was in such a cove that the whale was first met by the hand of Royalty. It had heard sounds, there, while skimming, of a whale acting oddly, rubbing about among the rocks without making a call. Sometimes it went quiet. Sometimes it was silent altogether.
Shadows in the distance. Something veiled by blue.
The whale turned its one keen ear to the motion, and still heard no song. It only saw the shape. One shape, or many, flapping, writhing, scrounging, seeking...
The motion stopped. The thing that was not a whale went still, then began to rise. The whale fled. Somewhere behind it, a heavy splash, then a rain. For a moment, nothing- then a shape that blot out the sun, falling like a hawk, folding its wings- crash of water- vast weight diving- giant claws-
Thrashing its gargantuan tail with terrible force, the whale was as helpless as a fish in the talons of a hawk before the hound of the Monarch. The thing that had once been a serpent stared down upon it, into it, its black predator eyes facing directly forwards at its prey. Its tail swept from side to side, groping the whale with its tendrils. A steady stream of water pumped from its gills-slits.
Then the pressure was released, and the leviathan spread its wings once more. With the force of an eel-like tail behind it, it surged back up to the surface and beat its heavy wet wings in the sun, returning once more to its hunt. For that was what it was, and the whale recognised it now- the swim, scrounge, sniff, swim, scrounge, the relentless pattern of movement it had seen before in sleepsharks and dire wolf-eels.
The hound of Royalty had no time to waste on such trifles. Not today.
Bleeding from rows of deep scratches, the whale gasped fresh air from the surface and fled, and did not stop or call until it was free in the open ocean, well out of sight of shore. Its brain tumbled in its head as if drunk. Every part of its body was violated, squeezed and cast down and gripped and hunted in ways no rorqual should be hunted. A horrible tension had crawled under its skin, into its blood, and taken hold of its muscles.
It had survived. Cast aside by some unnatural intelligence under divine command, it had survived.
And still the sea grew stranger.
XIV
"Lu..."
"Nothing, Mitsa. Just salt." Mitsa lay her head and closed her eyes again. Svietla, roused a little by the motion, only turned to look at the endless ocean.
They were dying of thirst.
With Tykhom lost to the storm, Arska was the only manbjork of the remaining four, and had taken to letting his whole lower body lay in the water, resting his head and shoulders on the edge of the raft. Occasionally there were sharks. There had been yelling and crying the first time he'd done it, and those savage wildfish had appeared shortly after, drawn by the smell of blood and despair. A pike or a gar could take lethal bites from an unwary bjork, and these fish were much bigger. Even now, the three wifebjorks still preferred to wait out the heat of the day under the crude shelter they had rebuilt at the back of the raft.
As their wounds healed and their thirst grew, Arska Snaketail had ceased to fear.
"Perhaps we should swim," he said. "We could each head a different direction- north, south, east..."
Svietla met his eyes, and he fell quiet. "If we do swim," she said, softly, "we will swim together." And that meant: I will not let you die alone.
Arska closed his eyes and turned away. He did everything alone. Svietla chewed a twig from the bundled supplies in her dry, dry mouth.
"I see something!"
All four were awake in a flash, staring at the ocean, staring at Lu. Lubov's young eyes were wide, her hand straining as she pointed out into the distance. "Smoke!"
"...It's steam," said Svietla, squinting. "Where'd it come from...?" None of them had an answer. The steam blew away, and they stared in hope and terror. Loud cries rose from the raft as the steam plume came again.
"We should swim-"
"Arska..."
"Arska can take the risk-"
"Svietla? Svietla!"
Without a word, the eldest wifebjork had submerged herself in the infinite blue. Gripping the sides of the raft, she took a deep breath, then followed her deepest instincts: head dipping, using all her muscles, raising her tail, and- slap!
In those still and empty waters, the sound felt as small as a leaf falling into a puddle. They said nothing to one another.
Crash!
Lubov pressed her hands to her mouth. There in the distance, in the near distance, the unmistakeable flick and slap of a gargantuan tail.
"It heard us." Arska frowned an exhausted frown. His tail was no good for slapping. "Do it again... Svietla..."
"Don't tell me what to do." Svietla was already steeling herself for another try. Everything about her was tired. She was the biggest, and had shared the last of her portion of water with Lubov. She slapped, and once again, the giant fish slapped back. This time it was noticeably closer.
"Pray," she commanded, or begged, and they did. Whether any god had answered, they knew not. Only the fish answered. Soon it was beside them, a shadow in the water.
"It could swallow us whole..."
"It doesn't care," said Arska, whose odd body carried odd instincts. "We're too small for it. Like a bear chasing a beetle."
"Bears... will eat anything..." Svietla shushed Mitsa and stroked the fur at the top of her head. Lubov stared at the shadow, completely transfixed.
"Is it... humming?"
XV
From then on the whale followed them. It was sometimes close by them, sometimes apart, visible as an occasional plume of breath in the distance, and sometimes gone altogether, to feed, Arska said. Sometimes it fed right below them, gulping down a little mouthful of shoaling fish which the bjorks had barely seen, circling in the shadow of their big raft. They watched the pleats of its throat stretch as it filled itself with water.
Sometimes the whale would nudge them along with its fin, or push them, almost carrying them, with its upper back. It did not push them far. Their condition did not really improve. The bundle of food disappeared, and they were reduced to gnawing on the wood of their own raft. A light burst of rain in the early morning was their only moisture, and they sucked from each other's fur, then from the wood itself. Their bones were visible even under their pelts.
Still they watched the whale, and still the whale sang. No more sharks came upon them then. They rested their bodies in the cool ocean water, and watched rainbows form in its spouted plumes. It gave them nothing but hope, and hope was all they asked. As long as the whale was there, the ocean was not so lonely. Its salt had lost its sting. They watched the whale breach, and forgot about their thirst.
And at night, under a spectacular blanket of stars, they would pray.
Land was sighted after thirty-nine days. Yelling goodbyes to the whale, they fled the raft and swam to shore with every last bit of their strength, sharks and pikes be damned, Svietla pushing Lubov ahead of her as she swam. When they washed up on the brown and silty beach, they found themselves by the mouth of a small river, and didn't even notice until after they had stuffed their bellies with grass and thistle and every bit of prickly green they found within arms reach. They slaked their thirst, the sun grew low, and in the orange light of dusk found themselves alone again.
"This land has few trees," said Mitsa, combing a sleepy Lu with her nails. She was looking better with her feet on dry land. Svietla was lighting a fire with grass and scraps of a stunted bush, Arska rummaging in the stream. "We won't have much of a lodge." Svietla met her eyes. They both knew that the real concern was food.
"Then we must live as the water-voles do, and eat what we can find." Arska returned from the stream with a struggling crayfish in his paws, stuck through with a twisted little stick. Mitsa gasped as he lowered the little animal into the flames.
"You cruel-"
"We will be like hunters who were taught by the Masked One. Like the giants, the hairless beings from the west. We will be like them. But we will waste nothing. Not even the offering of flesh- not even blood. That is how the Masked One spoke to his followers. Kill with purpose. Do not waste." Arska's tail glinted in the firelight. It was long, thin, flattened the wrong way, a deformity unlike any bjork that had been seen yet. He could neither slap nor pat down mud with it, but it had never slowed him down. "I've been to the top of the hill, Mitsa. There aren't enough trees here for one single clan. It will only turn our stomachs for a while, and we can't live on reeds alone. There is no old matriarch to judge. Who will stop us?"
Arska pulled the cray from the flames and took a crunching bite. He cringed, stretched his cheeks, made to spit, but held himself back. He swallowed. "Who will stop us! Hasn't the Singing Maker himself, or one of his daughters, appeared to us as a fish and saved us? We were meant to live!" He took another bite, smaller. "I'm not scared of salt water any more. I don't need a forest to hide in. So we'll have to build our homes out of mud and reeds- so what? Have you forgotten that these are the last days of the autumn? This land is warm! We need no lodge. We'll sharpen our nails and harden our hearts. Maybe we've found what we were looking for after all- a place for ourselves, far in the south. A place where no one can cast us out any more."
Mitsa looked down to the fire, then to the eldest. "Svietla..."
Svietla said nothing for a while. She could not reject Arska Snaketail, not after they had come this far together. She wondered if she could even pull rank on him any more. She had always been the little future matriarch of their little future clan, and everyone had quietly accepted that. But maidbjork cannot be without manbjork. The new world would have new rules. Nothing, now, was beyond question, not even Arska's odd instincts, held in his odd body. She spoke, and answered nothing.
"The spirit-whale has returned to the waters. Old-Bjork we have left behind far in the north. Perhaps for the better- they say strange things happen in his lands these days, strange dreams. Perhaps the Master of the Hunt will bless us, or the Lady Heat, in these warm lands. For now, we have no gods among us."
But she was wrong.
For beyond the hill, in the cool air of night, an eyeless giant with a head of bright brass was striding towards them, and its heart rang with the will of its dead master: Life, will, and the strength to persevere, strength it knew lay in the hearts of the mortals beyond...
Mamang encounters or recalls Homura's Colossi, its old friend from the Termina coast, and the Monarch's Serpent. The Serpent traumatises it a little bit.
Four bjork outcasts, three female and a male with a mutant tail and slightly weirdo tendencies named Arska, were swept out to sea on a raft in a storm. They encounter Mamang while drifting, and his company gives them hope to stick to the raft and carry on rather than try to swim out and eventually drown trying to reach something. They consider him to be sent by the Singing Maker (our good friend Jiugui).
They eventually land in the northern part of the island to the north of Orsus. The region is somewhat lacking in trees, but not barren, and has milder winters than the Thousand Lakes. At least one of the Guardians created by the dying Aletheseus comes to help them.
Here, thanks to the environment and a strong founder effect, they'll start a new race of bjorks, named after the mutant: Bjarsks, or Bjarska. They'll resemble muskrats (or nutria rats, another large water rodent) more than beavers, with a long, thin, paddle-like tail.
The Bjarska might be considered barbarian Bjorks by the northerners. Less social order, less inclination to build, more omnivorous, more inclined to fight, especially among males. But we'll see what happens.
0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 2,794 whale points awarded for creating a new race unassisted uwu
Total whale points: 8,551
Then out of the silence, blurring motion.
A shape whirled before the eye of the bull. It could not be a whale. Twisted, tangled, writhing, then sweeping up towards it in ripples as only an eel and a ribbon can, the hound of the Monarch emerged from the seabed. It was vast- thicker than the whale, thicker than a bowhead at its widest point- yet had no curves, no natural silhouette- for it was impossibly long, its body stretching on and on at an even width through three dozen sand-yellow stripes until it ended at last in a snub and scaled head-
And that head carried a giant searching eye, and in an instant it brought that giant eye beside the tiny sunken eye of the whale, and it stared, as if to say:
The band gathered around their fallen brethren. His limbs ravaged by fangs and claws and the color drained from his eyes and markings. The salter placed her hand on his forehead, confirming the obvious. He was dead.
Marshall Edgar nodded, and organized the necessary preparations. When everything was ready, almost everyone gathered around the story-teller as he told stories about the fallen, followed by the story of Arvos’ death and made a plea that his spirit be allowed to join his noble ancestor. The story-teller then walked around to the various grieving people, giving them time to give words around the dead. Not everyone could be in attendance, as there still needed to be people to watch the sheep.
When everyone who had words had shared them, the salter took a bone knife and made a small cut where the chest marking had been, carefully removing a small crystal from the cut. She washed the crystal with a prepared bowl of water before placing it in a small leather bag. It would eventually be stored with the rarer and nicer possessions of the band.
As for the mortal remains, they wrapped the body in animal skins and then splashed it with animal blood, marking it as something unclean to any other band who found it. They then left it where it was and prepared to continue herding their sheep further south.
Once the band had crossed over the horizon with their animals, a new Eidolon showed herself. It was strange enough, among these wandering people, to be alone; stranger still to be mounted on such a beast, better suited for scrounging than grazing. The lonely one dismounted, adjusted the fine black xo fur around her shoulders, and knelt at the body, gently resting her knuckles where the sheepskin covered its forehead. It was something any Eidolon could do with little effort, but only she could do it for the dead.
Memories flickered from the body to the lonely one. She had no need for a story-teller.
After a few seconds she removed her hand, looking down over the body. If the Eidolon had been asleep, he would be comfortable, warm at night and shaded by day under the skins they had left him. With the incision hidden below, the only thing that really marked him as dead was the blood, an important token.
But why skins? The lonely one crouched and mused as a vulture circled in the distance, perhaps confused by the unnatural shape of the covered body. The Eidolons had many skins, from hunts and herds, and could easily afford to spare a few they did not need for straps or shoes or rawhide tents. It wasn’t a burden, but it wasn’t a choice, either. There was little else they could use to cover the body but soil. Perhaps burying the dead in the earth from which they came was distasteful to them.
She stood. They were a primitive people. They had done well with what they had. And they would do better with more.
The band continued to travel towards fresh grass. While the herd didn’t need to travel great distances for its next meal, the group was travelling faster than their usually slower pace. A misjudgment meant that they didn’t have as much water as they needed, and so they were hurrying to a nearby river.
As they approached, they saw a strange sight, a herd of black sheep mostly left unattended, and a black tent. From the distance, they could make an Eidolon shape. They didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the valuable livestock, though the band couldn’t tell what they were doing.
Cautious, the marshall signalled for most of the band to keep their distance, but he called for one of his best hunters and the story-teller to follow him to greet the stranger. Both Marshall Edgar and his hunter wielded a spear, lowered by his side, and ready. They were the only two spears entrusted to his band from the noble ancestor’s supplies.
The stranger, too, bore tools in her hands, and she set one down only for a moment to wave a peaceful greeting. Whatever she was doing was plainly very important. Her head, they soon saw, was bandaged with hemp fibre, and she wore black furs. Her left hand was steady, holding a simple bone around which was turned a mass of fine black hair, and her right was busy, turning and twirling a thin, straight bone, stuck through the center of a clay ring, supporting a narrow string of twisted hair between the two. It was the back of those hands that drew their brazen eyes: the lines that traced her life-energy were coal-black, and, when she met her gaze, her exposed eye was the same.
She said, “Welcome.”
Edgar was the first to approach, with the two others a few steps behind. “Hail, stranger.” he said, “Your heart’s color is not one I have seen before.” he said, as a statement of fact. His tone did not indicate any particular judgment.
“Indeed,” she said, still focused on spinning the weighted bone around and around on a smooth concavity in a rock. “It’s not one you’re likely to see again. A curiosity I was born with, nothing more.” From this close, they saw that she wore on her neck the unmistakeable shine of three Eidolon heart-crystals, polished with great care, and secured in a curious way. They were not strung on a leather cord through a hole, as some did with tooth and bone trinkets, but caught in a fine and delicate web of tightly wound fibre, along with other precious things: a rufous feather, a glossy black beetle, and a glittering pyrite.
“My name is Ea Nebel. Come, rest, water your flocks, eat of the meat and the bulbs by the fire. You will help me- I have food and sheep, but no pair of hands that will lighten my work, and there is much wool to be spun.”
The hunter, Luca, raised his spear when he had a chance to get a better view of the stranger’s attire. Edgar signalled for him to lower his weapon, but walked over to him and let the hunter whisper to him. Edgar turned back to Ea Nebel, “My band-mate is concerned by how you are treating the dead. I find it strange myself.”
Ea Nebel listened, then smiled a little. “Indeed? You have good instincts, Marshall. There’s no safer place for them than here, with me. They were close to my heart, after all. They still are.” With utmost care, the stranger set aside her tools and removed the necklace, the length of it wrapped tightly around her wrist. The thread, they saw, was much like the spun hair wrapped around her tools, only finer, thinner, smoother, strong. She pointed out the adornments one by one. “My father- solemn, like the scarab. He, too, made provisions for my future. I never knew my mother, not since my earliest days, but my uncle honoured her with an eagle’s wing, because she travelled far, with keen eyes. I always think of her when I see one soaring. And my own choice, for my uncle- something shining brightly, all around, that struck a warm spark for me, like he did. This is part of their story. It’s how I remember.” This time, she tucked the memorial under her furs, against her chest.
While the marshall was trying to formulate a thought, and the story-teller silently observed the situation, Luca raised his spear again and interrupted, “How do we not know that your father is not the Usurper of Morning Hours? Your eyes shine with his color!”
“...Mm. Yes. That is why one of them was plucked out.” Ea Nebel tapped the hemp covering her face. “The Lord Night isn’t dead. Just wait another six hours if you don’t believe me. My father lies in a shroud of felt many miles from here, where we mourned and left him… But your band doesn’t know of felt, do you?”
Luca rushed forward, his marshall grabbing his spear but the hunter let go of his prized weapon. He reached out, and grabbed her arm where one of her symbols laid bare. She tensed, stood, backed away a half-step, but did not pull away. Luca could feel her heart through her skin: A wave of shock, fading away into nervous fear.
One did not need the empathy of an Eidolon to see the rage upon Luca’s face, “How dare you be the one surprised. You are alone and careless with your herd, and yet haven’t been parted from it. You must be some type of trickster wearing our flesh, did you take it from the departed?”
Ea Nebel’s face was like stone. Only her hand had moved: wrapping around Luca’s wrist, holding him as firmly as he held her. He felt a different kind of anger. “You have good eyes,” she said, rather softly. “But there’s one more thing that’s strange here. Haven’t you noticed?” A tiny smile. “I don’t have a horse.”
She kicked her boot against the rock she had been spinning on, and it woke up, shaking off a shower of soil and mud. The giant hog-spirit pulled itself out of its hollow and shook off the dirt, holding Luca in a cool stare for only a moment before lifting its head to sniff in his direction. It towered over the four of them, and Ea Nebel did not let go.
“Go. Watch the flock.” The beast grunted once at the Eidolon, then wandered to the riverside, where the cluster of black sheep accepted it as though it was a ram, or a master shepherd.
While the hunter and marshall remained silent, it was the story-teller who spoke next, “Unknown spirit, forgive my band-mates suspicion and hostility - his close friend had recently returned to the ancestor’s grace and our clan has been frightened by errant stories of invaders upon our lands who steal from us our precious life.”
“Luca is forgiven,” said Ea Nebel, releasing his hand and pulling away her own sharply, sparing a glance for the light bruise on her arm before she looked warily back at the three Eidolon.
Luca stepped away from the spirit, however trepidation still appeared on his features. The story-teller looked to the marshall, back to the reminder of the band, and finally to the unknown spirit. “If you would give me my curiosity, over what do you reside so that we would know better how not to offend you. Is it the river, or perhaps this felt you mentioned?”
A little light entered her eye, but only a little. “The fault isn’t yours. You were observant. Your traditions are strong, and you value discipline. I should have spent more time learning… Forgive me. I am the spirit who remembers the dead. I am the maid of shrouds.”
The story-teller glanced around once more, talking longer to think before asking, “Do you promise on the name and honor of Avros, and the ancestors of Avros, that you do not intend to harm or steal from our band?”
Ea Nebel nodded, raising her hand. “The band of Edgar has done right by its fallen. I swear it by Avros, and by the secret name of the Sun, and their honour. I will steal neither stock nor spear nor life from you.”
The story-teller looked over at the marshall and nodded. Edgar continued, hesitancy in his voice, “Then spirit of the fallen, we shall do what you ask. Whatever that might be.”
Ea Nebel met the Marshall’s gaze and repeated the words in her mind. She paused, choosing words. Somewhere behind her, the hog murmured a low grunt. “I do have only one pair of hands,” she said at last. “Perhaps… you would like to help me spin some wool?”
Despite having heard it mentioned before, now that he was not immediately distracted with other concerns, his shock caused him to repeat what he heard, “Spin sheep hair?” The story-teller immediately shot him a harsh glance, and he corrected himself, “We would be glad to assist you in your work. Allow my story-teller to go and call over the rest of the band,” he said. The spirit nodded.
The weighted bone, explained Ea Nebel, was a spindle, and the weight upon it, which could be clay or stone but always circular, was the whorl. The spindle was notched so as to better guide the wool being pulled away from the bundle on the wool-bone or stick, which was the distaff, and the coil of wound, spun fibre forming around the spindle as she turned it was called yarn, lengths of which could be twisted to make string and thread.
Many among Edgar’s band were wary of the stranger, or shy, but their Marshall reassured them, and the spirit did not pressure them. There was plenty of time to rest and water the animals, and much wool to work with. Ea’s flock was small, but, she explained, many animals would grow a fine fleece if they were carefully husbanded, even their own sheep. She even offered to exchange one of her rams for one of theirs, to strengthen both their flocks.
Her wool she had laid in a low tent, held up in the middle by a rare staff of wood from the north, along with many other tools of bone. Its edges were secured with yet another coil of coarse, thick fibre twisted from hemp: rope. From a long way off, its woolen walls were easily mistaken for fur. This was the felt of which she had spoken: thin, light, sometimes soft and sometimes stiff, cooler than furs and much warmer than straw. Having much wool, Ea Nebel showed them a low basin lined with hide which she had dug and filled with river-water, mixed with a soap of sheep’s fat and ash, where she made the felt by soaking it well, then pressing and rubbing it with a stone. This way, she explained, she had much to gain from a sheep, even before she slaughtered it.
The felt she made was sewn together with a fine yarn and a needle made of bone. Ea Nebel had a fondness for bone, and her tools had a rustic elegance, much like the band’s own. Among them were an array of long pins and thin hooks. These, said the spirit, were all that was necessary for yet another task. Taking a bundle of yarn and tying the end in a dextrous loop, Ea Nebel hooked and twisted the fibre in a kind of loose, endlessly looping knot, pulling and pushing her hook through the mesh that she was making, turning the yarn back and forth into itself. To do this, sometimes with one hook and sometimes with two needles, and even with a large notched square made from the long bones of xo, was to weave. When she was finished with her hook and yarn, Ea Nebel put the object gently on a child’s head, warming his ears.
“Wool and hemp can take any shape,” she said, late in an evening, tying together a good length of string by firelight to repair a net she had cast in the river. “They cannot replace hide, for which there are still many uses you have yet to learn. But they are useful. Thanks to your help, I’ve spun all my wool and mended all my things, and now there’s so much to spare… You should take all you’ve made while I taught you. You’ve earned it.”
The band accepted the spirit’s generosity, primarily concerned with not offending them, especially while their boar-beast lingered nearby. While usually they would have stopped by the river as the Lord Night reclaimed the sky, the group continued along the river away from the spirit’s dwelling. They settled out of sight, but they would not soon forget the maid spirit or her craft.
Ea Nebel let her head lay on the flank of the hog, more exhausted now than she had been by a thousand miles of travel, the fake bandage now resting in her lap. “You can go now,” she said, and the tent dissolved into a handful of blowflies. Tomorrow the sheep would wander off as well. She fell asleep, and the morning sun found her still by the side of the river, grinning from one ear to the other.
A sheep-herding band of Eidolon from the wood-deprived south of the plains, led by Marshall Edgar, bury one of their number after an attack by predators. They grieve for a little while before performing a small funeral, in which the crystal core of the dead Eidolon is recovered and the body covered, marked, and left behind for scavengers.
Ea Nebel observes the practice and approves of it, but notes that the Eidolon still have very little in the way of material technology. She contrives a very subtle and clever plan to teach them how to make the most out of the wool from their sheep.
The Eidolon encounter a disguised Ea by the bank of a river, showing off some interesting wool products, and very quickly realise that something weird is going on. Ea Nebel tells a whole bunch of lies to assert herself as a Perfectly Normal Eidolon, drawing on her own life history for inspiration, but doesn’t understand enough of the mortal culture yet to get away with it, and is called out by Luca, a friend of the fallen Eidolon, for not keeping an eye on her sheep at all times.
Some tense words are spoken and Ea is bailed out by her pig.
The two parties make up with the help of the band’s story-teller, who identifies her as a spirit. A little spooked, they put themselves at Ea Nebel’s service. She can’t believe her luck.
Over the course of a day or so Ea Nebel teaches the band about spinning wool, making string and rope, felt-making for tents and clothing, and forms of weaving similar to knitting and crochet that won’t take a lot of wooden tools. There was also a line about a loom in there somewhere, though.
Still a bit uneasy, Edgar’s band departs from Ea’s encampment with quite a story to tell about the shroud spirit.
Ea Nebel enters the cycle with 10 Vigor.
1 vigor spent to teach some southern Eidolon about fibre and textile crafts.
In those days the seas grew lush- lush beyond measure.
Vast was the expanse of blue sea that stretched beyond the clasped hands of the continent, and bright colour swirled therein as if stirred in by a paintbrush. Fish they had known, and water-bugs too, the little cyclopes, but never such a bounty as these: whirring, kicking animals, their stalked eyes black and fearful, cast about in the cold water like a muddy cloud, as abundant as raindrops.
The whales gorged. Fish alone had allowed many a race of whales to make far forays into the endless ocean. Now the gift of krill had shattered the chains that bound them to shore, and there was no limit to their travel; they crossed the planet whole, freer than condors. Even the lonesome giants of the ice had come to wander south, lording over all others with their unspeakable bulk. The whales grew fat on that bounty, and the sea did not cease to provide; swallowing shoals of plankton and forage-fish without number, they became mothers, and soon they were countless.
Hot with passion was the young bull then. The whale grew and grew until its very bones would let it grow no more, and then, one day, it was not a young bull at all but a mighty one, a titan of song and muscle, stoked with the fire of life and hunger. It leapt from the warm green waters of the southern summer, and the crash of its fall was an avalanche. Many were the rivals that heard it, and answered with strong song; no longer alone would this great bull be!
And yet, even in the battle-season where bulls won cow and heifer, the whale did not throw itself into the lifelong company of its kind, for which it had so yearned in the north. Even now, this bull was a wandering bull, a straggler, a stray, and the breadth of the unknown ocean called to it.
By day the imperial Sun did rise, and the whale gave chase as it fled to the West; by night travelled the injured Moon, and the whale followed, swimming through a sleep rich in dreams. So far west the whale travelled that it circled Galbar, and arrived on the rich coasts of Orsus.
IX
There in the East the whale did play, and feed, and roam the bright coast, filled with life long before the wide ocean had ever been seeded. An abundance of rivers washed curious smells down from the forests, and strange shore-fish had grown to be shoal-fish, as they had in the sea of giants. The wandering bull met many whales there, most quite like itself, sleek blue and grey rorquals filling the water with pulses of their low, mumbling song. Skilled fishers they were, and they showed the whale how to cage whole shoals in the bubbles of its breath, a fine dance in which the joyful singing whales of the central sea had not permitted it to take part, their white-black wings guiding them to spin elegant circles the rorqual could not hope to match.
Friendly were those eastern whales, but distant, and they were not its own. Their song was not the same, no matter how the whale twisted and turned its working ear, and their bodies did not bear the markings of its race. Every time it lifted its eye from the surface, the fin of their backs reminded the whale that it was not among family. Their bulls would not challenge it, nor was there any sport in challenging them, for there was no cow among them suited for the northerner, and the only tension was the far cooler matter of food. For many years already had fish filled these waters, and of ordinary size they were, though their shape be primitive. There was only so much room for yet another whale to come and forage in these populated waters.
So the whale travelled on, far to the south, until the sun one day rose, and did not shine.
Caught in the queer dimness, the whale turned and tossed and lifted its eyes up from the water and could find no source for the haze, not even a smell. It skimmed the water for cyclopes, and found them in plenty. It sang out to the fishing rorquals, and one answered with lazy calm. The whale returned north, a little way, and the sun soon brightened again.
Most puzzling was this darkness cast by no cloud! The whale had seen quite enough sorcerous water-borders in its youth, and was wary of this one. But all was well. The shade of heaven left the tropical sea no less warm, and the whale learned those seas to be safe. It entered the shadow, and crossed it without fear, once more emerging into light.
X
The whales of the south were small compared to the bull. They were vocal, fond of repeating their curious songs, now a long string of brisk beats flowing up and down like the tide, now a drumming growl, ba-brmm, ba-ba-ba-brrr... They ate what they could find, be it krill or forage or cyclopean plankton or prickly rock-fish roaming the shallow shore in schools, and were little troubled by the large stranger, though it swept up at once forage-patches that would take them three passes to clear.
The whale had encountered them before, and knew that their lot was a troubled one. Small enough to thrive on seas that would starve a giant like itself, they were small enough, also, to fall frequently prey to the all-conquering hunger of the orca. Perhaps it was that hunger which had chased them to travel so far south, in some vain and desperate hope to run from the invincible rip and tear of those hunters.
To the wandering bull, they were like children, perhaps trapped forever in the calf's nightmare of drowning and death- and yet, they travelled alone, swift and fearless, their hearts as bold as the great titans of the icy north. Strange indeed! Still, they were rorquals, like itself, even patterned in much the same way, and it was grateful for their occasional company.
Having lived in the open waters of the far south for longer than itself, the whale faintly expected their range to continue as the southern waters became cold again, the winter nights long. It swallowed down krill and fish at leisure at that far latitude, uncontested, singing its low beat all on its own.
A fell current found it there, alone in those waters, and the whale's appetite began to wane.
It did not cease its journey south, seeking another clear bright shore among the well-salted ocean, as it always had before. The sea remained quiet, and the krill was bitter in its mouth. The wandering bull would have journeyed far, even alone, even on an empty stomach, as it had done when it was young. The memories of that hungry voyage to the island-of-air grew clearer and clearer, poisoning its dreams until they became real.
Once again, a sorcerous barrier corrupted the waters in front of the whale.
There was no celestial enchantment casting this haze. It hung in the waters before the wandering bull, a noxious green stain that mocked life. It was like a cloud of silt that did not settle, but rose instead to loiter at the surface, another cruel trick of demented gravity. The water there was foul in the whale's mouth; its blowhole burned when it surfaced, and even the lice on its skin, grown thick again from its long journey uncleaned, seemed to writhe and die at the touch of the cloud.
The wandering bull did not touch that streak of corruption. It followed, cautiously, the westwards path of the cleaner waters beyond the cloud, occasionally circling to turn its good ear towards the cloud. The only sound came from far ahead. It might have been mistaken for the song of some still more bizarre race of whale, had it not been so relentless, and so stationary.
It clicked, and growled, and moaned low, unspeakably angry and pained, horribly un-alive. Wary of sorcery, yet afraid of nothing in these orca-less waters, the whale approached, and as it did so the cloud grew ever lower, tighter, darker, its corruption concentrated in one narrow stream- a single line of monstrous pollution billowing from a deep reef, a stunted island that had never grown tall enough to touch the surface, or feel moonlight.
Anger!
The noise was deafening. The shape was unlike anything the whale had yet seen. The whale dived deep into the blue dark, shielded by its ruined ear. It dared not approach this growling monster, shuddering and breathing yet sunk like a carcass. Such a poison that had been laid upon the ocean by a curse no larger than its own body-
Anger! Pain!
The whale levelled its eye at the light of the blue ocean beyond the curse, beyond the cloud, beyond the reef. There, somewhere, was a new sea, a clean sea, on the other side of the barrier. The whale twisted and twisted and listened for something it did not know, something it knew lay there where the night was so long the sun never rose, for the alien song of eldritch whales that knew no shore at all-
-but the sound of the curse was deafening, and the whale had only one ear.
XI
So ended the journey of the wandering bull. Starving and sickened, the whale fled north to the bright waters of the central sea, where green meant life, and so did song. Its appetite returned with a roar, and its flaking skin grew back clean. By the time it returned to familiar shores, the summer call of mates had lit fires in its heart, and young bachelors flinched back from the song of the bull who had travelled the world.
It was a wanderer, like no other whale- but it was a whale, still, proud! Great was that whale, and is still, crossing these oceans to this very day!
Aye, it is a whale!
Phelenia seeds the oceans and the whales, which were already doing pretty well, rapidly expand to fill the entire ocean.
Mamang reaches his full size. He circumnavigates the world and finds himself on the east coast of Orsus for a while, which whales have already filled thanks to fish from Tuku Llantu's coasts. When he travels south, he finds the shadow of the ring, but it's not too big a deal to cross.
Far in the south, he encounters the cloud of marine pollution generated by Coolmachine #1, which local whales have learned to avoid. Circumpolar currents have drawn its pollution into a long ring around the south end of Galbar, forming a barrier between the natural seas and the chaos around the Tree of Harmony. At this stage Mamang is easily large enough to destroy it, but he lacks the intelligence to identify this course of action, and that might be a suicide mission anyway... for now.
With this post, Mamang's story has now featured every major classification of baleen whale- can you identify them all?
0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 1,696 whale points awarded for still being a whale
Tamo was a Scholar, and never one to travel much. He was also an Exile. This moderately awkward juxtaposition had left him in rather tense standing among the Academy faithful, who seemed sometimes uneasy around him, and other times angry that he hadn't left yet. Was his kind a spy, an infiltration by blasphemers? Would he wriggle into their heads with innocent words, undermining their loyalty and tempting them to gaze up at that sinful orb? The Moon was very beautiful, thought Tamo, and it was a shame that his brethren quite refused to acknowledge it. But he never spoke about it. In time he was glad he didn't, because, despite their differences on the lunar question, the Archive Kynikos grew accustomed to his comings and goings, and the guards, once again, felt more like a shield than a threat.
"Good day, brother," called a somewhat familiar voice, and Tamo looked. The Ranger's name was Meritala, if he recalled correctly (but he always did), one of the many exile rangers who had remained on the Academy island to map it thoroughly. Much of the preliminary scouting being now finished, Meritala had spent the last few weeks combing the rocky shore for sea-caves. "When I last drew maps in the Archives, I saw you here, in this very spot, facing the same way. Have you moved at all since?" For most species, this would be considered a 'joke'.
Tamo shook his head. "I am watching whales," he announced. Meritala's hood tilted a little. "I have been watching whales for some time," he elaborated. "Look over there," he said, pointing out far into the ocean with a gloved finger, "I see some now."
The glow of Meritala's eyes dimmed in a long and earnest squint, but he saw nothing. The whales were there, he was sure (a particularly hard-headed true believer might have attributed it to lunacy), but he didn't quite understand what he was looking for. "Pardon my ignorance, Tamo, I'm not sure I understand. What is a whale?"
"It is a particularly large breed of fish," said Tamo, still staring out at the unknown seas. "They are gill-less, with horizontal tail-fins. For this reason, I believe they must be closely connected with dolphins, as are the orcas. You can recognise them by their puffing at the water's surface. There- they are puffing now." Meritala looked carefully, and saw that it was true: large, smooth shapes were disturbing the water, blasting tiny clouds of mist as they went.
"There are many kinds," Tamo continued. "The ones you see now puff a distinctive bifurcated spray, as if blowing from two nostrils. In fact, the spray emerges from the back of the head. They are further known by their rounded body, which has a disproportionately large mouth, and black skin, patched with white. They call often under water, like songbirds. In this they are not to be confused with another singing whale, which I call the joyful kind, for its jumping and splashing. It is also common, and frequently has irregular patches of white that may cover much of the body; but they have narrower snouts, an angular build, and long, notched fins."
Meritala nodded. The knowledge was delicious to him. He could feel it whet his appetite for more. Such books, that could be written of the sea! "What of that one, Tamo? I think I see another approach."
"Ah! Well sighted, my friend. That is another kind altogether, of the thin, fast variety, which we call rorquals. I recognise it by the ridge towards the end of the tail, but it is coming towards us, and you will soon notice, if you look carefully, a pale, twisted streak on its back. I call it the pale-jawed kind, for when it rolls onto its side, you see the same kind of marking on the right side of the jaw- but not the left. It is easier to spot from underwater, or from the high towers of the Archives- You should try it, Meritala, they are quite delightful to see from above. The guards don't bite."
The ranger shrugged, shook his head a little. "Ahhh, I should rather prefer to try it from the top of some cliff or mountain. Tell me more about this whale, Tamo, my journey's not been fruitful, but I am yet to experiment with the patience of the faithful for mere sustenance. It seems curious."
"Indeed," said Tamo, "a little oddly so. The pale-jawed kind does not typically make much use of its eyes above water, but this one has looked our way twice now. They do not call so much, either, especially the females, but there is a particular one about every few months that doesn't seem to shut up."
"Perhaps it sees us," said Meritala, listening for the sound of a distant tail-slap on the sea wind. "Perhaps it is hungry for knowledge, as we are."
"Indeed. They must be quite clever."
"What a blessed animal."
"Absolutely."
this post affects literally no one lmao it's just whale indulgence
Some knowledge-eaters, eager for new knowledge, take up whale-watching. At least one of them is remarkably good at it, correctly distinguishing several types, including a familiar face.
GOD I LOVE WHALES
0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 832 whale points awarded for being an awesome whale that everyone loves. Just a really great whale. The best.
Ea Nebel is a divine gravedigger and keeper of graves. Her task is to remember the dead and where they lie, and see to it that their remains are given the dignity they deserve, even if that be as simple as a prayer or as little as a glob of spit. She may be found at any place reserved for burial, cremation, or other correct treatment of cadavers, and has a great talent for discovering lost bodies and forgotten bones.
The Maiden watches over all those who take care of the dead, and who preserve their wisdom and history. Maintaining tombs and traditions with a pure heart may earn her blessing. When the bereaved come to a grave to mourn, she remembers them, and may appear as a spirit or animal to comfort them. When tombs and cemeteries are threatened, Ea Nebel may even manifest in person to defend them.
Sometimes, where some great being or army has fallen and none remain to bury them, Ea Nebel will accept the work of gravedigging personally, and build a monument for the dead as she sees fit.
To defile a carefully laid tomb arouses cold displeasure from Ea Nebel, which she discharges with straightforward curses in proportion to the offense. She is not a cruel god, not even especially harsh, nor omniscient, but she is without remorse. Neglect of the newly dead may yield a similar response.
Ea Nebel does not concern herself with matters of the soul. If a right burial is necessary for a spirit to pass on, she may grant it, as a mercy, but her duties are to attend the body and its memory in this life, not the ones beyond. Nor is it her duty to deliver justice- but on this her heart is not nearly so hard.
Persona
Ea Nebel was born with her duties already assigned to her, and nothing on Galbar could be more important for her. She brings her limited powers and knowledge to bear fully, and rarely rests, even though she needs it. With so much of her spirit invested in her task, it's no wonder that she so quickly becomes defensive when they are taken lightly.
For all her power and purpose, Ea Nebel is plagued with (usually) well-hidden insecurities. She knows that she has been charged with a task fit for a god, and fears that under the skin she is only a mortal with extra muscle; she fears that one day her sense of purpose will flag, and this doubt brings its own sense of guilt. She compensates by allowing herself no mercy in her work. If she has yet considered that this attitude may be the very thing that will grind her down in the end, she does not speak of it, especially not to herself.
Rare moments where she lets herself set her work aside reveal that Ea Nebel is not, in her heart, sombre. She laughs, she cries, she can clap, she can kiss. She understands death and has seen more of it than any man, and wants nothing of its sorrow; her heart is just too soft, and that is why she hardens it. Being among mortals makes her acutely self-conscious of her age and their relative innocence. The (impossible) thought of abandoning her station to embrace life and joy and beauty is yet another source of deep fear for Ea Nebel to feel guilty over.
Form
Ea Nebel is but a demigoddess; the body you see is all that she has. That body is no titan, and may not even be fully immortal. Her armour is divine stygian steel manifested by her strength of conviction, as are her many weapons, of which a few are the longsword, lance, sabre, halberd, javelin, and crossbow. Beneath it, her colourless skin is wrapped around a body with only the meanest feminine grace. Her strength is divine, so she has little muscle; she rarely eats, so there is little softness to her. She is uncommonly tall, nearly six feet without boots. Her blood is black, and hot as fire; her scars are the same colour, burned into her by the supernatural heat with which they close, minutes after being opened.
Her eyes, of course, are blacker than the darkest pearls, and number four.
Divine Form
There are certain elements common to many fine graves and temples, which, brought together, are sacred to Ea Nebel. She is far more likely to speak or manifest where they are present. Were she to have a truly divine form, it would probably exist as a collection of these properties, not limited to any one particular shape, place, or time.
They are:
Darkness. Night is the best time to speak to Ea Nebel. The shade of a dense canopy or a church with closed windows will do just fine. Caves and tombs, of course, are ideal.
Light. As small as a candle or as bright as a lighthouse. Moonlight will suffice- on some nights, even starlight.
A Boundary. Something that marks the space as sacred. Walls and fences are good, as are caves. Full enclosure is good but a single marker is enough.
An Icon. An image, effigy or symbol representing Ea Nebel herself. Her depiction may vary widely from one culture to another. A drawing of her face- three eyes on the right, one on the left- may be enough.
A Watcher. A living thing through which the Maiden may speak. Usually an animal, such as a moth, an owl, or a cat, though Ea Nebel may possess mortal gravekeepers or priests directly. If nothing else is present, a moth or spider usually presents itself, though if need be, Ea Nebel can talk through one's own reflection.
A Message. Written or spoken. Prayers, songs, and written stories or aphorisms are all appropriate. They do not have to be directed at Ea Nebel specifically, but if they are clearly not meant for her, she will not come.
A Gift. Ea Nebel will accept a wide variety of offerings. It is said she enjoys flowers. In times of need, a teardrop will do.
Note well that no grave or memorial is necessary for Ea Nebel to be present.
Mamang wanders the oceans in darkness and silence, hunting, dreaming. The thoughts that cross its simple mind are few and without words. The instinct that guides its elder heart is sovereign and pure. It is a whale.
Life
Is Mamang a god? No. Mamang commands no divine principle and wears no sacred crown. It is a whale.
Will Mamang die? Yes. In time Mamang will die. It is a whale.
Perhaps Mamang will be reborn.
Perhaps Mamang is not one particular whale, but a Whale, whose name endures long after any one Mamang's bones lie buried in the deep silt.
Perhaps a whale swims as it pleases through the ocean of time itself, and is not bound, like man, by such things as years.
Perhaps Mamang is simply long-lived.
After all- It is a whale.
Can Mamang be slain? Yes. Be it by demon, by man or by god, Mamang can be slain. Its fate is guarded by nothing more than the strength of its body. Its death is lured by nothing less than meat fit for one thousand men. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be recruited? No. Mamang does not speak. To bargain with Mamang is a fool's errand and an insult to the dignity of both parties. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be blessed? Yes, Mamang can be blessed. It is a being of grace, ancient and innocent. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be cursed? Yes, Mamang can be cursed. It is a wild beast, fierce and without mercy. It is a whale.
From where did Mamang come? From the sea did Mamang come. It is a whale.
Unto where will Mamang go? To the sea will Mamang go. It is a whale.
Aye, it is a whale, now and for ever more.
Addenda
Mamang will continue swimming with no particular aim until it is killed. As it is not a god, it will neither gain nor spend any units of Vigour. Instead, its presence will influence the lives of nearby mortals simply by virtue of being a 150-tonne rorqual.
Only mass and bestial willpower stand between Mamang and the divine forces at work around it. Any enchantment that falls upon the whale by will or by accident will be both wielded and suffered to its greatest extent. As time passes, it may become something like a canvas reflecting the falling inkdrops of the celestial arts, or a sponge steeped in the grime of heavenly negligence.
Edit: Ea Nebel's armour is not her standard attire. Her costumes vary, but typically include a black jacket, boots, and hat. Some combination like this is typical.
The grey goddess took a deep breath, pressed her flat hands tightly together, fingers over her mouth, inclined her eyes towards Heaven, and exhaled. "You need," she said, very slowly, "to take a long stick, with a wide tip, dig a hole with that stick, put her inside the hole, and then- listen very closely- you need to cover her up again with the dirt that was in the hole." She stared intently into the eyes of the two elves standing in front of her, her own elf-ears stiff with trepidation.
The two elves looked at one another. The male one, Phathed, briefly looked down at the ground and scratched the back of his neck. "Does... the tip of the stick have to be wide?"
"No," said Ea Nebel, her hands still pressed together, punctuating her words with a downwards movement, a nod, and, still unaccustomed to this body's remarkable sensory apparatus and its delicate musculature, a little ear-wiggle. "The stick doesn't have to be wide. It can be a pointy stick or a really blunt stick. It doesn't matter. You just need to dig the hole." Preferably a few feet deep, but over the last minute and a half Ea Nebel had lowered her standards... appreciably. Another pause transpired.
"I prefer digging with my hands," said the female.
Ea Nebel clenched her teeth behind her lips and made no further movement.
"If the stick doesn't even matter," said Phathed, frowning a bit, "why did you tell us about it? Is there anything else about this whole thing that doesn't matter? Does... does any of it?"
"We can find you a stick if you really want," the woman said hurriedly. Her name was Tohnayl. Previously it had been Clover, but she had swapped it with another elf, who hadn't been too happy with his for some reason. She raised her hands reassuringly. "Really, we can get you all kinds of sticks. There are lots of them about. This is a forest," she said, gesturing helpfully to the canopy around her. Phathed nodded. It was clear that they would have to take things slowly with the stranger.
"I told you about the sticks because I thought you might have some tools," said Ea Nebel, rubbing her forehead, her free hand clenched tightly around the hem of this impossibly short dress. On top of covering barely her shoulders, it was just... hideously white, glittering so bright she felt she could outshine the Moon. "Tools would help you dig faster, and some sticks might help you dig without getting your hands and clothes filthy. If that doesn't matter, you can use your hands."
"We can wash in the lake," said Phathed. "It doesn't matter if we're filthy. We can rub it off, see? Our clothes all clean up nice and easy, too- hold on, wait." He tapped his lips with a finger, then raised it. "Hold on a minute. Didn't you say, right at the start, that we had to bury the body because it was 'unclean'?"
"We don't mind if it's not clean," added Tohnayl. "We weren't going to touch it anyway. And Ternyp doesn't mind either. Because she's dead. Dead people don't care about that kind of thing very much. I think."
Ea Nebel laced her fingers tightly, turning around to the Iron Boar for help. The giant hog, for its part, had selected a warm patch of sunlight, laid on its side and made itself very comfortable. It met her eyes (still four) for a moment and then closed them again, untroubled. She turned back.
"Ternyp," she began, "is very dead, and that means she's going to stink. She'll stink to high Heaven and attract all kinds of wolves and raptors that you don't want anywhere near your obelisk. She'll also bloat, and rot, and fill up with maggots, and that's going to be a horrible thing to look at for anyone who walks past her, especially any of her friends. And if you don't put her in the ground now, while she's fresh, it's going to be much harder to put her in the ground later. Because she'll stink. And- let me be very clear on this- if you handle her with your bare hands once she is rotting, you will get her juice all over you and you will start a plague. Did you get any of that? Please, please, Heaven help me please, tell me you understand."
The two elves pondered, then slowly, solemnly, began to nod. An exhausted, broken smile began to leak from Nebel's lips. Then they opened their mouths.
"Once she stinks, we won't go anywhere near her. Promise."
"No one else will go there either. She'll be too stinky."
"The raptors can have her. They'll be too busy to bother with us. Everyone needs to eat, right?"
"Ternyp didn't have any friends anyway. She was too busy climbing trees all the time."
"That's how she died, you see."
"You can bury her, if you really want."
"We won't stop you at all. Really, be our guest."
"Would you like a nice stick?"
Ea Nebel chewed on her knuckles, hot tears welling in her eyes. She turned around to lean her head against the nearest tree and let out a defeated sob. When she realised what that was probably doing to her clothes, she quickly grabbed the back hem of the dress with a fist and held it down. A second later she dispelled the elven form and garb altogether, grabbing the sides of her broad hat and pulling it down around her face.
"Just leave her for the vultures," she mumbled, walking quickly away into the woods where the Iron Boar stood waiting.
Tohnayl waved. "Bye-bye!" When Phathed, feeling rather bad for the bizarre yet clearly well-meaning apparition, moved to follow her into the woods, he saw that both she and her animal had somehow disappeared. With a sigh and a shrug, he turned to Tohnayl, who was smiling happily.
"What's a plague, anyway?"
Ea Nebel meets some elves and quickly discovers that her job is going to be a lot harder than she thought it would be.
Voligan sifted his massive hands through the devastation, spreading his senses throughout the rock and dust, searching for whatever it was that had caused such a physical explosion and a magical tearing. He knew frustratingly little. It was divine in origin. There had been an attack, or an accident. Both, maybe. It had changed the entire universe on a fundamental level, ripping something away and tearing it into pieces. Throw in the fact that Iqelis’s touch was all over the sea not too far away, and Voligan had more than enough incentive to figure out what had happened. Not that he was having any success in that.
Chucking another large piece of mountain away, Voligan continued his slow steps towards the center of the devastation. Perhaps he would find answers there. At the very least he would be able to say that he tried to find the truth of whatever had happened here. After a few minutes he stopped and placed his hands in the dust again, digging through the earth as he extended his senses. Every piece of gravel, every grain of sand, every boulder, and every speck of dust he examined thoroughly and then moved on from. Each one was useless. They all told the same story. Something of terrible divine power had destroyed them. Whatever had happened had either included so many gods that it was impossible to differentiate, or one very careful god had covered their tracks.
He had almost disregarded another piece of gravel when he noticed something odd about it. It only had the touch of two gods on it, rather than many. More importantly, it was moving. Well, attempting to move. It seemed to struggle with purpose, despite failing to move past the pit of dirt it had fallen in.
Voligan moved quickly towards the struggling gravel, scooping the earth around it and bringing the entire pile up to his eye level. With a gesture, all of the dirt and rock disappeared and left only a very small simulacrum of Homura’s standing in his palm. It was different though. Something was off. Another god's influence, perhaps.
Voligan’s head tilted in slight confusion. “You are very far from home, little one. Where are you going with such determination, in this cursed graveyard of land?”
“...-”
The little shell jerked forwards as if wracked with nausea, jelly-legged and quivering. Its head rolled, trying to direct its eyes up towards the sound of the great voice, but it could make no steady movement. It seemed barely to move under its own power at all- some queer impetus threw it around from inside, almost bulging from the skin, as if animated by the flailings of the newly blind.
“I- heard- her-” the simulacrum’s lip shook, its body thrown stiff and then slumped forward. Its eyes bulged. “-crying...”
The shell’s movements changed in character. Something pushed from inside its thorax, splitting the skin of its upper back, twitching as it emerged, black as jet. The tiny shell sagged as its stuffing drained out of it, the grisly erection sucking away the fire that had filled its skin, starting from the fingers, and the face; when it was finished, only the outer layer remained, an oily, dead splat of empty skin heaped around its base in a sagging inhuman mess of lips and limbs.
The chrysalis stood silent. Now as tall as a man, it stretched up to the sky as if embedded in Voligan’s steady hand, and throbbed slowly, irregularly, filled with unseen fire. It was an obsidian monolith- it was a figure clothed in dense black silk, veiled by its hat- it was a suit of heavy armour, crawling with scrapes- it was a seething pillar of flies- it was a tower of macabre motifs cast in an iron sarcophagus- it was a drop of ferrofluid, stretching and straining on the natural magnetism of Voligan’s body.
And there it stood, soaked in the gaze of the gods, unable to answer.
Voligan stared at the chrysalis for a few moments more, waiting to see if there would be any more changes. There were none. Its shape only melted and reformed in simple cycles, breathing. At least he had discovered something in his trip here, though what he was not sure of yet. He looked over in the direction that the shell had been heading, musing aloud to himself.
“Hmm. Crying is more than I have to go off of, little Shell. Let's go see whose crying you heard, and perhaps you will come out by the time we arrive.”
He began walking in the direction the shell had been attempting to go to, talking aloud to the chrysalis. “The flies and general dark choices of your shell tell me that Iqelis had something to do with your creations, though if it was intentional or accidental, I am not sure. The iron and fire could be Astus’ touch, though I doubt he has left his workshop since he had a place to put one. One could argue that the iron and ferrofluid were my influence, but I would hope that I’d remember creating you. Especially in this devastation.
“But nonetheless, there are two gods who took part in your creation, willingly or not. We will have to find the other one later, as it is important to know where one is from. You do not need to meet Iqelis, though I suspect he will shove his way into your matters. He is self important like that. If you’re lucky, you will only ever hear of the Monarch and not meet him. Our creator, and ruler, is quick to temper and strikes me as harsh. Not someone you want to be interacting with regularly.“
Voligan continued like this, telling the chrysalis of the gods, goddesses, and the various goings on that he knew about until he noticed it’s shifting form begin to change again.
Before it had time to settle into any one shape, however, a dim blur swept by at the edge of his vision. A loosely measured fraction of a moment later, a large rough-hewn stone stood suspended on empty air by his arm, held aloft by a palpable sense of intimidation more than by any concrete force. On top of it squatted the all too familiar crystalline figure of Iqelis, surrounded by a throng of agitated flies. The god's eye was fixed on the shifting cocoon so intently that he appeared oblivious to the titanic Earthheart's presence altogether.
"The Flow brings us together once more," he greeted, his gaze unmoving even as one arm gestured widely around, "A strange lodestone you have there. Did you pry it out from under one of these rocks?"
Voligan’s fingers closed around the chrysalis, blocking it entirely from view. He shifted so that his body was mostly between Iqelis and the chrysalis.
“I found it wandering this devastation. Searching for someone’s crying. You wouldn’t have anything to do with this destruction, would you? Perhaps you found another god that ‘went against the Flow’. Though I must admit, blowing up an entire peninsula doesn’t strike me as something you would do.” He glanced over his shoulder back towards the Tlacan sea and its floating mountains. “Quietly poisoning an entire sea and then floating mountains over it seems more within your preferences. Anything is possible, I suppose. Especially if your victim wasn’t already beaten down and caught off guard.”
The light in Iqelis' eye flared up with the wrathful glow of a dying star at the mention of his exploits over the great water.
"For that," he snapped with uncharacteristic vitriol as he pointed almost accusingly in the Tlacan's direction, "You have to thank the noxious meddling of our dear sister of the moon. She would sooner tear up the entire Galbar than let me work without her verminous webs sapping my every effort."
He quieted down somewhat, the light in his eye fading to a less scorching intensity, before continuing. "And it is her, I suspect, that wrought this ruin around us, surely to crush some other wretch that had displeased her. I have been seeking their name, as well as something that walks and should not." He did not budge, but a few flies sat down on Voligan's closed hand.
From between those azoic fingers, inaudible to any mortal ear, came the finest, faintest little voice: “Her name was Ashevelen.”
Voligan let out a deep sigh, foregoing his reply to Iqelis as he uncurled his fingers and raised the chrysalis back to eye height. “I see you’ve found your voice, little Shell. You say her name was Ashevelen. Do you mean Ashevelen, the goddess of Luck? And do you know where Ashevelen’s resting place is?”
The chrysalis continued to morph in silence. For a few seconds, the stone-god appeared to have spoken to nothing. But the voice within only hesitated so long. “I think so. She was... the little lady, who rests between the mountains now. I just...” Another soft pause. “...can’t see.”
”It speaks.” Whatever Iqelis’ interest in the victim of the world-quaking rampage had been, it had evaporated in a moment under the unexpected rejoinder. His words were harsh and cutting, not charged with the same spite of when he had spoken of Yudaiel, but laced with a wholly new shade of menace. ”And it knows the annals of the dead better than us. Just as I feared, it has become much more than it ought to be.”
Voligan ignored Iqelis’s ramblings, bringing the chrysalis closer to his body as he began walking once more. “Well little Shell, we will continue heading in the direction that you were attempting to head before I found you. That might lead us to these mountains that Ashevelen is laying in. If not, I’m sure you’ll be able to guide us when you come out and can properly see.” He turned to look at Iqelis. “You are welcome to come along. I imagine you are as curious as I am as to where the final resting place of our sister lay.” The words, as was Voligan’s habit, were spoken calmly. No malice, no excitement, just an unwavering rumble that remained unperturbed in the face of Iqelis’s venom. The other god drifted along in silence on his rock.
No more than two of the Earthheart’s great footfalls had dented the dust before the hidden voice chimed in, once again, from its silk-iron-charcoal cocoon. “You won’t find her this way. I… was dizzy…” The speaker was soft, distinctly human, muffled but perhaps female, and underlaid by a faint crackling buzz that came neither from the cocoon nor from Iqelis. “I’m sorry… Voligan. I-” Another violent twitch shook the structure from within as it morphed from whirring scarabs back to iron-oil, and the voice seemed to break. “I’m stuck.”
”Some things should not be uncovered,” the One God thrummed without looking.
“Hmm. We can’t have you being stuck if you are our guide to Ashevelen’s resting place.” Voligan mused. “We’ll have to rectify that.” He gently tapped on the chrysalis until a crack appeared along the top of it, careful not to bring too much force down onto the chrysalis. A strong white light shone through, flickering like a candle made of snow.
“Come along, little Shell. The world awaits your arrival, and we need you to give our sister proper rest.”
The sarcophagus shuddered. Two sets of almost human fingers emerged from the top of the crack, curled outwards to grip the crystal surface, and tore the peak of the chrysalis wide. The hair it revealed was filthy, soaked in fly ichor and tar. The crack widened, exposing the light that shone from a twisting mass of clay simulacrum-flesh that boiled like bitumen.
One eye- one white, blazing eye of crystal fire inherited wholesale from the Lord of the Flies. It could not survive. Drowned in mortality, the eye flickered, dividing again and again into twin globules of white that crawled outwards across the face before fusing or sinking or shattering into smaller spheroids as the white fire flared once more, filling the wet ash of the Shell with dozens of rejected imitations created and resorbed in moments. The grey skin churned tirelessly, drawn like water to settle into its natural human shape, only to be boiled away by those eyes. Again and again the one-eye of the One God refused to be subsumed into the two-eyes of Man.
But this little spark was not the Eye, and this one little god was not the One God.
The face raised itself up to the imperial Sun, uncovering the black lips below, its hair falling wetly away to reveal the profile of a face so like its mother. There, under the dry light of Heaven, the boiling slowed, and the face hardened. The white crystal burned itself off, dulled by the brighter light, and tarnished to grey-brown, then, slowly, to black. The eye continued to bifurcate as it cooled, once, unevenly, then again, the larger sphere yielding three more- and there it settled, divided into four, unable to reform, locked in place.
The grey fingers holding open the chrysalis wavered, and the obsidian skin forced itself shut, again, sealing tightly. From within, pounding- then a scream.
“Hurrghh- aah- AAAAAHH!”
The chrysalis tore open, revealing empty air. A pale white body staggered somewhere on Voligan’s raised forearm, dripping odious fluids, cradling her head. It sealed itself, and she was nowhere to be found in the puddle- until there she was, crouching on the Earthheart’s titanic shoulder, rocking back and forth with her face in her arms. The broken sarcophagus melted, only to surge, leaping upon its escaped contents in an inky streak, knocking her back and staggering almost off Voligan’s shoulder as it wrapped itself around her, swathing her in black, unable to let go.
And there, at last, she lay, clothed now in a veil of carcass-flies, and now in a long coat and boots of finest black, holding in limp fingers a wide-brimmed hat as her uncovered hair dripped onto the living stone.
Voligan’s voice rumbled, pleased that she had been able to free herself. “Well,The flies, glowing eye, and human form answers the question of who helped make you. Welcome to Galbar, our canvas. What is your name, little Shell?”
While he waited for the newly created demi-god to gather herself, he turned his attention towards Iqelis, turning so that the shoulder with the little Shell was away from the god of Doom. “I’m going to assume that Homura came by and gave you some of her humans. Does she know what you and her have created? Or is it a surprise to the both of you, the path that the Flow has taken?”
”She knew no more than I did when she left this place,” Iqelis, who had been following the newborn with a grimly intent gaze until she disappeared behind Voligan’s mountainous bulk, craned his head forward in an absent nod, a faint bitter sheen in his voice. ”And had I foreseen that this might happen, I would have cut its germ in the bud while it was in my hands.”
He raised his eye to look into the stony visage that towered over him, its glow curious, prying. ”Tell me, brother, what would you do if in a thoughtless moment you sank all the lands you had raised back into the sea, and then plunged its bed so far into the deeps that no scrap of earth might ever see the light of day again?”
“I would raise new lands, or recover the old ones. It wouldn’t be difficult, since that is why the Monarch created me. I have control over all the lands on Galbar, just as you have control over all the ends of Galbar.” Voligan replied, casual certainty filling his rumble. “I do not know why you wish to destroy her. She is the only thing guiding us towards Ashevelen’s resting place. Unless you’d rather wander aimlessly through these shattered plains for who knows how long.”
”Ashevelen is a thing of the past,” Iqelis waved a hand dismissively, startling a few flies, ”Now that I know who has gone out the mouth of the river, I have no more need to dredge out her memory. She, however…” He jabbed a finger towards the stone-god’s far shoulder.
”Do you remember when, over the body of that living mistake, I named myself the attendant of the inevitable?” He pensively looked ahead again. ”I serve the law of the one truth, which says that nothing can be endless. None can overcome it, but even to attempt that, to try and bestow eternity on a shard of existence, is sacrilege. That hatchling has all the markings of what passes for an immortal, and it was I who made her so. I have transgressed in the gravest way against my own highest purpose, and the only expiation is her doom.”
“I’m sorry.” The new voice, still backed by that alien drone, was still as soft as it had been a minute ago. The newborn godlet had sat up with her face buried in her knees and her arms wrapped around them, darkened by her hat, facing outwards and away from her divine seniors.
“You have nothing to apologize for, little Shell.” Voligan reassured, not taking his eyes off of Iqelis. “If you have no desire to find Ashevelen, you may leave then. I intend to find our sister and mark her burial place. It is a dark thing, to lose three gods so soon after their creation.” Walls of metal rose from his shoulder and surrounded the godlet, protecting her, and muffling the words he spoke to Iqelis.
“Before you go, I have a question. You say you are the servant of the one truth. That you ensure nothing is endless. Does that mean, brother, that you intend to actively ensure the ends of the Monarch, yourself, and the rest of us? If yes, then that is a dangerous game to play, especially with our ruler. You will have made enemies of everyone, and only given Yudaiel allies in the quarrel you two have. I would request that you leave now, lest I have to fight a second god before the sun has even set.” He turned to fully face Iqelis, still calm and relaxed. “If no, then I see no reason to bring doom upon the little Shell. We will all face our doom in the end, and there is no need to force what will happen naturally.”
"That is the one truth, brother," the One-Eye spoke tonelessly, his voice the sussurrant sliding of a mirror over ice. His gaze had dimmed, barely brighter than the mere refraction of the sunlight above. "Things must run their course before they meet their end, that is not for me to change. Aletheseus was an anomaly, opposition to the highest law in the flesh. There is no other divine fate that I must sweep along by my own hand," he stopped, staring into the jagged horizon for a moment, as flies hummed around him, "Besides one that was thrust into the Flow by that same hand, in defiance of its duty. She is sinless, and yet…"
There was a long spell of silence and buzzing, before Iqelis turned to meet the larger god's eyes again.
"Let me see her, Voligan." His words could barely be distinguished from the wind tearing itself as it blew over stone spikes and broken gulches, a low, hollow, almost lifeless hiss.
“There’s no need for that,” said the woman who stood there, unbound by such simple walls as iron, facing the One Eye with four as black as pearls. Her stance was tall. Her coat whipped in the alpine wind, spun over grey skin the shade of boiling water, over bones as white as marble. The air inside her fizzed with alien power, and black fire was her heart. “Here I am- Father.”
Iqelis slowly rose from his crouch, crystalline joints grinding and crackling as he drew himself up to his full height. Against the sun, he was a gaunt, uneven shadow, looming over the godling like the echo of a troubling dream despite the distance between them. Then his hands, which had been resting by his sides, snapped up, manifold and faster than the eye could follow.
He was before her, a hand's length away, before the fragment of stone his foot had dislodged in leaping away had the time to fall the minuscule span below it. His arms were a canopy of skeletal branches around them, outside of which everything, from the flies to the wind to the distant extremity of Voligan's limb, floated in an invisible sea, sluggishly forcing its way with agonizing effort.
"Swear it," came the urgent, almost imploring whisper of fine quartz breaking far away in the night, "Swear that when the day comes, you will not flee from the end, that you will not refuse what you will know was meant to be. Swear it," the quartz shattered into a thousand tinkling shards, "my child."
“I’m not afraid,” said her lips the shade of bitumen. Even her hat lay in mid-air, unable to fall before she had spoken her vow. “I knew what was coming from the moment I heard your voice. I swear it, father. It is no burden.”
The one eye lost its dimness and blazed from within, blindingly white, and it was gone. After the passing of its glare, the silent ocean was abruptly no more, and the wind howled and the flies buzzed and the pebbles fell. The day itself seemed brighter, as if a shadow had been washed away that no one had noticed while it had been there, but all perceived keenly in its aftermath.
Iqelis was crouching on his rock again, eye fixed on what was, beyond anyone's doubt now, his daughter.
"The stain I take on my hands may never be washed," he crackled somberly, "Make it worth, somehow. I will ask no more."
The demigoddess picked up her fallen hat. “I will deliver no less,” she said. She shivered, slightly, as if the light of Heaven were cooler than the haze which had passed. “I can already hear bones clattering from every corner of the world. They weren’t like me. They didn’t remember that they would die.”
“Then it is settled.” Voligan spoke into the silence, leisurely dropping the massive boulders he had raised into the sky and his skin around the demigoddess descending from its sharpened form. “I am going to find the resting place of Ashevelen. Little Shell, I request your help in finding it. Iqelis, you are welcome to come along. If not, I hope our next encounter is less tense.”
The ground far below trembled faintly as a would-be bludgeon returned to its place in the peaceful earth. The demigoddess rested a hand on a retracting outcrop, staring back up at the titanic face shadowing her, smiling a small smile. “I’m sorry, uncle. I didn’t mean to worry you.” She planted a boot firmly against his skin, catching something in the arch of it: the cocking-stirrup of a large arbalest, which she cranked with a short grunt. She raised it to her shoulders and loosed a bolt, scratching a thin line of black far across the sky.
“That way.”
Voligan followed the black streak, ambling along at a gentle pace. “You have nothing to apologize for, little Shell. It is not your fault you were created.” A moment passed in silence before he spoke again. “What do you call yourself, child of Doom? I can’t imagine little Shell is your name.”
“I call myself Ea Nebel,” said the woman, her gaze fixed far on the horizon. “A god for the grave. I don’t have a name yet.”
“Is Ea Nebel not your name?”
“No matter who I am, I would still be Ea Nebel,” said Ea Nebel. “The rest… I think that might take some more time.”
”And time you shall have,” Iqelis mused, drifting along on his rock.
“Fair enough, Little Shell.”
They soon came to where the black contrail ended, gently resting in the center of a massive crater that was taller than Voligan himself. The walls of the crater were covered in glittering blood red diamonds that each radiated a small piece of divine power. Voligan knelt and gathered a handful of the gems into his hand, bringing them closer for all to see. “Hmm. It would seem that Ashevelen didn’t go without leaving her last mark upon the world. Luck is gone, but her presence is not.”
“It was a cruel fate,” said Ea Nebel, staring at the misshapen core of rock at its centre. It might not have been easy to spot, but from this close, even she could recognise the remains of the twin hammers that had crushed her in a stolen memory. “It’s over now. Nothing left but an echo.”
”It was what it had to be,” came the crackle from above. Some flies set down on the gemstones, rubbing their forelegs and marvelling at the absence of carrion in a place of death. ”Fate is never cruel, though those who enact it may be.”
Ea Nebel tightened her mouth, slightly, remembering the child’s yell that had sounded from underneath those rocks mere days ago. Cruel, indeed.
Voligan looked over towards her, ignoring Iqelis’s dramatic ramblings. She was now somewhere about his feet, though she had neither climbed nor fallen. “I am going to make a mountain range to both mark her grave and help this battered land heal. Do you have any ideas or requests about marking Ashevelen’s resting place?”
A voice fizzed up at him. “I think we should cast the dice, and let them land as they will,” said Ea Nebel, rolling a tiny red diamond back and forth between her fingertips. “It’s sad to see a bright heart stilled. But the little lady wouldn’t have wanted us to cry too long. Let fortune have its last play.” She looked up to Voligan from his shoulder. “There will be people here, one day. They should have a chance to get lost, or be found.”
“Hmm. Very well.” Voligan created a small plateau that mimicked the crater with a pile of blood diamonds on them. “Roll your dice, and we shall see how they create fortune’s refuge.”
She nodded, taking up a chunk of chalk that lay in the stone altar and, with a few strokes, dividing a flat part of it into larger and smaller sections, marking each one with a little sign. Taking the diamonds into her hat, she shook them briefly, inclined her eyes to the Sun, and let them fall among the symbols. “In the north region… Six caves. Eleven arches. Nine lakes… but only one valley. Two waterfalls. Thirteen peaks, one double. A scarp. A tor.” She counted all the fallen diamonds, then scooped them up again. “In the western region...”
The plateau rose and crumbled as she counted its landforms, one by one, modelling her words. It was crowded, chaotic, and, by the time she was finished, densely packed with more shapes than she could easily count. Every hidden corner of the land would have its own hideaways, wonders, and perils, carved in rock and snow and river-gravel. A wild garden it was, rich in sights for the bold fools who would one day dare to map it.
Voligan raised his hands and as he shaped the area around and in the crater as the rolled dice dictated, the blood diamonds sinking into the earth and across the destroyed land. Voligan continued to spread his fingers and send more mountains growing across the horizon, creating a mountain range similar to that of the Bones of Fortitude. “The blood diamonds would only bring greed and conflict here. She would not have wanted that.”
Ea Nebel nodded, watching the horizon far as Galbar creaked and rumbled and shaped itself all around her. “It is done.” A chorus of flies sang its assent.
Voligan nodded, pleased with what they had done. It wouldn’t make the crime go away, but it would help the world heal from it.
“Hmm. It is. And I believe we have answered our questions and settled disputes. I must go back to what I was doing before her death. Iqelis, I hope that our next meeting involves less death than the other two. Good luck in your endeavours.” He turned his attention to Ea Nebel. “I imagine you have things you wish to do as well, little Shell. Do you want me to drop you off anywhere before we go our separate ways? Or would you prefer to stay here for a little while?”
“I need to find my feet.” Ea Nebel raised a hand to the light, watching red sunlight sparkle away from the tiny diamond set into a grey-iron ring on her finger. “I need time to pace every corner of Galbar, so I will know it. I can find my way.”
A distant crash joined the rumbling of the final ground-shifts as Iqelis' rock went plummeting down, no longer compelled by incorporeal threats. The god landed on the Earthheart's mighty shoulder, close by the younger divine, this time with no distortions of time's flow to hasten him along.
"Sometimes, you will be the one who must deliver something to its end."
One of his hands took hold of another's finger and wrenched, snapping it off with a dry crack. Severed and struck with a deeper rigor than was even usual for its glossy skin, it looked like a short, recurve obsidian blade more than anything else. Iqelis tapped its base, and a length of porous grey stone slid out of it, as though it had impossibly always been inside it.
"I am sure you will know when to use this." He tossed the curved dagger to Ea Nebel, holding an intact hand outsplayed behind it to slow its flight to a leisurely crawl.
The godling raised a soft, pale hand, allowing the hilt of the glass knife to settle between her fingers as lightly as a feather. Ea Nebel wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing her fist as she turned it around; they oozed with tar as the darkened blade reflected across the featureless surface of her three right eyes. When she loosened her hold, a rubber coat had bonded to the scoria. She saw the light of Iqelis’s eye glint in its surface.
“Without flinching,” she murmured, and meant it. She looked up again, the white fire now glinting on her own tarnished eyes, where before they had been dull. “I… I will honour you, father.”
“Hmm. One should never walk the earth without companionship, even if she does have weapons for protection.” Voligan leaned down and touched a finger to the earth, pulling a large porcine figure crafted from hematite to the surface. A small moment of concentration and he filled it with life, igniting the eye holes with a soft green glow. It’s shoulders matched Ea Nebel’s own and it looked over at her expectantly.
“They will be your companion as you pace through the world and lay to rest those who require it.”
Her eyebrows rose. Ea Nebel tilted her head, took a hesitant step towards the sculpture, watched the green fire within follow her, its sleek ferrous body unmoving. She lifted her hand, then lay it on the figure’s back. For a second it was cool- then she recoiled, the glossy mineral body burning a dull incandescent red, the boar’s back licked by a mane of green fire as it forged itself into life. The hematite settled swiftly into a hard skin of iron and rust, and grey metal dust spiked into fierce bristles along its back as if clumped on a magnet; Rippled crucible steel were the tusks that sprouted from its maw, and glossy were its hematite eyes. It dipped its head as it examined her, breathing and pawing the earth, embers of green fire flying from its footprints.
The godling grabbed its tusk, and the boar allowed her to pull its mouth slightly apart before shaking her off, a single heave of its neck throwing her almost to the ground- and she laughed. “I love it!” The beast grunted dismissively as she took a nearby spike of Voligan’s skin between her hands and kissed the stone. “I will call it the Iron Boar. Thank you, uncle.”
“Hmm. There is no need to thank me. It will help you find your way and aid you in your purpose.” Voligan rumbled, pleased with himself. “But now I must take my leave. Unless you wish to come to Aletheseus’s gravesite as well, you will have to hop off my shoulder.”
"I have seen enough of that one," Iqelis gave a macabre chuckle to the notes of snapping bones, "Farewell, brother."
He took a stride forward and lay a cold, hard hand on Ea Nebel's shoulder with a low "Keep afloat, daughter," before vaulting off the titanic god and vanishing beyond the crater's embellished edge in a gleaming blur.
Ea Nebel watched the empty space where the One God had been. Her hand was raised slightly, but he was already gone. She clenched it briefly, but still waved, a little, to the empty space. “Goodbye...”
The hog grunted again. It was time for her to depart.
“Farewell, uncle,” said Ea Nebel. “I will always remember you, as long as there is earth beneath my feet.”
“Hmm. I would hope we’d meet again so that you don’t need to only remember me. If you ever want my assistance, simply call out. I’m always listening.”
She smiled. “I will.” Ea Nebel hauled herself onto the back of the hog, who accepted her without a shrug, and cast out her arm to the many mountains of Serendipity’s End. “Fly!” The stones did not yield to her command, but she flexed her grip around her father’s fingernail, and they quickly fell in line. The hog’s feet clattered against stone after stone, the great weight of it tilting the platforms one by one as the goddess descended, holding firmly to her hat.
They struck the ground in a cloud of dust, and then there was no sight of her.
In a little gulch, under a tree above a pool filled with the brightest of blue water, behind a garden maze of stones that stood and leaned and tumbled about in a thousand sheltered sanctuaries that the sun would not reach at its highest and hottest, there stood a little buff stone. It had fallen from a sprouting mountain and been washed clean by a waterfall, and at the end of its journey it lay here, sleeping in a sunbeam, warm as a laugh.
That stone beckoned the lost, the lucky, the castaways of fate, calling them to hide among the many hollows of its home, and find their way out again. They would all find their way out, in time- maybe not home, for the spell on the stone made few promises, but always somewhere with a hint of good fortunes, or at least exciting ones.
Luck is gone, read the woman in the veil, her eyes resting on the sacred symbols written in the rock. But her blessings remain.
She looked around one last time at her uncle’s work, the seen and unseen magic of a grave for a goddess they had never known. For a moment she thought she saw something sparkle at the bottom of the pool. Then she sighed, lifted her gaze, and was gone.
-Voligan is ineffectively searching through the devastated ruins where Yudaiel whacked Ashevelen, looking for the source of all this destruction when he comes across the very small simulacrum that Iqelis lost. He asked it what it was doing, and it said ‘I heard her crying’ then turned into a chrysalis.
-It seemed to be heading in a specific direction, and he had nothing better to go off of, so he started heading in the same direction with it in tow. He idly chatted to it while walking along, filling it in on some divine goings-on. The cocoon itself is mute.
-Iqelis shows up and asks him where he found it. Immediately protective, since he knows how stabby Iqelis can be, Voligan gives a brief answer before distracting Iqelis by bringing up Yudaiel. It works like a charm and before Voligan can continue, the Chrysalis speaks and names Ashevelen as the one slain here.
-Iqelis immediately gets unnerved because he’ll have to pay child support because he fears he might have created an immortal (with Homura), which is anathema to his purpose. Voligan, meanwhile, asks for information and helps the demigod out of the chrysalis shell.
-Iqelis states that his purpose is to ensure the end of all things, and that he has created an immortal. Voligan uses this to ask whether or not Iqelis intends to actively kill more gods, not-so-subtly hinting that if the answer is yes the other gods will gang up with Yudaiel and kill Iqelis. The answer is fortunately no.
-Iqelis demands to see his daughter, as Voligan is shielding her, and she comes out to face him. They have a discussion where she swears she won’t try to escape her fated end and he won’t try to kill her then and there. Voligan drops the massive boulders he had picked up, and backs away from fighting Iqelis.
-Iqelis’s daughter points the way towards Ashevelen’s resting place, and on the journey there reveals that her name is, probably, Ea Nebel.
-She and Voligan chat briefly about Ashevelen’s fate and what should be done to mark her place, before deciding to make the Mountain Range Serendipity’s End and the randomly-generated Monument Fortune’s Refuge. While doing this, he spreads the last remnant of Ashevelen’s power Blood Diamonds far away and across the land, to minimize greed and conflict in Fortune’s Refuge.
-Their work here done, Voligan offers to keep ferrying Ea Nebel around, but she wants to wander. As a parting gift, and perhaps a reminder of her job, Iqelis snaps off one of his fingers to make an enchanted obsidian knife for her. She promises to use it.
-Voligan, as a parting gift alone, creates an extraordinary pig-like creature that will serve as Ea Nebel’s companion and guardian. She very creatively names it The Iron Boar (Mk. III copyright license pending). Ea is delighted, the Boar less so.
-Voligan tells Ea that if she ever wants help to just call out to him. She then hops on The Iron Boar and rides off into the mountains.
"The Flow brings us together once more," he greeted, his gaze unmoving even as one arm gestured widely around, "A strange lodestone you have there. Did you pry it out from under one of these rocks?"
Voligan’s fingers closed around the chrysalis, squishing it. “Perhaps.”
The other god drifted along in silence on his rock, sipping his latte.
No more than two of the Earthheart’s great footfalls had dented the dust before the hidden voice chimed in, once again, from its silk-iron-charcoal cocoon. “Uh, hey, i'm really sorry, but I'm kinda stuck in this-'”
”Good,” the One God thrummed without looking up from his phone.
The broken sarcophagus melted, only to surge, leaping upon its escaped contents in an inky streak, knocking her up and off of Voligan’s shoulder.
“Shit.” said Voligan.
“I imagine you have things you wish to do as well, little Shell. Do you want me to drop you off anywhere before we go our separate ways? Or would you prefer to stay here for a little while?”
“CAN WE GO TO DISNEYLAND PLEAASE MY DAD DOESN’T TAKE ME ANYWHERE”
“Well, it is the most magical place in the world.” And off they went. It was awesome.
The godling raised a soft, pale hand, allowing the hilt of the glass knife to settle between her fingers as lightly as a feather. She wrapped her hands around it, squeezing the hilt. “omg my hand went numb ufcckkfuf-”
-Ashevelen’s death resulted in Blood Diamonds being created. Small red diamonds that, when used by mortals, grant the user a euphoric sense of joy and happiness and magical powers that don’t rely on the Tree and are based on the personality of the user. (2 vigor from Ashevelen before she died.)
-Voligan spends 2 Vigor to make the mountain range Serendipity’s End. A large mountain range marking the area that Ashevelen died in.
-Volgian spends another 2 vigor making the Monument Fortune’s Refuge. A magical area that draws the unlucky, the despondent, and those who need help and safety. It is a magical maze that ensures that no one ever needs anything in it, and that finding your way in with hostile intentions is impossible without divine aid. Those who wish to can leave, exiting anywhere in the world. It is a place where people can be lost or found, as they wish. At its center is the spot where Ashevelen died, marked by a simple headstone that reads ’Luck is gone. But her blessings remain.’
-Voligan spends 1 Vigor (total of two, but halved due to the earth aspect) to make The Iron Boar an extraordinary creature that serves as Ea Nebel’s companion and guardian. 3 Remaining Vigor at the end of this post.
-Iqelis spends 2 Vigor (discounted from 4 by the Doom aspect) to make a dagger that sends those it strikes to their premature end, via burning through their remaining lifespan in a moment. It will also hasten the decay of inanimate objects. -This brings him down to a total of 2 at the end of the post.
Coasts, rocks, silt and sand. Fish and kelp and coral, and the free voices of its distant kin. At last- shallow seas again.
The whale shoved its snout into the mud.
Clouds of dust and silt kicked up around its face. The young whale filled its mouth with free-floating dirt and expelled silt and water through its bristles, swallowing a mouthful of shrimp and grit. This was not a dignified way for an animal of its great, sleek size to feed. It was not as restful as skimming the rich green surface as it travelled, nor as thrilling as the lunge of the herring-hunt. It only filled the belly a little in the absence of more nourishing prey.
The whale's mouth had bled profusely in the hours and days after the blast. In the time it took to recover, more fortunate whales had scooped up all the fish and fry that remained along the shore before the dust-darkened sky had choked out the green that sustained their forage. Whole shoals of the littler fish had been struck and slain outright by the waterborne sound, left to drift away, sink and rot in the claws of carrion-crabs. Now the sea was to taste only of dust.
(Little did the whale know that the wrath of the Eye had lifted up ores rich in the salt of the gods, and cast that powder far and wide into the hungry sea. There it would leaven the waves, and when the winds and the currents at last cleared of dust, there would reign twelve years of great plenty on the coast of Termina, in which many calves would wean. Would that the whale had known of such things!)
The whale had learned of such mudlarking by observing, in its hunger, a distant cousin; a hook-nosed and pockmarked cow whale encrusted with barnacles and rather smaller than itself, but content to observe and call curtly as the sleek and desperate youngster fumbled its way around the technique.
In time the blood cleared from its mouth and it learned to swim straight with its crippled hearing. The shock also did fade, but the whale no longer felt young. It had seen much that was strange and cold and harsh, and that it could not forget; the clean sweet joy of its early years was not to return in those waters. Its gut and innards now crawled with worms, blown on a foul wind into the mud of the injured sea, and horked down a hungry throat. An army of lice picked and carved at its delicate skin, around its eyes and in the pleats of its throat, clinging on with legs like fishhooks. The whale knew nothing of worms or lice, of course, but it felt the keen sharp edge of its strength dulled and sapped ever so faintly from its weathered body, and so it departed that place, its hunger half-sated, for the more peaceful shore of its birth.
VI
The whale passed familiar isles, and reunited with kin it had known; the sea grew cold and abundant, the fish ever larger. The path it had taken would in time grow, and come to be a common one in the forthcoming decade of prosperity. South once to mate, again to give birth in the warmth of the sun, and north to enjoy the long summers granted by the Shepherd between the dark months of his winter reign.
It regained its lost weight, and indeed returned far larger than when it had departed, almost as long now as the strong and lonesome bulls that sang loud through the blue from afar, warding their mates. No close company, then, was found for the whale; the mothers were quite occupied with their calves, while its uncles had no patience for bachelors, and the heifers swam under their wing. It was enough to hear the occasional beat of their voices, and far better so than the long, low melody of the most distant ice, where swam the still larger, still lonelier whales of the furthest north.
And yet the whale longed for touch. The chill of the north and the sweet taste of meltwater reminded it of its mother, whose milk had ever nurtured him, whose great flank had brought comfort amid the distant chittering of orcas, that wandering calfhood nightmare whose song was the wolf-whine of death. There was no she-whale here who would give it warmth, for it had yet to win such favour. Its flecked and pockmarked senior had remained in the south. The black, bow-headed songsters of the north shore were ever glad to call to it with their whistles and melodies, but their ways were their own, and they could not match pace with the rorqual.
So the whale nudged against driftwood, rubbing its throat and belly against clean gravel, prodding skates and flounders and sleepsharks and whatever else it found in the blue. It gained such a habit of poking about between feeding that it nearly breached in pure shock when something finally poked back.
It was a chunk of glacier-ice, washed down a fjord and polished glass-smooth by the waves. The whale rubbed it with its fin and listened closely with its good ear, but it could not see any trace of what was touching its skin, even as it dragged curious tendrils across the whale's face and around its eye, tracing the line of the whale's closed lips as if with a fingertip. When it opened its mouth it soon felt something tickle the bristle-brush of its baleen, wriggling between the plates with animal curiosity, stroking the fibres up and down. The whale circled, slowly, watching the iceberg rotate in unison.
They explored one another in total silence.
As the claws of the icy creature traced the pleats of the whale's throat, it relaxed, and felt something release like a shackle briefly lightened. The ice-being noticed, and repeated the gesture in another pleat, and another, harder this time. The whale rolled over onto its back, and the ice-being continued with a mussel-shell fingernail.
At last- true relief. The ice-being carved off hundreds of lice at a stroke, casting them down helpless into the silt to be snapped up by cod. The chill against its skin reminded the whale of how things had been, long ago, in the cold, clean waters of its youth.
When at last the whale grew hungry and the ice-being too warm to continue, they departed, each to seek their own form of sustenance. Come autumn they would separate further still, seeking and fleeing the chill of the Shepherd. By winter they would be far gone, each to breed among its own kind. In spring they would remember, little wordless memories of touch, a poem of fingertips to be written anew in the clean and gentle hearts of giants.
And in the summer, once again, they would find each other.
Mamang continues to deal with the fallout of the blast, then heads back to the Giantlands.
It encounters a Nisshiniek, and they examine one another. The Nisshi learns that it can help clean the whale of recently-created parasites, and doesn't seem to mind, since these species were made by an unknown god in an unknown land. This interaction will probably spread and repeat in future years, as the Nisshiniek and whale territories overlap nicely in the summer season.
Man, this chapter is just maximum whaleposting. Mucho texto about types of whale, their movement and behaviour. I do not apologise.
Lord Zee
MarshalSolgriev
urukhai
Alby47
Crispy Octopus
