by Feint » 06/23/2016 6:31 PM
((Is that Cloud down there? He's cute! &&& People always assume everyone is male in video games and female on pet sites. I'm a guy myself and I even do it. Dx Something in the water, I guess. & holy mother of god I have the most painful hiccups right now.))
"Great, thanks," Cahir said, relieved. He was not a sea creature, he was a shoreline one. His kind clung to rocky cliffs and dove as needed for food. Coming out to the island in of itself was much too great a journey for his squat little body, and he only did it for hunger's sake. He was apprehensively curious about how well he would fare going forward, but it wasn't like he could just head back.
Days passed, and he surprised himself with how sturdy he was turning out to be.
"Well..." Cahir started hesitantly, scaly brow raised. It was a bit of a sudden, dark change in direction, conversationally. "It... well, it's - hm." He scratched the back of his head. "It's not a common thing that happens, usually," he said, "But it's becoming more frequent. Almost every year."
"We've always known of the sea goddess's unpredictable rage and the devastation it causes," he said, "But never was her temper aimed at her own children. Her wrath was always directed at the land. Land's her eternal nemesis," he explained. "We were used to that, we expected that. What we never saw coming was for her waters to turn red like blood and curse us with death. Anyone that touched the red tide died, it was nothing like the plastic. You didn't even need to ingest it. Just being near it was fatal."
"Someone we once dismissed as crazy - they kept saying clay was the child of land and sea. We thought, 'That doesn't make any sense. They're like ice and fire, there can be no joining of the two. Even sand isn't partially water and it's surrounded by it. Land and sea repel each other.' But he was right, he covered himself in clay and swam through the tide, over and over, spreading clay evenly through it - and it dissipated. Her mother's love restored her to her senses. The noble fool, though, he died."
"We didn't really want to believe it, but I guess we displeased her for her to attack us like that. Only thing we can figure is that it's the garbage. We haven't been cleaning it up, we've been ignoring it," he said sadly.
My wraiths, though not wraiths then, wandered deep into the heart of the polar storm. They tried to fight sleep, naive to the inevitability of their fate. When they awoke, they saw before them my own self, so much a part of the ice and cold they almost fail to see me. I wear a crown of the coldest, sturdiest ice, and my claws and fur have coated themselves in it.
I stand aloof to the cold, for I have lived in it so long, been a part of it so long, it no longer concerns me.
My wraiths are cursed to wander the polar tundra, eternally freezing, following mortal explorers and trying to warn them with their presence that they should not travel onward, should not make the same mistake. But there will always be those who persist in pressing on, never knowing what they are doomed to face, or destined to suffer.