ꙮ Some distance - not far - from Ripple, the dwellings and warehouses and various and sundry Kushtaka buildings rather abruptly give way to the island itself. Some of the island is farmland - plants that stubbornly don’t take well to hydroponics - but next to Ripple on either side are rocky beaches. A few of them, closer to Ripple itself, have been cleared and made nice- there’s sand, there’s mud, you can tromp around barefoot - but the natural state of things along the shore is fairly vicious rock, basalt columns, hard drops into the sea interspersed with sections where you could pick your way carefully to the water’s edge, if you wished to.
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- Aurelius
- The Awoken
Scene Archives
← Active ScenesThe Rocks, Near Ripple
#saint
strides purposefully along the edge of the island, looking at the sandy, Kushtaka-made beaches, taking a moment to peer over the edge of some of the hard drops down into the surf. She watches the crash on huge waves against the basalt, the spray reaching up high enough that she can almost taste it, and then she walks further and further away from Ripple. She needs to move. She’s been still too long. ⁂
slows as she nears a low swoop of land, where the shore breaks into rocks bigger than her and then into smaller, jagged rocks, and she thinks this looks about right. She shucks off her new jacket, folding it neatly, and the pouch that contains the mask, and then the other pouches and belts she carries. She flexes her feet in the worn leather boots, trying to gauge if the added dexterity of her bare feet is worth sacrificing the protection of the shoes. She decides to keep the boots. She can always take them off later. And then she begins clambering over the rocks, chasing the surf. 🙧
ꙮ It’s more treacherous than the lakes at home, and you could see in a couple of places that there was a steep, sharp drop-off with no bottom in sight, but here there’s a shelf of rock extending some ways out into the sea below the water’s edge. Closer to the sea and a wave rises to greet you, cold and crashing.
lets the wave crash over her, laughs as it does, and then shivers as it drenches her. She finds her footing on the shelf of rock, notes the steep, sharp, drop-off, and starts to walk deeper into the water, reaching out carefully to prod the shelf with her toe before taking one step, then another.
ꙮ It’s cold but the kind of cold that makes you remember where you are; not bone-deep chilling cold but, still, water from a sea that very well have no bottom to it. Exhilarating in such a way that you can imagine the Kushtaka crews playing in tune with each other and the crash of the waves themselves over the Glass Ships. The shelf of rock is sturdy when you nudge at it. No knowing how thick it is, but thick enough to bear your weight as you sink deeper into the water. Another wave, less vigorous, but it doesn’t need to be as vigorous now to crash over all of you regardless.
tries not to remember the Glass Ship, or the music, or the–any of it. She tries to think of the ocean, of the ocean only, and the infinite horizon, and what it would be like to be the only living person on this miraculous world. She takes another step forward.
how deep is the water, and how much rock shelf is there?
ꙮ The sea surrounds; the shelf slopes enough, and is wide enough, that you’d be treading water fully and it would still be some inches, then feet, below you, if you kept heading out. Facing the sea, it’s easy to imagine that there’s nothing -but- the waves, the horizon, the light-stabbed clouds overhead.
walks forward enough that when the waves come they lift her feet off the ground, and set her back down. The movement draws her forward, and with each ebb and flow she takes a step back to maintain her position. Part of her–most of her–wants to swim forward, out into the water, to see how far she can get before her arms get tired, before her body aches and the waves overwhelm her. But she is trying to be practical, so she keeps herself in place and then she tries to send a thought out, into the ocean, to the creature she saw and couldn’t speak to.
ꙮ Gnosis, corresponding to your chosen approach, 4/10 DC?
thinks of lotus flowers in still ponds–not like this, but it’s the best she can manage. She imagines their delicate petals, their subtle, earthy scents, their rattling seedpods after they’ve bloomed and died. And beneath the water, the hefty ugly stems anchoring them and keeping them afloat. She knows, or was told, this is a world without anchors, but all beautiful things need ugly, practical roots. Each song needs its unglamorous period of composition. She doesn’t know if the creature she saw was like her–the useful machinery keeping afloat something fragile and lovely, but the creature was like her in one other way. I too am a visitor, she tries to cast out into the sea, though perhaps not a polite one.
- Salme, The Sword-Saint invoked their 🟢flourishing gnosis [d8] -> 7.
- Salme, The Sword-Saint spent 1 Arete and now has 2 remaining.
- Salme, The Sword-Saint invoked their 🟢flourishing gnosis [d8] -> 8! It ✨explodes!
ꙮ Ascension!
- Salme, The Sword-Saint‘s 🟢flourishing gnosis has ascended unto the 10ᵗʰ rank.
ꙮ That’s an explosion, you can roll again!
- Salme, The Sword-Saint invoked their 🟢flourishing gnosis [d10] -> 1.
ꙮ Did you know that lotus roots, also, are a kind of rhizome?
: “I did,” Salme replies absently.
ꙮ And as Salme meditates, the sea -stills- around her, in response to her meditation. A soft, fractal green glow, spiderwebbing -through- the water like a pattern of light on a pale surface under the shallows, except it’s in every dimension. It does not last; there is a wave and it overwhelms with playful, mindless intensity. After the wave passes, the water is calm again, and the pattern webs out once more. Eventually, there will be another wave. ⁂
ꙮ The truth that Salme saw is that there is nothing ugly, beneath the water’s surface, just the strange. Things which were born for an environment that perhaps cannot be imagined, if all you have breathed is air. Salme reaches out, then, and as she reaches out, the Sea is an extension of her mind and thoughts. She is incalculably vast. A branching tendril-figure, like lightning but soft and green, forking and dying and forking again, briefly connecting her to… something. Someone? Something that observed her before once already, upon her arrival, in the Glass Ship. ⁂
ꙮ It is as ancient as the Sea itself. It warbles, softly, mournfully, across a distance incalculable in practice and in principle, and what it warbles is: what has been does not constrain what may yet be. What it warbles is: It’s going to be different this time. What it warbles is: incomprehensible, utterly unpredictable, a chaotic stream that disrupts her concentration, a thousand thousand rolls of knucklebones, the way wind-chimes make music that can’t be written, the precise unknowable moment a branch in the fire will crackle and spark. When the next wave crests, the root-light fades and disperses with it. 🙧
allows that to wash over her and through her. “It’s going to be different this time,” she whispers to herself, less affirmation than hope, wretched, sprouting hope, and she wishes she could call back to it, to let it know that she is going to try. But she is alone. She is the only person in the world right now and the sea could close above her head and drown her and no one would ever know. But she left the Mask on the shore, and the coat Archie made her, and the embroidery, and Unua could bear the Mask, most certainly, if someone had to. Wolf probably could, or Archie. She wouldn’t ask it of Aurelius, with his head full of too many memories, or of Awoken, without any warm memories at all, but she herself is simply the apparatus. She steps deeper into the water, until she’s treading water, and she tries to keep her thoughts from turning to the song that is hers but isn’t hers.
ꙮ It is easy, treading water, surrounded by horizon, to think of other things, or of nothing. To turn your thoughts away from that song. In the crash of the waves and the -sound- of the wind over the water there is an echo of the Worldsong of Samudra, available to anyone with mundane ears. There is the memory of the soft, gentle warbling. That will stick with you for some time, I believe. It is easy - it will not last - but in the sea, like this, it is easy to be Samudra’s, for a time.
is sick of songs. Why does everything have to be music. She remembers, she remembers–she dives beneath the waves reaching down to run her fingers along the rock that’s been supporting her. She pulls herself forward with one rough stroke, and touches more rock, her eyes screwed shut against the sting of the salt water. She thinks not of music but of sound. The crashing of waves, the roll of knucklebones, the–way she could never get any kind of song right, not with an instrument, not with her voice. She doesn’t want to think about this either. ⁂
pulls herself to the surface and takes a few gasping breaths and the danger of the water that she had been so curious about, felt so immune to, feels stupidly imminent now. She starts to swim back towards the rocks but then she remembers that she was supposed to die, but not here. There’s a tally that was hers to make, and she’s left it uncarved. That certainty spikes through her and she can’t remember she ever forgot in the first place. She stops swimming. She stops moving entirely. 🙧
ꙮ In the silence, floating in the sea, you notice things, drifting through the water, like intricate white lace. There must be ten or twelve of them. They’re nearly transparent- surrounding you in a circle, slowly orbiting you. Under other circumstances, they might be brightly-coloured; here and now they are dim and unobtrusive and, so far, they are silent.
looks at them and reaches out a tentative finger into their orbit, to see if they’ll brush up against her or avoid her touch.
ꙮ Each of them, in turn, as they orbit, brushes up against her finger. They’re oddly soft. And, no, there’s thirteen of them.
: “Hello,” she murmurs quietly.
ꙮ They reply, once she speaks, with voices like very soft chimes, each a different pitch, each a different length, each a different timbre; they all say “Hello” as they brush past her finger.
: “Did I disturb you?”
ꙮ ”No.” “Disturb?” “What is that?” “It is when a rock is thrown into the water.” “But that makes a pleasant sound!” “Not if you are a fish.” “But I am a fish!” “You are not a fish.” “This is a distraction.” “You did not disturb me.” “Nor I.” “Nor I.”
: “Twelve voices, all of them lovely, but there are thirteen of you,” she says, keeping her own voice soft and careful.
I assume I counted right.
ꙮ ”There are thirteen virtues, too.” “That is also a distraction.” “There are -five- virtues.” “You are both wrong!” “You are not a fish-“ -one of the noöplankton chimes like a bell, flashes an extremely specific shade of light blue, and the others - the ones being obstreperous, at least - very briefly flash purple and quiet down. They orbit you. The one that flashed blue, you think, speaks. “We have a message for you.”
: “A message?”
ꙮ Overlapping, fully: “You are not alone.” “You were born for the purpose of living.” “You are incredibly improbable.” “And yet, you exist.” “I am the Universe.” “You looked at me.” “Fuck the haters.” “You are fire.” “Thank you.” “Roll the knucklebones.” “…” “I see you.” “Hello.”
breathes out a soft “oh” before she even realizes she’s said anything at all, and then all the wonder she felt when she first saw the sea comes rushing back, and she feels tears well up in her eyes. “You looked at me too. I see you too,” she says, and then she asks, “are you ever lonely?”
ꙮ They orbit, a little closer, little ripples of color passing through them like it’s going from one to the other to the other, ever-shifting. “That’s all the message It gave us.” “There was a message?” “I think I’m a fish.” “I’m never alone.” “Of course -we’re- never alone.” “The sea can be very lonely, though.” “I guess?”
laughs, feeling a little more settled. “Can you tell me who It is?” though she doesn’t say it with much expectation of receiving an answer.
ꙮ ”Who what is?” “it’s It.” “What’s it?” “A fish.” “Why is EVERYTHING a fish with you.” “It Swims Below.” “So it’s kelp?” “Kelp doesn’t swim.” “This is stupid.”
laughs again. “You all keep changing colors. Does it mean anything?”
ꙮ ”I don’t know.” “It seemed like fun?” “My favourite color is γλαυκός.” “My favourite colour is whatever colour a fish is.” “What colour is a fish?” “I don’t know.” “It seemed like fun!”
: “Well then,” she says, and now she’s smiling. “What is a fish?”
ꙮ ”I’M A FISH!!!” “You are not a fish.” “Nobody here is a fish.” “Seabirds aren’t fish.” “The sea isn’t a fish.” “Kelp isn’t a fish.” “You’re not answering the question.” “I don’t know what a fish is.” “A fish lives in the sea.” “Are you a fish?”
: “I could be a fish. I don’t live in the sea, but maybe I could be anything I wanted to be. Isn’t that fun to imagine?”
ꙮ ”Huh.” “That’s pretty wild.” “It reminds me of something.” “Me too.” “It’s nice.” “Maybe we could all be fish.”
: “Maybe.” She looks up to the sky and she pushes her feet off the rock and lets herself float on the ocean waves, maybe a little like a fish. Or kelp. Who knows.
ꙮ They continue to orbit, passing around a little ever-changing spark of colour from one to another the whole time.