I walk down the streets and there are familiar faces, all the familiar lights of magic lighting the way straight to the harbor. I find it strange that mother, for all her justice, would have me patrol the docks. None of the humans on or off the sea abide by laws unless forced to, not even the laws they make themselves.
The guards are always friendly to the incoming ships but they seem to take a special pride in their love of bullying the average citizen. Here they are snoring for their pay; I notice they seem plenty awake to collect their “protection money” from a fisherman’s boat whenever one docks—how do they wake up so easily for that?
But the strangest thing is that even the “good” humans seem at odds about something or other. Each day, with a new dawn, just before clean-up, more regular than a sunny day (and here in Khyber Mercane’s “Perfect Porthaven” that’s saying something), I see the paladins and clerics arguing around the docks. Don’t they tire of it all? What can they argue about every single morning? Don’t they get bored? These humans follow the exact same routine every single day—so what can it be? It’s amazing they die so quickly. You’d think with all the time they waste doing the same things they must have the time to do it forever. I often wonder what difference it would make if they argued on a clean dock, rather than cleaning up after instead. Just for a change…
Es glides along the main street, all of them lead to the harbor haven. For what might be minutes, she is called. For once the calling is not her mother’s. It is something deeper, something that yawns at her existence. It flows and rumbles. Like a tide she is drawn to the shore. But the shore is water. And the water is Es. The liquid is shallow, and inharmoniously clean against the docks. Her soft grey form slips forward, and the guards do not see her; they would do nothing all their days but to fall in love with her if they did. The water ever so gently takes her in, and for one who feels nothing, she can almost feel it tenderly caressing her in a perfect circle, a ripple, tracing up her body as she disappears in its essence.
Have you ever woken up only to find you’re not really awake? There is a fear in it, something so very far beyond distress. I think the human word for it is “loneliness.”
