Tree of Life Book III

Part II - Chapter 12

She let the water fall and melt away into the ocean.

In this way, the woman began clearing the excess water from the cavern. It appeared that it wouldn't take long before the ground could be seen again beneath the bottom of our boat.

As we all continued to stare at the woman's work in progress, I eased over to stand beside Malchus. "What is her name?"

"Elurin." He shook his head. "She is a strange one. She is a First, but not like other Firsts. She cannot take human form. And she swears fealty to no one. Not even Lady Artanis. She comes and goes as she pleases."

"Her power is water?"

Malchus nodded. "She is powerful, that one. More powerful than me by far."

I frowned. "I've never seen her."

"She went away. Long ago." He shrugged. "When she left us, it was not on good terms."

The water beneath our ship dried out. We came to rest on dry land. Well, dry enough, because it was still soggy and wet like mud. The people stepped out off the boat. We spread out on the field and stretched our legs.

With the excess water in the cavern gone, Elurin relaxed her waterspout. She let some of it drop back onto an area inside the cave and that pooled into a lake on the side by the far wall.

Good, I thought. We will still have need of water in the time to come. Who knows how long we might have to stay in here?

Outside our abode, the rain continued to fall. Elurin went to address this problem next. She waved her hand again.

A translucent dome appeared over the oculus. It curved and covered the entire opening from one end to the other. We could see through it and make out the wan light still wafting in from the outside, but the rain could no longer enter. It fell to pitter-patter against the new barrier instead and drained and streaked down the side of it, like tears, like weeping running down a child's face.

We were protected.

With her work done, Elurin turned and gazed down upon us from her perch high above. She was lithe and small in the distance. She was a wisp of a girl. Her silvery hair waved about from an invisible breeze and her dress was fluttering too.

"She is indeed powerful." I turned away from that apparition to face Malchus. "Will she stay with us?"

Malchus bit his lip.

"She must be elated. Now that the world has become the way it is. It must be everything she has ever wanted. Everything she ever longed for."

Malchus smiled at that. "That is something you don't understand. And perhaps I…or no one truly understands. For as long as I can remember, Elurin of the sea has always and only longed for just one thing."

I frowned. I edged in closer.

"To be completely human."

I turned my head upward to the oculus. I searched the entire dome.

But she was gone.

~~~

With the immediate danger out of the way, we turned our attention to other things.

It was nearly pitch black in there inside the cavern. There was no light.

A young fellow I didn’t recognize stepped up. Dior was his name. He had the most elaborate hairdo I had ever seen. And I wondered at how he had been able to maintain it all this time throughout our near death experience amid the storm.

Apparently, Dior's power was fire. He began installing brands and torches all over the settlement and these were remarkable, in that the fire that burnt on the tips of them never went out and never required refueling. They lit up the place so it was bright as day.

We counted ourselves, everyone from the ship and we were eighty-six in total. Men, women and some younger ones too.

They were hungry. Well, it was a good thing I was there then.

Setting aside large plots on the ground, we marked them off for fields for growing crops. I rubbed my hands together and got to it. Wheat, rice, corn. I waved my arms about and started the growing process and then expedited it, making everything grow faster, like a thousand times faster than their normal speed. In minutes, it was ready.

Malchus conjured up a set of stone ovens. Dior started the fire. There happened to be a few who knew how to bake among us and so in another half an hour, we had some bread.

As we ate our first meal in what seemed like forever, we sat down and talked about it, hashing it out. We had no idea how long we were going to be in here, but we should start getting organized, nonetheless. That much we all agreed on.

So that's what we did. We got organized. We settled in.