It was nighttime.

That didn't mean there was a nice moon out, all haunting and ominous, though; just that the cave lights were dimmed, casting shadow throughout Fornax. Still, it was an atmospheric night. Mists drifted over the sea, breakers lapping softly at the shores of the islands. Out at the crescent-shaped larger island, though, the peace was suddenly broken: a spray of water erupting just beyond the shore, a glowing shape bobbing to the surface, and the sounds of gurgling and gasping as what looked like a very tiny man flailed out of the water.

He was a child, but he did not look like one. Instead, he was merely two feet tall but fully-formed and proportional, with the appearance of a thick beard and elaborate clothing. He had none of those things: his entire body was a slimy ooze, one that rippled in an unnatural way as he struggled his way to shore, wading and staggering in the surf. He also--technically speaking--didn't really need to gasp, but it was as though he'd been created with some idea of who and what he was, and that idea didn't quite match up to "a softly glowing ooze."

The dark green pearl, shattered deep below, had ejected him and he'd popped out; now he faceplanted the sand, laying there with arms down at his side, his 'hat' staying exactly where it was and disregarding the laws of real-hat-physics entirely.

At length he spat, rolled onto his back, and stared up into the mist. His lips pursed, and a few magical bubbles bobbed up past him, floating away into the air.

The tiny man stared into them, and giggled.

Well. Nobody came to greet him, or eat him, and that left him alone--stranded on the, well, strand. He pushed up, once laughing at bubbles had lost its immediate novelty, and began to stagger upward along the sand. He didn't know where he was going, and only had the slightest goal formed in his mind, one he didn't yet know enough to put words to.

He couldn't put words to almost anything, yet. But they were coming, slowly, and as they did, he used them.

"Beach," he stated clearly, pointing at the sand, and grinned brightly at his own genius. (One might have been forgiven for thinking his childish clumsiness a drunken stagger.) Hand swept out to indicate the washing breakers. "Sea." Oh, and he had another word for that one: "Ocean." No--more--"Water!" He paused, turning to regard the sea proudly, and leaned back to bellow a word that meant nothing: "HYOY!" It was a nonsensical sound: he was just happy to be alive, and wanted to voice that.

Onward he went, stumbling along the shore.

"Wall!"

"Hand!" (He pointed from one hand, to the other.)

And, leaning back--another plume of bubbles popping up into the air--"BUBBLES!"

Hands slapped wetly against his own chest, the tiny man grinning. "WIGHTBEARD!"

He felt a sort of unity with his magic--a strong affinity to water, and he knew that it was his. A tiny hand held a tiny (yet very rotund) belly, and he chuckled upward at his bubbles. He pointed at one, feeling quite jolly about all of this.

('This' being, this whole 'being alive' thing, the sea, the sand, the dark cave, everything. It was all perfect!)

From the point of his finger came a crackle of magicka, and a moment later he was grinning again, carefully cradling the frozen bubble in his ooze-hands. There was no real worry about him melting it; it would melt given time, of course, but he wasn't some warm-bloodied beastie with a hundred-degree temperature. He was cool as the sea, and as he sauntered (or rather, stumbled) onward, the delicately tiny frozen globe remained intact in one careful palm.

"Bubble," he informed it matter-of-factly as he went on.

He didn't quite know where he was going--and it didn't matter, all that much. On he went, his pointing-and-naming-things march in full swing.

"Pebble. Rock. BIG rock. ...Boulder," he clarified, as if informing the mist that gathered all around him.

Then, the sky. "Air." Well, it wasn't truly 'sky.' It was the space between he and the cave ceiling, high above, but that didn't matter much, really. "Beach." Wait--had he said that one? It didn't matter.

He paused to point out all the aspects of his fake costume, his opacity and shape adjusting here and there to fix bits and pieces of it. "Boots. Belt. Trouuuuusers!" He liked that word, and found himself laughing.

Only after some time did he find himself at the exit to Fornax. A peer down the tunnel made him realize that this would leave his birthplace: the ocean he already felt so connected to. And he knew, too, that he wanted to come back here--but something drew him onward and outward.

He had business elsewhere.

But it wouldn't be so easy, travelling from here--he knew that by instinct, each swish of his steps growing harder. He would lose too much moisture up ahead, if he weren't careful. He had to keep near water, at least for now. Maybe when he was older, bigger--but not yet.

"When I speak"
When I think

For the first time, his magic didn't come, and Wightbeard frowned down. It was magic he was trying to do, right-? Wasn't it..?

He huffed and pointed at his feet; to him this made perfect sense. It was obviously his boots that would hold in this moisture (even if he really had no boots). "Magic," he said aloud, pointing to said feet. Then he tried again: to withdraw all his imaginary bubbles into his pores and keep them there.

The ice ball, though, he kept in one hand--he was keeping that.

After a moment he felt the sucking pop of his ooze's pores closing tight; water was held behind an otherwise porous skin. Okay: he could make this journey now.

The tiny bearded ooze-man stood up straight and proud, and pointed at the tunnel.

"Tunnel," he said, and marched off toward his destiny.

exit Wightbeard