Fragment: An Ocean Of Stars

The night was warm, and a soft wind was blowing in from the autumn-coloured sunset, which set large in the west, accompanied by multitudes of high, fluffy clouds reflecting orange and red, deepening to purple and blue. Bright, pale stars peeked out through the clouds, and a single moon was a high crescent against the deep blue sky ringed by the darker clouds. The ocean swelled and sucked in dark, rolling waves, reflecting orange and gold from the setting sun.

She stood upon one of those lone rocks in the wide ocean ways avoided by ships and men, for the expanse of water was treacherous with hidden reefs, and mysteriously deep shafts into the dark depths. The waves rose and fell around her perch, falling in musical rivulets through small holes eroded into the strange stone. Her feet were bare, and the water stroked and played over her toes before falling away. Her clothing was airy, billowing and flapping around her, seeming half alive in the mild ocean breeze. She raised her violet eyes, and pale arms to the encroaching night sky, as if entreating some divine power in prayer.

As if in answer, a strange luminescence awoke in the deep circle of water ahead of her, ringed by reef. The lights played below the waves, circled, danced, and shimmered in pale hues. They rose closer to the surface, and spread out to the edge of the ringing reef, wandering in and out of holes in the holed stones and between plants. Soon, below the lights there came a dark shadow with many tendrilous limbs, and a very small bulbous body.

The woman stepped into the water, walking across the shallow rocks below the waves, her transparent white gown waving in the water behind her as some strange fish before stepping into deeper water, and treading. Her long black hair streaked with silver and ornamented with feathers and beads was a long serpent behind her in its braid as she swam to the middle of the deep waters, turning small circles as a few of the pale lights followed her and weaved between her feet and toes.

The shadow rose slowly, as some leviathan might, from the cold, empty depths. Long, suckerless deep green tentacles rose around the woman's small form, threading themselves around and between her limbs, coiling about and grasping her arms and legs, her wrists and her ankles, in their firm boneless grip. A few circled her waist, holding her immobile in the water. It's grip was as chill as death, and as strong as steel.

With only a moments pause, only long enough for her to take a deep breath, it began to pull her beneath the water, inexorably downward into the darkness, followed only by the light motes. The water that was once warm became chill and burned against her skin and clawed at her lungs to give up their captured breath. Before long, she gasped, losing her air to the chill waters... yet nothing swelled in to fill the space.

What felt like an age of breathless travel in darkness, the pale followers having faded far behind, broke into a dazzling shower of falling, floating, flying lights. Glowing diamond dust strewn in the darkness, passing quickly with small whisperings of song and the sound of chimes. Still, her shadowy captor drew her on swiftly through the cacophony lights.

Soon, the lights were replaced with twisting galaxies of singing stars, bright nebulae bursting with colour and light, birthing stars and planets, lone asteroids rolling through the vast emptiness, cold balls of pocked rock of arcing towards their distant destinations. Space, filled with the pulsing music of creation, the long, slow drumbeat of the heart of all.

The traveller slowed, and its captive passenger spied planets passing by in their slow circles, clouds rolling over their spherical bodies, vast oceans tinted green and blue... and stranger colours still. Barren moons and barren planets passed beneath them, grey or dark, covered in craters and impact trails, cones of volcanoes, and raging acid storms. They passed a comet taking luminescence, its tail swung out far behind it, burning in chill brightness as it swung towards the star that would be its eventual melting demise.

Nearing a planet, the creature slowed further allowing her a view of the slow creep of dusk across its curved edge, the fuzzy demarcation between air and emptiness, the pale clouds swirling over its surface, curled into shimmering storms over darkened landscapes. Oceans the colour of emeralds and mountains pale with caps of pure snow. Deep forests thick with ancient, tall trees and expansive rolling grasslands blowing with tall grasses dotted with boulders. Vast deserts filled with waving, blowing dunes and grassy swamp riddled with tea coloured waterways.

It passed over the creeping darkness of night-time, passing into the atmosphere, carrying its captive still. It passed over vast ancient bogs, spreading woodland thick with tall evergreens, hills and valleys, and lakes reflecting the light from a single, full moon. Strange constellations wheeled above them, bright and alien. It floated near a meadow in some vast, near-trackless wood thick with hanging moss and twisting, gnarled trees, slowly falling towards the treetops, then threading delicately through them, leaving the sleeping birds and creeping animals undisturbed.

It deposited her near the meadows edge, where through the tree trunks she could see the bonfire burning, and the flickering shadows of the animal-headed dancers, smell the roasting beast, hear the drumbeats and the lilting song. orange firelight reflected off of tall totems bearing the faces of animals and spirits, gods and demons alike. The air was crisp against her skin, but not unpleasant. It withdrew its chill limbs from her, and passed back upward through that sky, silently wandering back into the starry night, empty, yet so full of life, as she picked up from the soft loam the mask of a bird...