Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

It was a well rather than a pool, but this away from civilization Lewerike didn’t think anybody had drunk from it in a thousand years—at least considering the unhealthy color of the moss growing on the half destroyed edge— and thus nobody would’ve minded if he took a dip in it. He hoped.

His skin itched and his brain burned and his soul ached. So he took off his white robe, shucked off his bone bracelets, freeing himself from their annoying clatter, and dove in, breathing deeply.

While studying, he noticed that all heroes had a weird relationship with water. It was almost their distinctive sign, something that marked them as the main character of glorious epics; sometimes it was something silly, sometimes it was tragic. The great Kal’fa could drain an oasis in a single sip; Junke the wise was afraid of boiling water; Blappa could become invisible while submerged; and Ferah the Dark, who was born without gills, almost drowned.

Even the stories about elemental spirits — somehow they all ended up with water. The most powerful fire and earth spirits, Vaashti and Bushti, could never against the powerful Vaawah, the all-encompassing sea (although it were the air elementals, whose names couldn’t be pronounced, who saved the tribes from certain destruction).

Maybe it means something, Lewerike thought as he listened to the stories of old and learned them by heart, or maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. All Suthi tribes lived and flourished around oases, after all. If you asked a Suthi child if water had a shape, they would draw the outline of the body of water closest to their home.

“But then why are the gods in the sky,” he would ask to the old masters after the lessons, afraid of being blasphemous but unable to stop himself, “when Suthi were clearly meant to live inside the water? The desert burns us and we struggle to live in the heat. Why do we celebrate feathers and hollow bones and all that doesn’t sink?”

“Because sound is air and air is sound,” the masters would answer, long-suffering, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. They would fold themselves in their long robes of light-coloured linen, shaking their head, their bone earrings, necklaces and bracelets jingling against each other, making noises like rattlesnakes. “Because True Words are created through the vibration of your soul, and not some—soaking of paper.”

And then they would sigh, because Lewerike was a descendant of Phoeh, and wasn’t supposed to have that kind of doubt festering in his soul, and Lewerike would stop breathing and go look for the nearest pool of water.

The first step was looking at the surface—he wasn’t necessarily trying to see himself, but the way his face got deformed by the ripples never failed to mesmerize him. It drained his dark skin of all color, made it look like he was in another world. The second step was to dunk his head in it and breathe.

The water thrummed around his eardrums, singing. Sound was water and water was sound, flooding his gills and his lungs, cooling his head and his heart.