Five soul abandon their formlessness and descend upon the world. They dance through the stagnant air, and wind begins to blow. They land on the ground, still and lifeless, and for the first time something begins to move. The sand kicked up by their movement swirls, and within this great cyclone the newborns begin to create themselves.
Grains of sand begin to gather, morphing into limbs, mirrors, strange absences. The souls inhabit them, and from this combination of matter and spirit five primordial entities begin to coalesce:
ALTERTHENTERRINTARTINTH, the Empty. Paradoxically, they cease to exist as soon as they come to life.
Gyaweft, the Smelter. Fire pours from the gaps in their armor, scorching the ground around them.
Dr. Bob, the Unmoved Mover. He surveys the world and prepares to act.
Kūhaku, the Mirror. For now, their body is blank and colorless in the darkness. There will soon be far more for it to reflect.
Nazir, the Weaver. Their eyes illuminate the sand in vibrant shades of green.
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A͈͕̯͙̤̲̱̻w҉̬͎͟a̵͉͙͈̲͡͡k̞̖̘̘͚e͉̟̖͙̙̰͟ͅņ̪͙̱̼ the sands.
6The hole in reality whispers to the sand, filling it with intent and the spark of life. The ground stirs, awareness echoing out into the infinite, and gradually the desert begins to come to life.
ALTERTH continues, eagerly describing the process of his own awaking. There is a pregnant pause when he mentions consciousness, the beginning of independent thought. Then the ground begins to roil, suddenly angry. Dunes rise and disappear in the space of an eyeblink. Coarse tendrils clutch ALTERTH, and sinkholes threaten to swallow every primordial whole.
Create an Ocean. A different type of grain coalesced from the air. Wet, where everything was dry before.
3A ripple passes through the sand, and Kuhaku is inspired. They feel another substance in the air around them, a fluid instead of solid grains, and reach into the atmosphere to bring it forth. A thin stream of water comes into existence before their eyes, falling onto the desert with a soft pattering sound.
The mirrored entity reaches for more, but finds that they have already depleted the air. It stings now, drier than dry.
Use my inner fire to mold the sand into glass globes with a piece of my inner fire inside them, then throw the globes into the sky creating the stars.
4Gyaweft melts sand with his own internal fire, turning it into beautiful spheres of glass. He is so absorbed in the task that he continues even once his material has started to scream.
After placing a wisp of his own fiery essence in each of the completed globes, he tosses them up into the sky. Some fall, shattering into a million glorious shards as they rejoin the earth, but many begin to hover far above the raging sands. They shed a soft light over the world, making its chaotic flailing visible to all.
Use large amounts of pressure to make some of the sand into sandstone.
16v3Dr. Bob compacts the sand, squeezing it together until it begins to stick. Then the sand twitches, and in a moment it begins squeezing him back.
The newly-minted doctor struggles until the sandy tentacle clutching him is forced to drop him to the ground. He's too young to die! Practically an infant! There's so much to live for!
The sand says nothing, but its body language remains highly aggressive.
Make web, big web.
6Nazir's second creation, after their own body, is a large web. So large, in fact, that the spider finds it too difficult to restrain himself to the ground. He skitters upwards, searchingly, and finds that someone else has created glass stars to illuminate the void. Nazir ties strands of silk to them, and weaves a web that encompasses vast swathes of the cosmos, sand and sky alike.
When the sand begins to rebel, he hangs safely up above it.
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Topic: Sand & Souls - Let There Be Turns (Read 61459 times)