Until the Rains Come

[yutzen]

The following tale has been compiled as best as I could manage from every fragment I could identify within the various libraries of Ishiss (city and nation). I will readily admit the experience was both thrilling and immensely frustrating: Individual fragments have been well-known for quite some time already, but a number of minor yet notable contradictions prevented the rise of a true compendium, as leading figures I shall not be naming made mutually incompatible versions and declared theirs the most truthful, actively attacking others over assumed lack of veracity. I have done all I could to smooth over the contradictions and provide something closer to a definitive version, fully expecting to draw critique from the aforementioned figures for making such a claim. To them I would like to say: Go ahead. I have so much to tell you.
The various fragments were delightfully well preserved despite dating to pre-Refuge times, thanks to the Ifchi’s sturdy paper-making techniques, but different interpretations of their contents only multiplied with time, obfuscating matters that should’ve been far simpler. If any further fragments show up beyond their Exit, I will be retrieving them personally this time.


 

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Many a thread can be drawn between water and life. Both have been so tightly linked as to be synonymous throughout our existence; even those that thrive far from water will always need to carry some with them, and even the most sun-baked peoples must eventually return to it. But more importantly, more relevantly, many a thread can be drawn between water and Being[1] as a whole, not just for that which breathes and moves. As we and all others are shaped from water, Being is not just a state, but a fundamental part of all we know, the bottom-most building block. For all that lives, for the stone beneath our feet, for the air that surrounds us all, and even water itself. Even the emptiness beyond, the void that holds seemingly nothing, is in itself held up by Being; if it wasn’t, nothing could occupy it, for it would not be there at all[2].

The threads hardly end there. Much like water, Being is a limited thing. Just as water bodies of all kinds are surrounded by dry land and by empty air, made scarce in every direction, all Being is strung out in one body after another, hardly ever connected, held up by nothing, pressed down on by nothing, surrounded by nothing at all. True nothingness, that cannot be pushed aside so easily by anything that Is – not without intent, motivation, actual force that such masses of Being cannot usually muster by themselves. And just like water, Being can slowly fade into its surroundings, seemingly dissipating into nothing – except in this case, the nothing is very much literal. Being can slowly seep into the rest, too thin to hold or even be anything, too disperse to do anything more than exist. And just like murky pools in the mud, drying in the sun and steaming away into thin air, the thinner it’s strung, the quicker it can all fade away. Leaving nothing but vapors and cracking earth – or nothing at all, as the case may be.

But what of those that dwell in these pools? Are they to go quietly, dry out and die under the scour of these merciless surroundings? One of the big differences, the proper differences, is in the scale. With puddles strung across the mud, you hardly have much in them. At most, a few striders, a few dozen bogmites, anything beyond the hundred would be too small for the eye to see. Being, however? Even the tiniest drop, barely worth remarking on, could hold millions and millions like us, only vaguely aware the very foundation of their existence is vanishing with every passing year. You and I[3] are not even bogmites at such grand scales, and we are even more helpless in the face of such drying-up than they would be.

There are, however, those that aren’t us. And of them, there is one out there that we know is not helpless.

A curious entity, one that lives in nothingness yet needs Being to thrive. A wandering sort, never staying long in one spot, whether it Is or not. A creature of opposites, one that could only come to exist in the quagmire that occurs where existence and nonexistence meet. In this, and acknowledging its shape would be unclear to us all, I would compare it to a toad[4]. Skipping from pool to pool, diving and digging alike, sifting through the mud made by Being. And just big enough to change the very landscape around it, little by little, one shovel of its webbed limbs at a time.

And change the landscape it does. Just as a creature that is neither of earth alone, nor pure earth, would know best how to shape the places were both meet, this entity can shape its own quagmire with greater results than anything of singular nature. Neither[5] a creature of nothingness alone, Nor[5] one of Being like us, it alone can carve the grand, yet precise shapes it desires into the murky puddles that shape everything. And so it does, with every passing eon, seemingly dedicating all of its endless time to molding this swamp of existence to its own desires.

But what would such a creature desire? What manner of wants could a being so far beyond our comprehension even have, that we could understand? The answer is uncertain, but if I were to take the simplest guess, it would be: Preservation.

Preservation of what, you ask? Hard to answer. It could be its own life, keeping an environment it prefers, or perhaps there is something else to it. Perhaps it is aware of smaller beings like us. We only know what it does: When one of the pools of Being is running thin, when it seeps away into the nothingness, spreading into thin vapors unable to hold even the tiniest smidge of existence, this creature, this keeper of the quagmire, starts carving away the edges that keep it trapped in place, and lets all the Being held within flow freely, away in directions we could not perceive. What forces actually move these flows, we don’t know either, but we know exactly where it leads: To a greater pool.

For the comparison holds, as I said before: Greater masses of Being, much like greater bodies of water, do not dissipate nearly as quickly, and the deeper they go, the longer they can last. And the toad in charge will merge the unfortunate pools of existence into greater ones, forming ever greater bodies of Being dotting the nothingness beyond. Less of them, for sure, pooling their minuscule inhabitants together, forcing them to adapt, but perhaps it’s the price to pay in the face of oblivion – that is, if it even knows they’re there.

How long has it been doing so, one wonders? How many pools of Being have been merged, and come close to drying out again before having to be merged, again and again? Whole worlds blended into one, with their individual strings of history knotted into a singular rope, one by one? Is it perhaps doing this without aim, simply forming ever greater bodies, intervening only when they threaten to dry? Or is there a greater lake of Being somewhere deep, towards which it channels every last trace of existence so that it may last? Perhaps it’s the first of these answers that’s the most important of all. For it would determine the rest, wouldn’t it? If it’s been going long enough… all that’d be there would be scattered puddles, channeled through ever-greater distances into a grand, yet shallow lake, all that’s left of so many different masses of Being. Then again, it may not be so shallow, but the toad is never truly sated with its size. We simply do not know. All we can do is speculate…

And speculate we will. For however long this has been going on, the only thing we know is that it’ll continue. Perhaps until the end of time, when all dries up, even the biggest of all pools, and it’s forced to concede, roll over and die… But I wouldn’t think so. As I said, all Being that dissipates into the nothingness around it? It’s never truly gone. It’ll grow thick with existence, perhaps thick enough to start holding entities again, even if just the smallest of all. Perhaps Being shall coalesce, as the apparent end draws near, and the keeper of this quagmire has but the smallest puddle, the very last inches of a well, to itself…

Perhaps, just like the toads we know, all it needs to do is hold on until the rains come. And perhaps then, as the great string of puddles and pools is reformed, as the cracked earth of nothingness returns to a quagmire of its liking under the storm, it shall finally rest… While the rains last, at least.
 

[1]Direct translation from the word shurrif, which can double as noun (existence) and verb (to exist, to be), while acting as antonym to the word frush (nonexistent, not real). Every fragment insisted in using it as a noun, with context aiding the translation, and I have capitalized each proper use of the translated word for clarity’s sake.
[2]If these passages seem more reiterative than they should, I apologize; part of the problem in compiling the tale from its fragments was that different sources often neglected passages and comparisons that others did use, and completeness’ sake demanded I weave them all together.
[3]Unusually, between the fragments I collected, this was the most common, most possible translation. More curiously, not once did I find anything resembling an address to the reader, or the author referring to themselves as a writer; the closest I could find was something that would translate to “my dear interlocutor”, which both hints that these were once meant as transcripts, and baffles me as something anyone would deliberately speak, let alone write down.
[4]An astounding number of fragments attempted to specify species-wise, rather than leave it at a more recognizable level. I have opted for the latter, rather than fall into the “scholarly” squabbles of trying to pinpoint individual manners of batracian. Again, all objections on this particular matter can be presented publicly, and I will welcome each and every one.
[5]Unusually, the word I translated to “Neither” here often refers to a manner of temporary Exit-like gate to either a distant spot within the same realm, or more rarely, another realm, requiring an individual to “embody” it to function. Said individuals cause an overlap between areas, being “neither here nor there”, hence the colloquial name. While further elaboration is beyond the scope of this volume, the term does not seem to apply 100% here. But the parallels should be clear, and I chose to capitalize “Nor” as well to reflect this.


-Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified and under active investigation)