(Untitled)

[8th_castellan]

Ramon's been scarce ever since the wedding, for the obvious honeymoon-related reasons, and simply due to a relapse into his usual reclusive habits. With the whirlwind change in his life that is holy matrimony, going back to old ways is comforting somehow. Gives him time to think on this all as well

Comments

[godinthelake]

The pebble strikes the water's serene surface, vanishing even as the first ripple spreads outward, and gone entirely when the second circle begins. There is not a third. All nature's voices have gone silent, for the voice that answers is none of Mother Nature's sons.

The familiar rumble begins, like whale-song played at the wrong pitch and in reverse: hooooooooooom? rolling up from the hidden realm below, rolling like waves crashing against the rocks of the waking world and then slipping back from whence they came.

Speaking of which, there should be waves on the lake, as with any large body of water. Those too have stopped.

[8th_castellan]

This never ceases to awe Ramon. Yes, sometimes it's a little hard to entirely take the enormous creature seriously when you get to talking to him, as Ostha can strike a person as senile and otherwise mentally cobwebbed. But as Courtney warned Ramon ages ago, the mentality of these sort of creatures is so far removed from the mortal thought process, it's folly to underestimate it simply because it seems daft by our standards.

These unnatural occurrences whenever Ostha-Huth is woken up only further exemplify that.

Ramon takes a seat on the end of the dock that extends several feet from the shore, his legs dangling over the edge, but not touching the water. Waiting for when the aboleth decides to show himself.

[godinthelake]

It takes a while, as all such great old beasts do - as slow and steady and eternal as all the tides of the world. The murmur of the aboleth rises from the waters again, high creaking notes and clicks like no music a sane mind ever composed, plunging slowly back down towards that same hoooooooooooom that makes one's lungs rattle.

There are no waves on the lake, nor does the water ripple when the creature's tremendous body suddenly breaks the surface. The top of its broad head emerges, and the uppermost of the three great red eyes that sit one above another, and it blinks its wet eyelid at him.

Then the pale light that passes for a pupil directs its gaze downward as two or three feet of the very end of a single tentacle also make an appearance...holding a tiny, tiny pebble. Ostha-huth studies it curiously for a moment, in an oddly I-has-a-pebble sort of way, before the eye turns its attention back to the castellan on the dock.

The voice never does seem to be as vast as it somehow ought to be.

"Hello, Ramon Salazar."

[8th_castellan]

"Hola, Ostha-Huth." The castellan gives a short bob of his head to improvise a bow so long as he's seated. He smiles a little at the examination of the pebble. "You can keep that, or give it back to me, whichever you'd like. I just tossed it in to see if you were awake." They'd never actually discussed if this was impolite or not to the aboleth, but Ramon didn't quite know any other way (outside of offering a cow) to draw the great fish.

"I thought I'd check in on you, see how things have been. It's been a long while since the last time we've spoken. Was winter all right for you?" Ramon, of course, always made sure to bring and tether cows to the lakeshore for Ostha during the whole frigid season, but he never actually saw any of those bovines get eaten. He only waited for the tentacle to come out for over a half-hour the first time before he decided to go back inside and leave the lake-dweller to eat when he deemed it the proper time for such. Plaga carriers don't care much for the cold, after all. Not even a little bit.

[8th_castellan]

"That's a good thing. To say hello when meeting someone again for the first time in a long time." Far better than lashing out or remaining silent, for instance.

"Your children, most likely, are all in other worlds, though. I wonder how one would ever be able to find them." A considering pause, once again captivated by that little pebble sitting oh so innocently on that post. "Would you ever want to? Or are you content to leave your children where they are and stay here where you are?"

[godinthelake]

Ostha-huth remains still for a moment, pondering how best to wrap itself around this question. It seems oblivious to the pebble now, which perhaps suits the little stone's nefarious purposes quite well. "As you have said, I...am unchanging. The depths of the sea are steady and still, and I am that which dwells in those places."

It sits silently for a moment more, for in wrapping itself around the question it has discovered angles that do not fit its form, and thoughts that groan in aching protest as it tries to fit them into the shapes of these small, brief words.

"I have always been where I am, and my children have always been where they are. Sometimes these two places are the same. Sometimes they are not. Now they are not, and our seas are not. I do not...know...if I am content. I do not change, for I cannot die, but I think that while I drowned in dreams all things changed around me. I do not know if I am content."

[8th_castellan]

"I know the feeling," Ramon sighs, pulling a knee up to lean an elbow on it, and then rest his head against the palm of that hand.

There's a long, thoughtful pause again, Ramon now looking past the red-eyed leviathan in his lake, and instead gazing at the glassy water. Watching the sun makes pools of liquid, yellow light off the ripples.

"I'm going to have a child soon, Ostha-Huth. And I do not know if I am content with this."

[godinthelake]

The little pale light at the center of that wide red eye points itself at the castellan's face with something that might be a kind of curiosity, though it is anyone's guess if the creature can actually recognize the body language and expressions of other species. Odds are in favor of 'not at all,' and yet still it looks, and if it understands nothing it does not seem troubled by the fact.

"Is it unfortunate, then, to have one? The world above must have room for it, and Time must have time enough for it, for there is Time enough for all things before forever is done."