Jordan's story about the flood
The moment that sums the great flood for me was completely mundane, yet all the more uncanny for being so astonishingly unlikely. I can recall the fights, the desperate people, the strangeness of Laudan streets becoming branches of the Thaims, the floating bodies, the monsters the bodies became, the sadness, the fear, the danger, but that all fades into the mist of exhaustion. More than anything else, the experience of the flood was the experience of an exhaustion so distilled that I nearly weep to think of it. However, on the second day, there was a moment of precious beauty, a little reminder of the wonder Render wove into every part of the Cloth.
There was a house, four stories tall, that had collapsed, and only the dirty red roof stuck out of the water, which was still flowing swiftly. Perched on top of the roof was a small grey tabby cat. It calmly watched the water go by, tail curled around its paws for some time. Then, it realized I was watching, and it stood up, stretched itself, and moved to the edge of the roof. It watched the current for a few moments, head bobbing, and then it leaped onto a broken table that was drifting by. The table wobbled, and nearly capsized, but the cat held on and kept its balance, and as the table drifted off, the cat sat up on its new perch and curled its tail around again to watch the city fall apart around it as it drifted on through with dry feet.
Call me a fool if you like, but right then and there I said a prayer of thanks to all the gods that I had lived to see that moment.
There was a house, four stories tall, that had collapsed, and only the dirty red roof stuck out of the water, which was still flowing swiftly. Perched on top of the roof was a small grey tabby cat. It calmly watched the water go by, tail curled around its paws for some time. Then, it realized I was watching, and it stood up, stretched itself, and moved to the edge of the roof. It watched the current for a few moments, head bobbing, and then it leaped onto a broken table that was drifting by. The table wobbled, and nearly capsized, but the cat held on and kept its balance, and as the table drifted off, the cat sat up on its new perch and curled its tail around again to watch the city fall apart around it as it drifted on through with dry feet.
Call me a fool if you like, but right then and there I said a prayer of thanks to all the gods that I had lived to see that moment.