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Over the endless eons I’ve discovered that a ht I’ve ever tasted, so whenever possible I go up to the shoulder of Mount Shrak at first light to drink in the beauty of the sunrise No matter what happens later in the day, the taste of aelse can provide
It was on a day in the late spring of the year when the creatures of the Wasteland had made their futile attempt to seize sister Zelana’s Domain and had been met by Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s twin volcanos that I went out ofsun
When I reachedplace, I saw that there was a cloud bank off to the east, and that always lorious
I looked around at the nearbyup into my Domain a bit more slowly than usual, and last winter’s snoas still stubbornly clinging to the lower ridges It occurred to n of one of those periodic clies which appear much more frequently than the people who serve us seem to realize The temperatures on the face of Father Earth are never really constant They’re subject almost entirely to the whi chilly, Father will get a lot of snow That can go on for centuries
After I’d considered the possibility, though, I dismissed the notion Zelana had ta the past winter to delay the invasion of her Doh until her hired arht take a while for things to go back to norone rather well this past spring The more I considered the matter, the ods froress to infancy in the process had, in fact, fulfilled that ancient prophecy Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s twin volcanos had forever sealed off Zelana’s Domain from any more incursions by the creatures of the Wasteland
Thethat eastern cloud-bank a glorious criht I’ve always found early suht of winter or the dusty light of autu to my step as I walked on back down the mountain to thefor me at the cave-mouth, and she flickered her customary question at me
‘Just taking a look at the weather, little one,’ I lied She always seeet all pouty and sullen if she thinks that I prefer the light of the real sun to hers Pets can be very strange so?’ I asked her
She bobbed up and down slightly in answer
‘Good,’ I said ‘He hasn’t been sleeping too well here lately I think he was badly frightened by what happened down in Zelana’s Doht a bit subdued so that he can sleep longer He needs the rest’
She bobbed her agreeht diht Ashad into our cave, but that had passed, and she was now very fond of my yellow-haired little boy She’d never fully understood Ashad’s need for solid food rather than light alone, so she habitually hovered near hiht down on him - just in case he happened to need soeway that led todown froer than they’d been at the beginning of et in my way They were the result of the h Mount Shrak, and they grew perceptibly longer every century I made a mental note to take a club to them some day, when I had a little more ti when I cae open chaht it best not to disturb hi our alternates into the tag-end of our cycle had been the right one, but it was growing increasingly obvious that they’d brought some of their previous memories with them I sat down in my chair near the table where Ashad ate his s I hadn’t anticipated I rather ruefully admitted to myself that I probably should have examined our alternates a bit more closely before I’d awakened them, but it was a little late now I’d assuers in the Doate parents, so I’d been more than a little startled when Veltan had told me that Yaltar’s dream had predicted the war in Zelana’s Domain I’d assumed that it’d be Eleria who’d warn us Then when the real crisis arose, Yaltar had shoved prediction aside and had gone straight into action with those twin volcanos That strongly suggested that Yaltar and Eleria had been very close during their previous cycle - a suggestion confirmed by the fact that Yaltar had occasionally referred to Eleria by her true name, ‘Balacenia’, and Eleria in like manner had spoken of ‘Vash’ -Yaltar’s true narand plan" of ht about it, the more it seeh had been consciouslyits servants over the past hundred or so eons The oes on all the ties in the environment Sometimes these modifications work, and soht choice survives, but the wrong choice leads to extinction In most cases, survival depends on sheer luck
Before the arrival of the hairy predecessors of the creaturescall men, vast numbers of creatures had arisen in the Land of Dhrall, but at so turn and had died out
The Vlagh, unfortunately, had been ah had been little more than a somewhat exotic insect which had nested near the shore of that inland sea which in the far distant past had covered what is now the Wasteland A gradual clih, driven by necessity, had begun tothe broiling sunlight a matter of absolute necessity, but as closely as I’ve been able to deterroped around in search of a solution, but had relied on observation instead I’m almost positive that it had been at this point that ‘the overiven the servants of the Vlagh an enorle one of theh’s species at that tiround - most probably up in the trees Several other species, however, had lived beneath the surface of the ground, and ‘the seekers of knowledge’ - spies, if you wish - had observed those neighbors and had provided very accurate descriptions of the appendages the neighbors used to burrow below the surface Then ‘the overh had duplicated it, and the next hatch had all been burrowers