by catch » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:32 am
Perhaps, before the poisoning of the Lake, the alien landscape would have been something more familiar, an underwater mirror of the world above, filled with thick forest of scintillating grasses and weeds, dappled by the light of clouds of fragmented water lapping turgidly above. Filled with flocks of sheep-fish, trout that could - and, commonly, did - provide any enterprising Myrkenite, and the Dagger, with something fresh and special for the table, and larger, solitary statesmen of carp and catfish, and here and there, the silent stalk of that river-wolf, the pike.
But none of these greeted the eye of Tennant, in his strange contraption. Whatever had poisoned the lake had done its job well, and there was nothing but a smooth, alien landscape as he descended, down far enough to make out the pocked and marked floor, with rotten vegetation and rotting fish scattered as far as the eye could see. It was a beautiful desolation, and the further he was pulled along, the more Tennant might doubt what it was he was looking for, for there was nothing for him to see.
Would he know it, when he saw it? What, exactly, was he looking for? A golden fish, a pretty rock, some sign that the Lake was still alive? An Eye, perhaps? For the conical gem, there was - well. There was a sign. Certainly, there was a sign. It would take sharp eyes indeed, and the flash that would meet Tennant's eyes was nothing jewel-like, or horn-like, but a treasure, all the same.
There was a patch of living. Just a little patch, a spit in the eye, a defiance of the poison that swirled around it and clawed with bony fingers. Verdant water-weeds grew, huddled and frightened, under a strange overhang, while tiny, finger-length fish darted frantically, to and fro, within their waving fingers. And the longer one looked, the more apparent it became that the overhang was quite deliberate, quite even, something that could, simply, not occur in nature. With the crust of sludge of great age and wear, and water-growth, it could be the outline of a feminine face, one great, pitted eye that jutted from the lake-bed, to stare blank and baleful at the sky, far above.
And, in the shadow of the face, a tiny portion of the lake lived on.