Frost 47, 122 immediately following viewtopic.php?t=4368
She smiled, letting it come to her at its own pace.
Glorbp Glorbp splashed down from the top of her messy black hair, floating about in front of her, upside down, smiling at her. In his garbled language, which Norani found herself understanding now, "Friend, help!" He was bouncing excitedly, though it was strange to see how he did so, for he was bouncing down, not up. Norani couldn't help but giggle. She nodded, smiling back at the excitable little elemental, as some watery aether was sent her way. She responded with an arm shifted back into its watery state. An image entered her mind, a drop of water. It was sent as a question, one she responded with aetheric yes.
She entered her watery state, feeling a large drop in aether as she did. Glorbp Glorbp slid into her form as well, and she felt herself lift from path, floating as the elemental had done. They raced through the lush jungle, until a clearing appeared and Norani discovered her orientation. Out of the boughs of the great tree that dominated this island, a massive and loud waterfall roared into a lake below, the mist at the base forming multiple rainbows crisscrossing the area. Glorbp Glorbp moved them up along the face of the waterfall. It radiated with raw power, the noise vibrations alone threatening to shake apart Norani's form. They raced along the top, up and over the crest, stopping in a branch above it. Glorbp Glorbp deposited her upon a branch, before splitting off from her once more. He began staring intently at something.
Norani knelt down, her watery vision seeing a glowing drop of water there upon a leaf.
A garbling from Glorbp Glorbp, "Become water."
Norani nodded, knowing this was Glorbp's response to her request for guidance. So she reached out, touching the drop of water, and willed her aether to become that. She felt her body grow smaller, her aetherically charged water flowing into the droplet, without it growing. And once she was fully inside, she still maintained her watery perception granted to her by this growing power and bond with the elementals.
But she was depleted entirely of aether.
A panic was growing, she was stuck inside this singular drop of water. Glorbp Glorbp bobbed around into her field of vision smiling. As he stared on, Norani relaxed. Become the water. She wanted to focus but she suspect... She stopped trying to focus at all. She stopped trying to think. She emptied her mind as best she could manage, and simply felt and experienced what it was like to be this droplet of water. She no longer felt small or insignificant. She was a beautiful and perfect structure of nature. She was warmed by the sunlight coming through here, she could feel the openings in the plant beneath her as it slowly drank from her lifegiving nourishment. Time began to fade as Norani slipped from thinking to simply experiencing.
She felt the world grow cooler as the sun set and the night came into the sky. She saw this happen three, maybe four times, before she felt the leaf she sat upon shake. Another drop of water had fallen from above. She felt herself sliding backwards, meeting the other droplet, instantly merging and increasing in size. The new water welcomed her and she welcomed it. And then they became each other.
Another day passed.
Another drop joined in.
And another.
Then the leaf began to tip. And the water droplet with the elementalist began to slip downward. And suddenly she felt herself falling, changing her shape, fat at the bottom, pointy at the top. She crashed into a tree branch below, splitting into several more water droplets. This was not painful for Norani, it simply was. And she could feel herself in all of the droplets, and that all were still one with her. Some slipped away and dropped, and some stayed where they landed.
Soon, all of the droplets slid down and off the rounded branch, landing upon the blades of grass and leaves of plants below. They quickly made their way down to the mushy, fertile soil, soaking into it. There, Norani became one once more, joining the widely connected water that gave life to the plants around. She felt many of them drinking up her water, while she felt more and more water adding into her presence, as she spread further and further through the soil. She could feel bugs and worms and all things in the ground drinking from her, some through their mouths, other through their skins and carapaces and such. She was realizing just how much life was in just a bit of soil as she soaked in further.
Soon, she was racing along, having seeped into lightly flowing rivulet underground. Suddenly she had speed, power, and she grew in both quickly. As she went, water all around joined her, as she carved through the soil below. This was not painful for the earth, but rather, helped it spread its own life giving essence to another part of its world. Pain didn't seem to exist in the elements here.
Suddenly there was sunlight again, as she flowed out over rocks, making them sing, her own waters singing in response.She bounced and flowed and tumbled along, forming into a small creek. She was racing along, curving and falling and rising and laughing all the while as the sun shined down. And then she bounced into a river, it seemed. Huge, powerful, unstoppable even if slow.
And then with a roar, she was falling. She realized she was the waterfall now. And she roared in unison with it, as she hurtled down toward the lake below. With an explosion of mist and water, rocks and fish alike tumbling about, she was the lake now. She found that she could feel everything. She could feel Astrid nearby, gathering water for Ruvaf, and Glorbp Glorbp there chasing fishes. She could feel fish laying eggs and others being hunted. She could feel where she met earth and formed mud, life birthing mud, and where she met wind to make mist.
Wind.
Her arche called to her, laughing as it always did with her. And she reached out, becoming mist, warmed and evaporated by the sun. And she was carried by the winds upward. She was light, weightless, nearly nonexistent as she floated and tumbled as a thousand million particles of water upwards. And soon, she was looking down upon most of the island as she was joined by billions and billions more like her, floating like a cloud. No, floating as a cloud. She could feel that she bore an immense weight as such, and still, was floating as easily as the winds move.
And a few more days passed, the cloud growing and growing, becoming heavier and more dense. Until, one night, a charge rippled through the cloud. Something changed. The storm elemental arrived, racing through every particle of the cloud, dashing through the winds and waters alike, changing all of them. Norani felt herself changing and shifting as the charge rushed along.
CRACK!
Thunder ripped through the sky, lightning flashed, and Norani was falling now, as one singular raindrop. She was glowing as she raced downward with a billion of her peers. After falling for what felt like an eternity, she splashed off of Glorbp Glorbp's forehead, who with a nod, yanked her out of the water, depositing her in her mortal form upon the ground, soaked, breathless, and exhilarated. She was refreshed, renewed, and amazed. She had never even come close to realizing that the world of water could be so complex, and this was just one tiny aspect of it. Coming up to sit upon her elbows, staring at Glorbp Glorbp, she smiled at him, reaching out with a mortal hand, "Thank you, my friend." She was crying, but for the first time in a long time, they were tears of happiness, of joy, tears of healing.
And using those tears, Glorbp Glorbp bridged the connection between the two, his form appearing in the menagerie of Animus forms within the Rune upon her back. The two were Bonded now, and Norani hugged him tight, laughing.
