Overview

They say this tale was told by a Sev'ryn girl with red hair. Half Sev'ryn and half Biqaj, she sat around the fire pit with us on the Mwẹnz Tsäbtä and spoke this story. It tells us what we all know, that the Immortals are not to be taken for granted. Respect the land and the seas.

Origin

Told around the firepit on 23rd Cylus in Arc 717, this story was told to the Immortal Cassion, although the girl telling it did not know.

The Tale

The tale is of a Biqaj. There are many tales that Biqaj tell betwixt the sea and the stars, many falsehoods and fables. It is of a child, maybe nine arcs old who was with his father who was working as a navigator aboard a vessel. The boy was aboard the ship with his father, helping and learning, as our children learn to hunt and survive, learn the ways of the land, so too do the Biqaj learn the ways of the sea.

One trial, just at the end of Ymiden and before the second sun hides the stars for a time the child, whose name was Joq'an, heard the captain boasting of this ship and how it could not be sunk. He was listening to the grown ups and he heard his father warn the Captain not to speak so, for it is not wise to mock the ocean any more than it is wise to underestimate the earth or woods. The Captain laughed and called him a fool, a superstitious Biqaj who did not know the wonders which could be built with science and technology. A second time, and then once more Joq'an's father warned the captain to have more reverence for nature and the Immortals who guided them but they had laughed him off.

The Captain told Joq'an's father that U'frek himself could not sink the ship, that they would freeze in Saun before they sunk at sea, for the ship was unsinkable. Child as he was, Joq'an still heard it as clearly as you hear my voice now. That night, they both prayed to U'frek for the foolish men and left them to their boasting.

Ten trials passed of work and travel and then Saun came upon them. The second sun appeared in the sky and on the first night of Saun Joq'an and his father went to sleep in their bunk. Joq'an woke up, confused and hungry. That was his overwhelming feeling, one of hunger. Yet he was not thirsty. He heard shouting and calling and he called to his father who woke in the bunk above him and he, too, was confused.

The shouting was sailors, Biqaj as it happened, who had found the boat adrift, just off the shores of Desnind.

They didn't understand what could have happened. It remains a mystery to this trial. It was fifteen trials into Saun, and they had slept all fifteen. Yet they had not died from lack of water as they should, nor from lack of food, although they were both hungry. The vessel itself was drifting and had been picked up.

There wasn't another living soul aboard with Joq'an and his father. The crew had all disappeared, except for the Captain. He was dead, sitting at the table where he spoke those words and he was covered in ice, frozen solid, even in the middle of Saun. Even in the suns of Saun, that ice around him never melted. When they gave him the death rites at sea, he went into her frozen. Maybe he still is, frozen out there under the water, regretting his words and waiting until he is forgiven.

Links

Thread where this occurred: here!

Credit

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