A long-eared rag doll in a wooden short-boat glided along the ocean, not from a current, but because of magic. Its user, a young elven child with short, brown hair and big, blue eyes stood on the shore. A solitary fish tattoo partially disguised by her shirt's neckline shimmered and swayed with the movement of her hands. Her mentor, an elven man with long and greying hair lounged in the sun as his young apprentice carried on with childlike frustration.

"The boat, I can't get it to come back," she cried.

The elder straightened his spine. It had been lightly curled against an island palm of light pink. He was half listening and half enjoying the tropical winds that cooling him on that warm day.

"Like your tattoo, you're a small minnow in a vast open sea. Your movement, little one, depends more on the eb and flow of the ocean itself."

The child stood silently; her light blue eyes were aglow. She was a good-hearted child who at this point in her life listened when someone taught her something.

"A small creature learns to ride the tide, not fight it," the elder continued. "That is how our small planet exists in the grand scheme of things. Our planet fitting into its place leads to greater harmony in the Big Dream."

This metaphor weighted too heavily on the child's mind. She frowned. "Can you just tell me how to move the boat already?"

"So precocious just like your parents," the elder chortled. "They wanted to investigate the Ocean's Gate today. I don't know why."

He looked out onto his village. It was a tightly connected network of colorful seashell homes, big enough to fit humanoids, and wooden rises that ran across the sea and connected to their little island. Some plank pathways were fractured and lead nowhere.

"The danger has long past and now we have to rebuild. We must focus on the future rather than the past," the elder remarked to himself.

As if by cruel irony, his body and voice were shaken by an underground tremor. The surface of the water wavered and rippled and the young girl's boat overturned and her doll floated up facedown. The young girl cried as it happened. The ground shook so hard, her little body fell down; and cautiously, the old man leapt to his feet. He listened closely with his long and veiny ears as he heard a series of explosions, each setting another off in a series of chain reactions mightier and more fearsome than the last until everything stopped. The old man and little girl stood silently, partially in shock but partially feeling as if their movement would be a tiny ripple that'd upset the planet's sudden instability further.

"I want you to come to me," the elder said softly, pulling his fingers forward.

The little girl was filled with the kind of terror that children experience when they cannot comprehend their surroundings. Tears began to well up in her eyes and she whimpered quietly. "I want my mommy. I want daddy. Where are they?"

The old man knew he could not answer, fearing the worst for her family; but soon, he did not have to answer at all. A mighty crack appeared and sliced through the pink tree's roots. The tree split apart, and the elder who was surprisingly light on his feet, grabbed the girl up in his hands. The crack traveled into the water; and suddenly, the fault line descended with water rushing downward like a waterfall.

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It took the little girl's boat and doll with it causing the child to cry out loud. "Dolly!"

The elder kept running, dashing along from the fractured island onto the wooden planks. They creaked heavily. The old man was filled with fear, but it did not compare to the feelings of the young girl. She thrashed and struggled in his arms, flailing in a tantrum of misery. Her cries upset him more than anything. Children's cries of terror were often the most disconcerting sound of all.

He ran onto the village of planks and saw others of his kind running frantically along them. They were all women and children. The men of the village had died in a tragic disaster one year prior.

"Jeeg," a middle aged, somewhat plump elven woman cried. "What is happening to our world?"

"I don't know." Jeeg responded, a panic filling his eyes. "This might have to do with the Ocean's Gate."

"Didn't the Tintels go down to investigate it a few hours ago?"

"Where's my parents?!" The young Tintel sobbed and pounded the air.

The middle aged woman's body trembled and her voice shook. "What are our we going to do?! I don't want to die."

"If the plates of Tarabos are sinking, try to get to a higher ground on your gliders. Those Sylphens have blessed them with their magic."

The middle aged woman nodded and dashed off in the direction of her sea shell house. Jeeg ran in the opposite direction to the Tintel's. He had a made a promise to Krithaan Tintel, the patriarch of the family. He could still hear the words of Krithaan in his head: "If we don't make it back, protect my daughter at all costs."

Jeeg had agreed, not knowing the severity of the situation. He knew it now and rushed into the wooden door of a tall, teal and spiraling sea shell home. Inside, in the midst of a very well kept house was a small triangular mini-ship with a pilot and passenger bubble at the center. He had flown in it once with Aerie Tintel, a young mother fascinated by technology from other planets.

Jeeg quickly opened the hatch and placed the crying child in the passenger seat. He moved into the bubble himself; and then, he pressed the fire button on the ship's lasers and blew the front of the house open. This was too much for the young child, who desperately hid her face in silence over seeing her home destroyed. Jeeg pulled the levitation switch on the mini-ship and it began to glide. It dragged for a bit on the ground before lifting into the air and flying through the burned and ruined entrance of the little girl's house

Jeeg took off in the now purpling sky, full of dark unsettling clouds like the stretched faces of demons. Jeeg looked down to see plates of the planet now lowering into the dark abyss below them. Frantic flyers buzzed around like helpless insects, and Jeeg soon realized the sad fact that they wouldn't be able to escape. He bowed his head in lament, regretting it was he who had escaped when there were thousands more deserving to leave this imploding world than him. All the while, the young child bawled, her voice growing quite hoarse, not realizing that no matter how loud she screamed it would not bring her parents, or anyone for that matter, back.

Jeeg took one final glance at the world he once knew. He saw the Acridia desert, a home to many adventures he had in his youth. He and a boy he was fond of braved the dry wilderness of sand sharks in order to find the lost Jewel of Acridia hidden deep within a buried stone temple. The sand of the desert was now sliding into an abyss like a freshly gaping sinkhole the size of half the planet. Jeeg looked and saw the once great levitating city of Argon, made of dark rectangular towers lit by magical gases. It was powered by these gases too and Jeeg had seen first-hand how they were made in his youth. It too could not resist the gravitational pull of the either and crashed into the Oceanita, causing a massive wave of white foam. Many sea shell homes including Jeeg's hometown were swept away in the enormous tidal wave. Jeeg, overcome with grief, cried into his hands for the watery world of the great Oceanita was home to the people and the places he cherished most, both living and dead. From the stratosphere, a once fruitful and prosperous planet split apart and imploded on itself, taking an innumerable amount of lives with it. The tiny minnow no longer coexisted in the big sea, it had been torn apart without cruel pre-mediation but simply because life was as a whole, unpredictable.