Lirran woke up long before the sun had risen, now he was waiting for his jailer. She would surely arrive before the sun.

He just sat there, in the boat, unbound by any barrier but the certainty of death. A swarm of hungry sharks circling the boat would have been more inviting than the prospect of the spiritwalker that had imprisoned him without walls. Maybe if his master had been as intimidating, he would have actually listened and followed his instructions and warnings.

Kaza returned just before sunrise. She did not come aboard, instead throwing a few handfuls of clams into the boat along with the canteen and the knife, then carefully placed a tool akin to a long thin bone with a small point affixed to its end, made of the same material as the stone knife. The look in Kaza’s eyes told Lirran to be very careful with it.

The water in the canteen was brackish, but drinkable, and Lirran downed it immediately. Kaza took the canteen and returned back into the depth, leaving him again alone. He draped the blanket over his head. By itself, the searing sun and heat would have been bad enough, but the stillness of the air, at times absolute, left him as if all the world had become a stuffy room with no window.

He opened the shells with the knife and looked at the insides. Raw clams were certainly not his idea of a good meal, but he closed his eyes and with his teeth, scraped the pink and yellow flesh from the shell, swallowing it all done in one quick gulp to taste as little of it as possible.

The knife was a marvellous thing. He had heard of knives made from rock, but this black glass was peculiar in itself, the serrated edges bearing marks of careful chipping and breaking, it drew his gaze.

After having eaten all of the clams, he felt more satiated than he had thought, but also struggled to calm his stomach. He looked at the empty shells. These would apparently be his material. He picked up the other tool Kaza had left his with. It would certainly be useful for scratching the shells, maybe even drill a hole if he twisted it. He ran both tools across the ridges of a clam shell, then along, then across again. Whenever making powder or paste for his old master, he would try to feel the material and the tool meet for the first time and the hundredth time, the leaves and seeds grinding between the rock of mortar and pistil. When he absentmindedly moved stone over stone, he could feel the vibrations through his bones, noise in the background, and let his mind rise higher, meditate on both separation and unity of mental and material.

What united him here and in the mental realm? Just days ago, it was despair, a weakness of both, a paralyzing acceptance and the certain knowledge that it was over for him, that there was nothing but despair when looking back or looking forth. Kaza threw that certain knowledge into question, like the floor of a ship was not truly solid and dependable, as it could be thrown into uncertainty by a wave at any moment.

He still had nothing in his past to build up, just an uncertain future. Flight from the past into uncertain future, like a ship adrift at sea, unsure where winds and currents would bring him, and unsure what the denizens of the deep would do with his corpse.

He looked at his hand, imagined where Kaza’s bladed mouth would tear apart bone, muscle and tendon, imagined her tongue stripping away his body layer by layer. It wasn’t pain he imagined, just the process of flesh separating and being churned, his self disappearing bite by bite. What kept him from giving up this task she had given him and telling her to do it? What motivated him to carve this self he did not know? The excitement to see beyond the material world? To behold the grand design from the outside? It tantalized him little for some reason. In the end he was still a horrid thing to let live.

Her tears appeared to him. The fear in her eyes when she realized the betrayal.

Waerloga! Oathbreaker!

He closed his eyes to his past. There was nothing to build upon there.

The last light of the day had vanished when Kaza returned with a filled canteen and a fish that was at least four feet long, less than five inches high and completely silver, like a living cutlass. He had done little with the shells except trace straight lines and Kaza was visibly upset. She slithered on board and stood up before him, a spindly figure clad in wet, pale flesh towering above him. Her face and eyes, as foreign to his knowledge of humans as they could be, showed disappointment with him, her black eyes looked at him from a face that seemed almost glowing with the light of approaching night. She made only one click sound and pointed to his blanket, then she dropped backwards into the water. The message was obvious.

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After eating and drinking for the day, he rolled himself up into the blanket and went to sleep, paying attention to the swaying of the boat, reminding him of the real corporeal world while he sunk into the bay.

He managed to catch his awareness before he fell into dream. He sat up on the beach of the bay and soon after, a nebulous cloud of sea foam manifested before him. Kaza looked at him with upset interest.

Is this boy even trying? She wasn’t addressing him, she knew he would hear her.

I don’t know how to make an idol for me. For anyone.

An idol is something that has a meaning and can be identified. It is just for you, it only needs to have a meaning to you. You need to be able to look at it and recognize it as you, to remind you of who you are.

Lirran looked at her and tried to say something. But who am I?

Kaza said nothing, she seemed to share his confusion at that question for a while.

Frustration rose in Lirran, his desire to know grew and Kaza was just looking at him from sorry eyes, judging him and his ability to follow her demands. Finally, the built-up thoughts erupted in a single scream of all the words at once. Am I the stupid boy who followed his dick into the dreams of the girl he liked? Am I the bad apprentice who stole from his master? Am I the impulsive idiot who struck the girl’s bigger brother? Am I the runaway who hid in street alleys and tried to fake a magician’s mantle from scrap? Am I the deckhand who hired on by claiming to have seafaring experience? Or am I the lost survivor who wishes not to survive, instead to throw all luck and gifts away?

Lirran sat there waiting for Kaza’s final judgement. But it didn’t come. Instead, Kaza knelt down to him, close to his form. Her figure started to shift and turn as he didn’t know how to feel about this woman. He realized she was about to hug him, but in a much different way than he had hugged her before.

When she touched him, the bay of dreams fell away. He was in a soft place, surrounded by a soothing heartbeat, hugged by soft flesh.

You are all of these things and yet more. Your mistakes may be set into your past, but you are free to set forth away from them. What you lack is a goodness to guide you. What goodness do you wish to attain? Your future is nothing but a blank slate without your own plans.

Lirran thought of the fairy tale of wizards he had adored so much, wise men with more knowledge than anyone and skills which were open only to a selected few.

No, it cannot just be strength and power. Goodness comes from the restraint of strength, not its mere presence. Just like you need to carve yourself from the material of the idol, you need to carve your future self, your wished being from the material of what drives you.

Lirran sat there for a while, looked around him. He did not want to live in this darkness of emotions.

The darkness is nothing to fear if you know where it ends and you begin. But it must end somewhere even if it feels like it is inside you. Where does the darkness that drove you to dissolve yourself end?

Thoughts raced through Lirran, then he locked in on what he had found: Nowhere.

That is not possible. Do not be defeated. There is something deep within you that you wish to keep from the darkness. What made you reconsider being taken by the darkness?

Thoughts swirled in Lirran’s mind. He leaned back into the soft flesh that hugged him and kept him safe. I wanted to give myself to the darkness and the otherness beyond the threshold because I had hoped it would devour me and my pain. I was sure I would do, so I took the last act of will and decided how to go out.

But now?

I no longer wish to be a pawn to circumstance, just being pushed along and around. I want my own guiding star. One my will can follow rather than strike out like a blind, lustful idiot. I wish to put my guilt to rest. I do not wish to go out of this world with this hopelessness and despair in my heart that would lead me to evil, and neither should anyone else.

A sound surrounded him like a happy hum. Then I shall show you that, your guiding light of redemption and betterment. The light of a good life that will drive the pain of guilt away.

Inside Lirran, a flame was lit. Yes, I shall follow you, my master.

No. Follow not me, I cannot be your light forever, I can only show you my star that shines in the same sky.

Yes.

Then do you wish me to lead you onward?

Yes. With my idol complete, I shall join you and follow your guidance into the dark. Lirran felt the warmth of his flame and its light joined that of the sea foam.

Then go now, to the waking world and finish your work. By tomorrow evening, I shall inspect it a last time.

She opened her embrace and let him float up, to the surface, as he would breach the water’s surface and inhaled the will to live.