It Came From the Great Water: Chapter 1

Here we observe the tale of a young lachin, torn too soon from this world. Her tale is grim, perhaps too much so for your young ears, but heed her lesson well, lest you follow in her footsteps.

This lachin was a playful soul, as all lachin of your age tend to be. Her amita was a generous leu, and allowed her and her creche to play wherever they wished, as long as they stayed away from the great water.

"Why can't we go in there?" whined the lachin, because in addition to being playful, she was also a curious soul, as some of you might be.

"Because," said her amita, with the patience of a saint immortal, "that is the domain of the water monster, a creature with too-long legs, a voice like thundering rockfall, and claws like spears."

Well, the little lachin had seen her fair share of monsters-- her werreken lived in one of the most dangerous regions of Adastra, after all-- and she thought this one couldn't possibly be any worse than the silverback or the lycan. So when her amita's ears were turned elsewhere, she broke away from the creche and made her way down to the water.

All went well for a while. The great water was indeed great: A patch of blue that seemed to stretch as far as her eye could see, until it met the sky and the two became one. She splashed around in the shallows, unwise to the noise she was making, and unaware that a shadow was slowly making its way towards her...

And suddenly, whoosh! A horrible creature burst out of the water, with too-long longs, a voice like thundering rockfall, and claws like spears! It seized our poor lachin by her scruff and dragged her under the surface. The scruff, as you may recall, is every lachin’s weakness: your amitas would carry you by the scruff to travel from one arare to the next. Our lachin was defenceless against this! It is truly a terrible monster who resorts to such terrible tricks as these. Her last thoughts, before the water filled her nose and the world grew dark, were of her birth-ken, her littermates, and her loving amitas, who would never know what became of her.

Nobody knows what it did with the lachin after that, but some say the water monster consumes the flesh of its victims to sustain its eternal youth, or that it makes a terrible throne out of their bones, upon which it perches to watch for its next victim.

And that, by the Moon herself, is a true story. It was told to me by my own amitas, and now I tell it to you, that you might heed its warning. Stay away from the great water, and the monster that haunts it!