The First Wandering of Water
The tortle called Water was hatched on a secluded beach of
Humik along with thousands of others, from a clutch of a dozen siblings. Their first memory is of sheer instinctual terror as opportunistic seagulls bore down on the hatchlings, horrible talons snatching at still soft shells, the squeaks and caws, the feathers and blood. The hatchlings, eager to escape the birds, hurried along the shortest possible path to the ocean's edge, but Water found their new legs weak, new body unfamiliar, and stumbled wildly about the beach. The gulls found these erratic movements difficult to predict, many attackers missing Water narrowly as they clumsily floundered through the sand. Water watched in horror as their more sure footed siblings were picked off, one by one, chirping pathetically as the birds carried them away, fought over them, tore them apart.
Water, terrified and nameless, felt their feet flop from under them and tumbled backwards, tripping uncontrollably away from the water towards the interior of the island where they finally came to rest among the roots of a great banyan tree, the terrible shrieks of the birds lost in the breeze as it coursed through the branches of the sprawling tree. “You must be Water,” a voice asserted, startling the exhausted hatchling who looked up to see an ancient grinning tortle sitting in meditation at the base of the tree, their friendly face hanging high above. The old tortle picked up Water, carried them to a safe stretch of beach and set them down in the gentle surf. “Find me, softshell,” they said. Confused, but thankful for the relative safety of the ocean, Water left the shallows behind as their grinning benefactor seemed to disappear into a sudden rolling fog.
In the next few days, Water found their balance and felt their muscles strengthen but often thought back to those initial stumblings. Refusing to believe that they simply got lucky that day, Water sought to rediscover and refine the beginner’s mind and body for which they had to thank for their life. Years of purposeful wandering finally led them to
Drybeak Monastery, where adherents of the trickster god
Sanska were taught to cultivate precisely these kinds of erratic movements and effortless stumblings in the smoldering shadow of Mount Shellsmoke, known commonly to outsiders as The Burnpile.
Water was accepted as a member of this order of monks by the great master
Roshi Stilldrop, where they earned their keep on seasonal deep sea fishing expeditions and trained tirelessly in the Drybeak techniques until the time of their
Second Wandering in their twentieth year.
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