{"id":1191,"date":"2026-05-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethdoman.com\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2026-05-04T08:55:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T13:55:30","slug":"the-water-glob-and-what-we-find-there-writing-prompt-6-last-part-finished-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/?p=1191","title":{"rendered":"The Water Glob and What We Find There: Writing Prompt 6 Last Part (finished or not)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parts 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, and 3<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<Why are you here?>> <\/em>the mind probed again. Thoughts flashed through Cerule’s mind and he knew they were seen. Thoughts of the council, intercepting rumors of the elves’ plan to send searchers for the Star Collate Bone, of himself being called upon as the best space-farer among them. He couldn’t hide the thought that possibly it was also because they saw him as disposable but “aggressive” enough to interfere with the elves’ searchers at the very least. Thoughts of the council’s plan to use the Bone to end the war decisively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<That is why they sent you. But why are <\/em>you here?>> <\/em>The massive squid-creature’s eye rolled as it looked him up and down and looked beyond and through him. If he’d been on land, Cerule would have been sweating. And possibly screaming. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t screaming now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, he took a breath. It clearly didn’t want to eat him, at least not now. So he organized his thoughts then spoke them aloud, not from necessity but from a desire to arrange them properly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am<\/em> here for the Star Collate Bone. I want it for me. For my home. For all of them. I know that if the elves get it, they’ll use it to make the ocean inhospitable somehow. Chemicals, drying it, I don’t know. And I’m pretty sure the Aqui council want to raise the ocean levels to flood the elves’ coastal cities, their main front in the war. But I’ve seen<\/em> records of before; before we knew we shared that planet. It wasn’t peaceful, certainly; our peoples are too argumentative for peace. But it was better.<\/em> We didn’t wreck coastline or bombard reefs. We didn’t turn our industry solely to subjugating the others. All they see in each other though are their weaknesses and all they see in themselves are their strengths. And I am both and neither. I have the strengths and weaknesses of both; I have none of the strengths or weaknesses of either. And so I am alone. They claim otherwise but I am apart, but that lets me see. What do I<\/em> want the Star Collate Bone for? I want to use it to take away their toys and make them talk.<\/em> Or, barring that, separate them from each other until they learn to play nicely.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eye watched unblinkingly as Cerule made his speech. There was a pause, broken only by the swish of water and the occasional bubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<You are angry with them<\/em>.>><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m resigned,” Cerule said. He thought of his burning anger in his youth, then his desperation in his young adulthood. He was growing past all that, he believed. “I’m not at peace with them but I find it difficult to believe they will change on their own, and certainly not if one side has an overwhelming advantage.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<What when you have the power?>><\/em> Images flooded back into him; images of his planet with himself, holding something bright in his palms, commanding mountains to rise to separate the nations, exploding war machines, sending wind to repulse attackers. There was an allurement to the images but Cerule found himself shying back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No. No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to be in charge. I want a small house on the beach so I can study and live in peace, but I will not have the peace for that if they get what they want. You want to know why I’m here? To stop either of them being first to claim it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a rumble through the water that shook Cerule’s bones within him. <<Very well. Return it to me when you are done. It created this world you see. It created me when I was but small. It is dear to me.>><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cerule executed an Aqui bow as well as he could nearly engulfed within a tentacle. “I will,” he swore with his words and his mind. Another arm of the enormous creature reached past him, then returned, holding in its grasp a band of sorts. It looked like woven seaweed, and at its center hung a bone. It was smaller than Cerule’s palm and seemed etched with a swirling pattern like a flower. The bone of some ancient creature that had somehow amassed power on a cosmic level to bring a dream to life, to shift the atoms and molecules of the space around it to the will of its bearer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<I used it foolishly in my youth,>><\/em> the mind returned. <<It will serve you ill if you do so as it did me. I learned. Heed me and learn without foolhardy mistakes.<\/em>>> Cerule’s mind flooded with images and knowledge. Knowledge of ecosystems and how they churned. Knowledge of weather patterns and ocean currents, of their ebb and flow and their interactions. Knowledge of how a misstep can cause chaos on a global scale. His mind throbbed so that he didn’t notice as the embracing tentacle released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<Be wise. I will see you again, young Cerule,<\/em>>> the mind sent, then with a swish, the tentacles and the eye were gone, vanished into the inky black of ocean that surrounded him. It was over and in his hand he held the Star Collate Bone. He<\/em> held it. The fate of planets, of people, of the future, rested in his hands alone. It was too much. He trembled. But the cephalopod had trusted him. It was wise, vast, and ancient, and it trusted him. He could try to do the same. Cerule summoned his ship back to him with his wrist console and climbed back in, venting the water again. Then it was time to return home. Home and to destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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Do not copy to other websites or skim for AI training<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parts 1, 2, and 3 <<Why are you here?>> the mind probed again. Thoughts flashed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,25,35],"tags":[977,974,952,975,20,973,465,972,549,132,976,978,726],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rough-draft","category-writing","category-writing-prompt","tag-aqui","tag-bone","tag-cerule","tag-creation","tag-magic","tag-ocean","tag-octopus","tag-part-4","tag-sci-fi","tag-space","tag-squid","tag-star","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefrancofamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}