[Quest] it is a perfect weapon,

[Random Events]

  what the water hides in dark and sand 

The oasis has not much changed in its thousands of years. The moon does not rule it; there are no tides to eat and recede from the banks. Maybe the spring-fed waterfall now cuts a little deeper into the rock. But some of the same trees are still growing as they have for centuries, and the same migrations of animals make their way here, to drink from the sapphire waters and rest in the shade of the wide-leafed trees and dream, perhaps, of what life might be like if all the world were as kind, as rich, as giving as the oasis. 

All that is to say, there is no telling how long the hurl-bat has waited beneath the crystalline waters of the lake. The fish there have known about it for a long time, and avoided its sharp prongs, though they gleam bright enough to draw them close when the moonlight strikes them in the water. The weapon has never rusted, and will never rust. It is as beautiful as the day it was forged (and how it wishes it could remember that day! But Tuchulcha had not been Awake yet. The enchantment came later, and there was a story).

The axe knows it is waiting, though it isn’t sure for whom. Every time a shadow on the edge of the water glances over the surface it thrills in excitement and sends the crabs scuttling. There is a woman who lives in the oasis, and the weapon has (many times!) wanted to call out to her. To ask for a story, or some way to pass the time. 

But it knows one thing with the same sureness it knows how to cut and scream in the air and taste the iron of blood: not yet. Not yet. So it sleeps, it waits. 

Until. 

One day the sun slants just right and it knows that She is coming. That today it will be held, and its many-carved suns will gleam again the light of the Solterran day, and its eyes will wink brighter and more colorful than the dull and plain white stars. Today it will not be alone. 

Help me, it sweetly asks the crabs, and they do (glad to be part of something so strange and different, though you couldn’t tell by their grumbling). Little by little, bit by bit (Faster! It thinks, We’ll miss her!) they pull and push and carry and drag the axe to the edge of the shore, where they are glad to leave it where the water licks up timidly over rock and sand. Thank you, thinks the weapon, and goodbye! 

It hums a little, to itself, eager. Too eager (some would say) for such a killing thing, but then, what good is a sullen blade? 

And then there is the small vibration of feet. A child’s feet, a girl’s. And the axe knows she will look down at the gleaming thing in the water (so bright, so beautiful, all sharp peaks and swooping curls! Never was a thing made with such love or such skill. Ask anyone.). 

It can’t resist. It speaks, for the first time in longer than can be counted, and its voice is not garbled and silenced by the water. 

“A-po-lonia.” 

---

@Apolonia might notice the crabs of the oasis acting strangely far before she notices what it is they are carrying in between their many claws. Will she notice the way the sun hits the weapon first, or will she notice the way the wood seems to be smiling. Or maybe she will only hear her name spoken against the sand. Surely it wasn't the wind howling her name...

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This quest was written by the lovely @griffin

Enjoy!