First of Summer, 512 AV
Kavala never thought steps would be hard. But they were difficult, at least for her, who looked with a practiced eye and wanted perfection. Steps rose out of the sea onto an Isle that had never existed before the Konti had turned her magic and her attention towards it. She'd tried, at first, to make a long sweeping staircase up the windward side, the one facing the Suvan and west. But the driving waves that sometimes boiled out out of the Suvan made that nearly impossible. So the staircases went on either edge and curled back to the leeward side where waves would not knock people off boats or the steps themselves when they went to visit the island.
And as for the steps themselves... Kavala envisioned grand sweeping perfectly even perfectly elegant stones of lapis and marble. The only problem was marble was hellishly slick when faced with routine coatings of salt water. Trying to form it, she fell more than once, her res work making no difference in the islands construction if the steps were unsafe. Far more practical was the stone found along the shore in a dark black color and veined with green red and sometimes a bluish grey. Kavala opted for that and patterned the stone of the steps after the texture, for it was easy to work on and since she had so much of it around to know what it should feel like, it was easy to produce.
She simply produced layer upon layer of res, turning djed to stone, building up the layers slowly and slowly, working on one step at a time. Sometimes she floated in the water as she did so, working on the steps beneath the waves. But as she got higher, she perched on the stone steps she'd already formed, working on higher steps. There was two sets sweeping around either side of the island, and one leading from a landing to another higher landing. The northern steps were the double sets while the southern facing steps was one long staircase. She'd gotten most of the first and second landings done, but was still working on the sea cave and the chamber totally protected from the elements. The island was a season short of being done, and thus a far had been a year long secret labor.
She came here every morning instead of running the beach. The beach had gotten too crowded for her since Serrif had started following suit and running along the shore in the mornings. And she found working djed was just as exhausting as running. In fact, throwing herself into the island's work and Sanctuary's Within and its exterior had taken its toll on Kavala. From the storm, the tragedy there, she'd steadily gotten more and more worn, loosing weight she could ill afford to drop. Single mindedly, Kavala wanted to fix The Sanctuary and get it back on par to where it had been before, and this time make it far better. In a way, it was one of the only things she had to do. The child had died. Her contract was paid. Tasi was doing so well, walking and now talking a word or two here and there. She had volunteered in the city a bit too... grateful for the Council and its decision. But here, this Isle, was definitely something all her own and something she could control.
It didn't leave. It didn't die. It just grew day in and day out until it was done. And she worked on it.. two hours here, three hours there. Slowly it grew, took shape, and she knew it would be fanstastic, a real place to escape.
And so she worked on steps until drops of blood from her nose started interupting her work. That's when she realized her head pounded again. Another headache. Kavala sighed, gave the island one last look, and slowly began to swim back to shore. One there, she glanced at the sky... only slightly deep into the morning, not even quite mid morning , so she tossed out her blanket, stretched out with her hand pinching her nose. So using her bag as a pillow, she stretched out on a blanket she usually carried with her, drank deeply from her waterskin, and relaxed under the syna's light. She had to work to do, of course, but nothing that wouldn't keep until later. For now she was tired, felt like the quiet of the beach was where she needed to be, and well being in sight of the big storm doors leading to the Sea Cavern on the beach level, Kavala wasn't hard to find.
So she stretched out and drifted back out, hoping the headache would relax a little and let her get a step or two more done before she headed back up to do more work. She was alive, and thankfully so, but the depression that had clouded over her was always just lurking on the edge of her awareness making her think things would never be quite the same, nor would she ever be quite happy gain. So many were dead. A part of her, laying there under the gentle morning sun, felt dead as well.
