Closed Never once have I feared the night. (Reign)

[Torias]

53rd Summer, 513 AV Two bells after nightfall. With age, there always comes loss. I had a family once. Parents. Brothers. A wife and daughters. People, a culture, and a god I would have laid down my life for. After a time, despite your protection, all of these things leave you, and they take with them a piece of your soul you cannot recover. You see the meaninglessness in becoming concerned with the trivial. And inevitably, everything becomes trivial. But there in oblivion are slivers of light. Ones which were always there, but were outshined by the sweet, powerful brilliance of that which was fleeting. The small lights, you realize, are the things that never change. The qualities that reside in everyone, living, dead, and still to be born, that push the world ever onward. These small lights have become precious to me, and have all but replaced what I know of hope. I cannot help but wonder if these small lights are what the gods perceive when they look at each of us. Because once in a while, you get the chance to see one of these lights glow brighter. It is the most beautiful thing I can never describe. There had been many places Torias had traveled in the recent decades, but Zeltiva was one of his better choices. It was the site of a recent plague, striking a novel sense of humility into the local fair (that would be humans). The nights were relatively more quiet than say, Ahnatep, but more organic and alive than the mechanical rhythm of Sahova. Quiet conversations spilling through open windows, the distant bark of a dog, the occasional wafting scent of dinner being cooked: it brought comforting nostalgia to a rotting Nuit. This night had brought him to the shoreline, not far from the docks, where the ocean lapped peacefully on the sandy lip of the city. There, in the salty pockets of water that accumulated in the rocks at low tide, were the aquatic oozes Torias required for some of his potions. It was not necessary to gather them at night, but he prefered the relative isolation of darkness than the piercing scrutiny of sunlight and citygoers. In the distance, one would have seen a tall figure set a burning lantern down on the soft earth. Wrapped in a thick, washed brown coat that protected his frail body from the elements, the four-armed Nuit knelt in the moist sand next to one of these rocky pools. A vial was produced from inside his coat, while a nearby scrap of driftwood was plucked up to help coax the coagulated oozes into the glass container. His coin pouch rang softly against his waist as he shifted. The peaceful rolling of the ocean waves provided a soothing atmosphere while Torias worked. Not so long ago, Torias imagined mountainous waves must have slammed into the docks and the waterside structures when the Djed storm descended, but little evidence remained of that now. Like an open wound, it had slowly healed, leaving only traces of a scar.