Lonethorn

I do not blame Miss Covington for her suspicion. It was warranted.

I can reason her dislike as to how I found myself, a common-born through and through, at one of the gates of a Regency League institution. How do I explain it to her then? The series of fortuitous circumstance that I had to make the most out of, that led me to the path that is Lonethorn University?

If she persisted further I would have given her four words. Four words that come to my mind. Four words that I would have given her to sate her accusative curiosity (or inflame it further).

"Treasures from the tides."

After my mother left me in Sorez, me and my uncle settled into a fixed routine. I did my homely chores as he set out for work each day in the city, meeting up clients and working cases in the Tabernacle Of Law within the city. The work made me not think of my mother and kept my idle hands busy. After my chores I then distracted myself with his moderate collection of books (of which are merely the technical sort, my uncle had no uses for novels nor penny dreadfuls, much to my dismay) Perhaps a month of moping had gone by and the lonesome corners and bookshelves of my uncle's abode had become too somber, even for me.

I think my uncle too had picked up on this dour demeanor of mine and finally took me on a jaunt by the seaside, the very same seaside I was warned not to wander by myself. I was the very soul of childish obedience then, though dejected by the departure of my mother, I obeyed when uncle suddenly appeared at the doorstep of my room and declared in that authoritarian tone of his that made judges and jury alike to hang unto his very words. "Anrique, come," he simply commanded and I obeyed with no further noise nor inquiry. We don our coats and walking sticks and made off one misty afternoon.

Our destination was the nearest beach, not half an hour away from where we lived. It made no difference to me, so long as I kept busy and this was by far the busiest my mind had been as I took the fresh new sights to be stored in my mind. We left the hilly and pastural scape of the city outskirts, passing through a brief copse of pines, oaks and willows that made up that border between the pastural residences and the outlying shore. The soft thrashing of the waves were not far off as I trekked that thicket. The ocean breeze was a constant visitor, always rustling the leaves of the few dozen trees that lines this part of the coast. They towered above us, quiet. I noticed the peculiar nature of not a single chirp of bird can be heard. There were places like that in Sorez, scattered about. A chill crept up the back of my spine and into my open neck. It was not a grand grove of trees and still it instilled in me a watchfulness from their brief shadows. My uncle walked on unhindered nor undisturbed by the silent sentinels of this miniature forest. I tried not to add voice that some of these trees had odd carvings and effigies etched into the very bark. I hurried after the older man.

A smile made its way to my lips as my gaze met the limitless shores that stretched onward. We arrived on a pebbly beach, the waters were calm here and the waves soft and tranquil as it met the stones. The greyness did not strike me as cold and hard but rather almost akin to a warm blanket amidst a chill rain, surprisingly comfy. Me and the old man walked in silence with no fixed destination, just simply relishing in the subtle silence afforded by nature.

Others were there too. Families on quiet little picnics, lovers taking a stroll hand-in-hand, and lonesome individuals amidst their own thoughts walking in line with the soft accompaniment of the waves. It wasn't terribly overcrowded and the number could hardly reach fifty that afternoon.

I cast my gaze all around me. I noted that from here, one had an picturesque view of the city and the docks jutting out into the sea. A myriad of vessels erupting from the grey mists and into them. The grand majesty of the vast gray waters had an effect on the soul of appeasing whatever inner turmoil besetting them, like any sight of nature would. So far, I saw no fuss as to why both uncle and mother forbid me from wandering here, not an half an hour away from the house. As we kept on walking, I saw a pair of siblings running up a kite on the opposite bank, their parents eye on them.

But what caught my special attention from me were the several odd constructions dotting on the side of the seascape; iron lampposts hoisted on mortar and stone set well beyond the coastline and rising well over two meters. They are old. Corroded and barnacle encrusted, the light they afforded were meager at best what with the smeared and faded glass within. But shone they all still. For how long, I do not know. They stretched into the horizon, parallel with the coast, a decent gap of about ten or twenty meters in between each.

Were they a form of rudimentary beacons used by local maritime folk? Or to accompany night strollers in this part of the coast? I was about to voice my question when another piped in.

"See anything peculiar Anrique?" My uncle asked, stopping sudden and facing towards the open waters. The quiet surf gently lapped the soles of our boots.

I looked around and could not find anything amiss. It was just a quiet little beach with a few people enjoying the scene. I shook my head. "N-no sir....?" I replied hesitantly. I wasn't sure what the old man was aiming at.

"A fine day it is. The waters are calm. I'm sure if the same could be said of the clime at those Thousand Spires of yours, everyone would jump on the water, wouldn't you agree?" Uncle said. I thought on those words a bit, chewing them.

A fine day it was indeed, the air not terribly cold and yet not a soul could be found so much as baste their ankles in the water. Even me, who hardly a day went by when we lived in the Towers, when I didn't jump from the reefs into the aquamarine waters with a great splash. I strode out from my uncle's company, taking a few steps forward. It brought to the waters edge, the waves now smashing against the tips of my boots. Back at the Seaspires, I sometimes would spend the noon traipsing on the reefs on bare feet, letting the cool waters lap at my toes while I was lost in some fine novels my mother had brought.

I stared into the roiling waters. I think I could see into the bottom of it as well. It couldn't have been three feet at the deepest and yet already the grey murk that was prevalent in the waters of Sorez made it seem phantasmaly abyssal. My feet froze, not taking another step. A spine tingling chill crept up and held the back of my nape hostage. It felt like an illogical fear had me in its throes.

No, that is wrong. Not illogical. But inexplicable is the more apt term. As if some deep animal instinct of self preservation kept me from making that one more step into the unknown murk of the Greysea. Yes, that was it. And yet what was there to be afraid of? I saw nothing out of the norm. No warning signs of any sort that could offset this sensation that had entirely gripped my spine. But I found myself enraptured by the waves of the sea. It was gray from where I stood but when seen in a certain angle, such as I do now, It appeared as black as the pits of hades itself. Dark and unknowable. Deep and uncaring. As if the domain of something entirely else, outside from the vision of the illuminating light of day. One could not help but feel as if....something was there despite the evidence to the contrary.

I do not know how long I stood there over the water. I was broken away from the trance when my uncle's hand grasped me by the shoulder.

"That's enough boy." he merely said. "It would be dark soon." Then he nodded to the nearest iron lamppost, whose light seemed to grow brighter. No, not brighter but rather everything else slowly turning to the coming night.

I stepped away from the water, the cold gripping sensation never quite leaving my spine. I half expected uncle to leave for home but we kept on with our stroll. I looked back and saw a few people leaving. The family that picnicked had long since made their way back to the city it seems.

"What was that?" I asked uncle.

"That be the Old Blood of Sorez, my boy. It is good to see its grip in you. I had been worried your foreign father's blood would dilute the call." He said without any malice. I stopped myself from wrinkling my nose at the remark about my father. Best to let it slide. "It is an instinct," Uncle Arnao continued. "Much like the instinct of any animal in the wild, it is one borne of self preservation."

"H-how did this...'instinct' came to be? And why be afraid of the sea?" I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it firsthand. I never thought myself abnormal, though by Sorezii norms this was as normal as the grey seas and the unlifting mists. And how did mother overcome it and sail away from here? But Uncle Arnao picked up what I left unsaid.

"No one rightly knows for certain. There are those that says that the Old Call was some curse by some forgotten god of old, to keep the Sorezii from taking sail and trap them here in this misted lands, stricken by fear of the seas. While others say it is a blessing from a benevolent deity, a warning to be wary from the sleeping horrors that cast the mists like a blanket. The legends goes on depending on who you ask. I think there is a grain of truth in all of them. And the Old Call is not some debilitating illness, you need not worry in that regard. Did you not grow up by the sea yourself? Pass through the Greyveil without an incident? I think it only makes itself known in...certain parts of this world. There places aplenty here in Sorez. Trust not your eyes nor your ears for they can deceive you, Anrique. Trust only in the Old Call." The lines on his face seemed deeper as he told his tale. As if he was dredging the innermost particles of his being and making them laid bare. Maybe all Sorezii have in their souls this irrational instinct embedded. Maybe grouchy old Arnao Serrano hasn't been able to open his innermost thoughts unless to his dispersed kin.

"And as to your question on what I think the Old Call is; I think we inherited it from our ancestors. Do you know how parents discipline their child that it carries over unto adulthood? A habit reinforced into the very impressionable mind of a child. What if something, a long time ago in our forgotten past, it is one that kept on happening over and over again, a lesson that was reinforced unto the innumerable generations that followed. Until, eventually, it was ingrained on the very fibre of our psyche as a people, living here in these lands."

"A lesson? So that we would be afraid of the ocean?" I intoned, positively curious and intrigued by this trait.

"As I've said, It is an instinct borne out of self preservation. Survival. Like a babe learning not to touch the handle of a burning pot. The baby reaches out, gets burned and learns to be wary of pots, whether they be hot or cold from thereon. The baby learns to be afraid of the pot, to be wary of it. The Old Call is akin to that instinct. Now imagine it, Anrique. An entire period in our history as a people, a period in which we became afraid of the very ocean that it carried on to our descendants. An instinct drilled to the very subconscious of our people. I ask this what could have such a thing? To warrant such fear for the greywaters?" He didn't speak for a time after that.

We kept on with our walk, neither saying anything. Me in the middle of processing this amazing and terrible information while uncle had the look of a man gazing way beyond the horizon. I could scarce comprehend what thoughts he had ruminating. Clearly, the man had his own opinions and ideas of this uncanny trait among the Sorezii people. My own mother never told me outright of this ancestry.

We stopped in our stroll, gazing out into the seas. It couldn't have been past four in the afternoon but with the prevalent mists it seemed close to sunset. As I scanned the horizon, my eyes grew wide at what I saw not a quarter mile away from the shores. We had reached a part of the beach where the tide have pulled up, leaving the shallow seabed bare for the winds. The waterline has greatly receded revealing warped stones, eons old and tide pools. Down the distance, A few people were hunched over with sticks and buckets poking at the exposed sandbars and mudbanks. Do they not feel the Old Call at their napes? I thought to myself then.

"The Call can be overcome, mitigated up to a point. As I've said, It is not a debilitating illness. It's just a....'sense' for things. Like what those brave fools are doing over there," Uncle Arnao replied, already having guessed at my line of thought at the sight before us.

"What are they doing?" I asked the old man.

He remained quiet. I thought I saw his left eye twitch at the question. Time passed by but it couldn't have been more than just several minutes. Over the horizon, a vessel was slowly swallowed by the mists just as six others were making way for port.

"Us Sorezii can trace our recorded history dating back as much as 1,700 years, Anrique." The old man suddenly started again, completely ignoring my question, "And for all that time we could never recall or trace as to what caused the Old Call tingling in our spines. It seems that the Old Call goes back even beyond that time. All we have from before that period are folktales, myths and legends."

"Stories? just stories?" I asked incredulously.

"More like warnings really. It is all the same." He replied with the briefest noncommittal shrug. Whatever mask he had briefly laid bare was back on again, the same old gruff stoic exterior. But there was indeed more to the man rather than just a simple grizzled lawyer. Uncle Arnao had more to say, "And one warning echoes down the millennia, the kind of warning parents tell their children, and their children's children."

I could not discern what it was he felt when he said the next words, what weight they held on him, only that his eyes conveyed that I keep these words from this moment henceforth.

"Beware the treasures from the tides. Beware them."