A Song of Deep Waters [Malthiel/Sohl]

[Marshmallow]

In restless dreams, he heard them calling. Time and time again their songs would reach him as distant echoes, mournful notes carried on the currents from the unfathomable abyss. They beckoned him forward, but always despite his efforts, he could never reach the source of the calls. The harder he fought to push forward, the stronger the currents became, and the further away the songs would drift. Until, inevitably, he was left alone in the deep with only his own song drifting back to him in broken notes from the lifeless, empty spires of a dead city.

In the darkness of the dream, a deeper shadow passed over him. Great and terrible it loomed, at once a source of both comfort and dread. He reached out to it, but it felt impossibly far away. It turned to face him, and he felt the crushing weight of its judgment. He called to it, he sang, but the dead silence was so heavy it smothered his desperate cries. All the sea had turned its back to him, save for the attention of this one shade. The shadow would sing to him, a rumble of thunder that crashed over him like a wave, filled with malice and echoing dark promises. Then the shadow lunged--



The dream weighed heavily on Malthiel's mind as he fled the city. He needed to get away, and presently even the deepest reaches of Lake Sommut felt too claustrophobic. His mind and body ached for the wide-open seas, the rushing currents and rising tides that were the closest reminders of home and comfort to be had.

He steered well clear of the port towns, avoided the tourist sands and the patrols of fishing trawlers and whale watchers. He travelled up the coast, where the smooth beaches gave way to rocky shores that swept and swelled into a great grey wall of sheer rock. There, far from the prying eyes of passers-by, Malthiel abandoned his vehicle in a secluded lot and leapt to the choppy seas below.


Hours bled away, from misty morning to shining afternoon. A storm projected to make landfall overnight darkened the far horizon, but for now, the winds were fair and the skies clear. Amid the sound of crashing waves and trilling sea birds, a rumbling song bounced down the craggy cliff walls and through the ocean waters. Something like whalesong it was, though it rose and fell in pitches and warbles and sounds too alien to fit description, at times too high and too low for human ears. Malthiel sang out his solitude, and listened to the bouncing echoes as he drifted in the blue.

[MP]

The sea, beneath the sough and sigh of the waves, had gone deathly quiet. Not a bird circled, nor a fish stirred in the deep recesses, and the lack could be felt even to the surface. Black-tipped ears swiveled, tracking the noise, and the tiercel turned a slow arc against the sky.

It was the silence more than the song that drew him. On a normal day, Sohl might not have noticed. The sea was alien to his kind, unexplored even in legend, and whatever life moved there beneath was beyond his reach. But life made a sound, gave a fullness to the air, and now it had gone. In its place, the singing soared, lowered to shake the very marrow of his bones. And it was singing, he was sure. Not like the hum of whales or the drone of human crafts, but a deliberate melody that repeated over and over, just above the sound of the waves.

Sohl made another circling pass, wide and uncertain. He couldn't see any shapes through the water. Couldn't pinpoint the source. It seemed to come from the water itself, and sometimes after the echoes had faded and the sound resumed, the singer had moved again. He followed, content to listen.

It wasn't like human music - no defined notes or rhythm. It reminded him a little of a hunter's song, woven in with the elements. But where Icarim singing complemented the silence, using it like another voice, this song seemed empty. There were gaps in it, and the waves washed over the echoes rather than complement them.

Sohl hummed along, trying to understand the pattern. At first, he repeated the melody to himself, singing a second behind. A low rumble that swept to a higher moan. A series of chest-deep booms. It was a strange melody, but he began to learn the patterns. Even then, the pauses kept throwing him off. Sohl began to fill the silence with a few improvisations of his own. A keen would fit well here, or a low rumble there. Nothing too loud - nothing to interrupt the singer. The elaborations were for his own sake, making up for the empty spaces where his instincts expected a song.

[Marshmallow]

Intermittently the song swelled in volume, rebounding off the jagged cliff walls when Malthiel surfaced for breath. His form was but a great, dark shadow beneath the foam and spray, barely breaking the surface before vanishing again. The current did more to move the leviathan through the swells than Malthiel himself. He was a passenger, drifting as the sea took him. At times, both he and his song faded briefly into the deeper reaches. But just as it seemed the echoes would fade to silence with no renewal, the shoggoth would return to the shallows, passing so near to the cliffs that he risked beaching himself upon the rocks. It was with only a minimal, token effort that he righted himself to avoid disaster.


At first, distracted by his melancholy, Malthiel didn't notice the extra notes that drifted down on the ocean breeze. Softly sung, they were simply a part of the echo. One more fragment among many that bounced back from the coastline. It was only in the gaps, where the song broke cadence and gave way to the wash of waves that this new echo became strange.

His song was never meant to be sung alone of course. The empty spaces needed to be filled to make the song complete. For terrible eons, Malthiel had only had his echoes to sing back to him - but these far away notes were different somehow. They didn't carry quite the right tones in quite the right way to be of his own voice. These were soft, odd notes that carried farther on the wind than the water. Just distant enough to be a mistake of imagination.


He didn't want nor did he seek an explanation. Even if it was all in his head, a hallucination brought on by loneliness and stress, the leviathan sang back to that far-away, feather-soft echo. The long moans, the trills and warbles, and deep booms that cracked like the thunder of an ocean storm rose higher to meet this second voice. And the silence between the beats beckoned at them to fill the void.

[MP]

When the singer next paused, Sohl's ears pricked, and his own voice faded. The song had changed once he'd joined in. It was stronger now, more deliberate. The pauses stretched as if to make sure of the silence. His first thought was that he'd annoyed the singer, and the tiercel drifted a few meters higher in embarrassment. He returned to listening - more respectfully this time so as not to interrupt. But the more he listened, the more pointed the silence seemed. Not listening for him, but waiting. It seemed to invite a second voice.

The masked face tipped at another swell of the melody. Sohl was curious. A little excited at the chance, and a little nervous. It only sounded like an opening. So when the next silence fell, he responded softly. Loud enough to reach the waves below, but no more. And this time, to be sure, he let his natural voice come through. He sang in the ringing accent of the Icarim, eerie and hollow, or else booming and thundering to fill the silence. The sounds felt right there.

[Marshmallow]

As expected of a figment, the second voice faded as soon as Malthiel had raised his song to it. The gaps rang empty once more, and that silence was now all the more noticable. He shouldn't have felt disappointed; of course it had been all in his head. Of course.


The next break in the song stretched on. The leviathan surfaced with a spray of water and mist, took a breath. As he sank back down, he heard it again. The figment, the second voice, returned. High and hollow like the mountain winds it rang back down to him to fill the empty notes. It was like a dream. He could sing to a dream, if only then to imagine he was not alone.

But... No. No, it couldn't be a dream. It had to be real, because the voice singing back to him was not Shoggoth. It was an alien song that filled the spaces he left. Alien, perhaps, but not unwelcome.


Glints of silver lit up just beneath the water's rolling surface, as a myriad of eyes snapped open with sudden alertness. Tentacles splayed in the water to grasp the craggy bottom and anchor him against the current. Still rumbling and trilling his side of the melody, Malthiel raised his head above the sea in desperate search.

[MP]

The sounds the singer made were nothing like his own, but they seemed to share the same intuition. Sohl sensed when to lead and when to weave his song with the background, and the singer responded just as deftly. It lacked the melodies of the human music he'd known; instead, it resonated in the chest, moved as a current around him. It was as if the sky and sea were singing back to one another, and Sohl's mane fluffed as he flew. He turned to keep pace with the singer, their movements as matched as the song.

Until the sea opened a dozen pale eyes. Until the waves extended in a mouth full of pointed teeth, as large as any behemoth. The song died in Sohl's throat as he saw it rising.

The tiercel whirled at once and darted landward as fast as his vents could take him. How high could such a creature jump? He flattened his mane for as much altitude as possible, and it was only when he'd reached the safety of the shore that Sohl dared look back. Neither his father nor his hymu had warned him of marine predators so large. He flew anxious laps along the beach, tracking the song as it moved.

[Marshmallow]

No sooner had he spied the golden shape lingering in the sky above than did it disappear, streaking off toward the coast in hasty retreat. It bolted faster than the leviathan's eyes could track the movement, gone in a blink and taking its sky-song with it. There was only silence from the shoreline, and the high edge of the cliffs blocked his sight of what may lie above and beyond that great wall of grey stone.


The song faltered, dying off with one last fading bellow. 'Wait!' his thoughts cried out in desperation. A warbling call chased the shape up and over the cliffs, an impulsive cry, almost pleading in its higher notes. The sound was threaded through with a sinking hiss, a whispering sigh that hinted at language but somehow fell just short. 'Come back!'

[MP]

The shoggoth's call was answered by a bubbling yowl that, despite the language barrier, could only be interpreted as 'no way.' Safe above the cliff, Sohl craned his head for a better look at the creature. It was still eyeing the cliffs, and even the higher parts of the call shuddered through his bones. He turned another anxious circle in the air. Laid his ears flat. When it continued to watch, he uttered a sharp series of scolding barks at it. He could appreciate an ambush predator, but hunting by lure - especially a social one - was just unsporting.

[Marshmallow]

Despite the pleading tone in his cry, the golden shape did not return and instead clung defiantly to the cliffs. It called back with a round of sharp, staccato notes that sounded for all the world like a chastisement. Or, in afterthought, an alarm. It wouldn't be unlike the sea birds that took, screaming, to the skies whenever he surfaced for so little as a breath.

In all fairness, he could hardly blame the creature for its caution, and in his solitude, he almost changed form just to follow the thing. Something about its slender shape and golden hue rang as familiar, and he was in sore need of comfort - though he'd never admit so much within earshot of anything living. But if he had seemed suspicious just for raising his head, giving chase would only confirm the golden streak's paranoia, and none of his flying forms were particularly quick.

With a disappointed puff of breath and mist, the shoggoth slumped boneless against the rocky foot of the cliff. He did not shift, nor did he depart for the deeper waters. As he rested motionless in the surf, Malthiel altered the colouration and patterns of his skin. The abyss-dark blue-black mottle brightened, morphing into tones of pale, earthy grey streaked through with wavy lines of brilliant copper. Certainly, no ambush predator would go out of its way to make itself so deliberately visible. He hoped it would get the point across.

Malthiel watched the shape above and let out another long, whispering hiss. The sound pitched sharply downward into a cascade of chittering clicks with a peculiar cadence.
'I mean you no harm.'
The words were layered into the sound, sinking through a thousand filters until - to the watcher up above - it resembled a language both like and unlike its own. Understandable, he hoped, if only just.

[MP]

Sohl tipped his head at the mottled display. It was very colorful, showing off like that, and it didn't seem especially predatory slumped against the rocks. He hoped it didn't beach itself there. But he wasn't eager to get closer either. Teeth were teeth, and the sight of the tentacles sent an unpleasant chill through his gut. He stayed safely back along the cliff. But he did tip his head that much further at the clicking sounds. The tone was strangely intuitive. Friendly. The creature didn't mean to harm him - at least it said.

So while he didn't go closer, Sohl hesitated. It had been good to share a song, and surely there wasn't harm as long as he was out of jaw's reach. After a tentative moment, he raised his voice again. A peace offering. The eerie song, silvery and booming in turns, threaded over the wind once more. Weak at first, but gaining strength, and woven in with the sound of the surf.