VALERY KONINGSBRUGGE

I wanted to scatter like all of the other packs, but my conscience didn't let me. I was hazy in the head, but my heart was purest and wouldn't let me sleep on this if I didn't fix the problem myself.

The Compeller had impaled countless Wayfarers and was holding the two iceberg foreigners captive in an impressive and sadistic display of dominance.

I got as close as I could to the platform structure that "Earl" stood on and had manifested from the water. He stood with finesse and I could sort of hear what the old man from the ice and Earl were talking about.

"Son," Earl said, "is that you?"

"Yes, yes, it's me," the old man sniffled. "How are you still alive?" The hand of a Wayfarer was clawing for the ocean surface, the person being split between alive and dead. It was a horrible sight and I put the Wayfarer out of its misery by stomping the hand into the water.

"Why are you so old?" Earl asked. "How can you be older than me?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I don't even know where we are. Is this the future?" If Earl was a Compeller, then his son was most likely a Compeller as well. Is this how Compellers are sprung into life? They are formed within the crevasse of an iceberg and are released when the last ice melts?

"If this is the future," I spoke up from under Earl's feet, "I wonder what the present looks like." Instantly, the water shifted and swirled around me; an alarming threat made by the Compeller with such disdain to who I was. "Woah, hold your seahorses there. I come to offer my gratitude to thou who have saved me."

This was a lie, in itself, because my gratitude had sunk with the Wayfarers who had died by the hand of this man and was not given the simple process of entombment. I believe that if a member of our tribe was not entombed when sinking into the water, they wouldn't become a sea animal in another life and remain as ghosts lurking in the deep sea. Ghosts that rest no more than the average human because they are constantly being awakened by their environment that ceases to haunt them.

Earl said, "Then offer your thanks and be off."

"Val?" the old man asked as he looked down at me. He knew the first three letters of my name which was strange for someone who had been in the ice their entire life and I had never laid eyes upon eyes before, until this very day.

This day in which the morning glory clouds have stayed in the sky until the afternoon, the period of time which our existence inhabited.

The pillars of water that held the old man and the girl up, cast long shadows over me because the sun was creeping away and so was the snake of clouds.

Earl's platform cast the longest shadow because he was front and center and acted as a line of symmetry between the pillars.

I readied to dispense a bubble from my mouth. I picked a small canvas from the foam in my mouth and wished to entrap the man standing above me with an artful grace. I let the bubble fill the front of my mouth and teeth.

I blew the air in my lungs into the bubble and it expanded immensely before my eyes. I unattached the bubble from my lips, directing it upwards.

It caught Earl off guard and his body slipped into the bubble as it smooshed against him. His feet tucked into the bubble and left the platform which morphed back into liquid and splashed back down to the ocean.

The pillars also did the same, the water holding onto the old man and the girl as they were pulled into the rest of the sea.

Somehow the bubble prohibited the Compeller's powers from functioning. The old man popped his head back up through the surface. He looked around frantically.

"Where's," he said, taking a deep breath, "Jennifer?" I didn't know. She had been looking rather weak up there and I had doubts that she would survive the water. The water that ate and tore. A calm, pristine bank that could be ferocious with its rage and anger.

Lash out on the world, it does. It complements the sky well. The sky has clouds which can also show apathy for us. Rain and storms bill the waves that do not hinder in striking down a fellow. We are in its way, but we are also the cause of its anger.

They are not violent per se, but they know what violence is and they can inflict pain whenever and wherever they please.

The old man swore under his breath and dove back into the depths from where he treaded. I wish I could help but I am useless when it comes to underwater saving, which shows that this has never happened before. I just hoped that the girl was alright.

"Get me out of here!" Earl was still in a bubble floating above us, the wind taking him nowhere which was a letdown. "You have imprisoned me in a bubble for what?! The bubble is prone to sharp and I will make it my damnation that I see you punished in front of the Floaters for this."

"You may try," I prompted. "And you may succeed. But I will have it so that you are punished alongside me. And the last breath you breathe will be in the names of those that float beneath my feet as ghosts rather than spirits! They were not in the wrongdoing. You are wrong in taking lives as if there is no matter and no regulation that stands for murder."

"Oh, weep your sorrow, for the sun is fading and no one will stand in the way of my regulation. And that is the truth, spoken with ease." He was correct. The sun was losing its shimmer and soon, night would fall.