"It is always our self we find in the sea." - e. e. cummings

So many times I have walked along the Mother's shores. Each time is different. Each time She is different. Sometimes I have walked with another; often I have walked alone. I am alone now once more. But never has one walk been like any other. Always there is something She teaches me, something I learn. Always She restores the life in me. And I am grateful to Her for it.

I rise from my rest earlier than is natural for my brethern, after the sun has passed its height, but long before he has surrendered to the will of Elune, as She rises in her rule of the night, and all those who live for Her coming.

Twilight. An inbetween time, neither here nor there, neither day nor night, close enough to be in either world, yet part of none. None of my kind do thus, but I have taught myself to do so. The reasons are many. It is a time when I can hear best the whispers.... ......the whispers of Elune as She seeks to teach me of Her ways, answer the questions of my heart with Her wisdom, fulfills Her promises for my people to me. .....the whispers of the Mother and the creatures living within Her boundaries, as she rolls on and on, never ceasing, but never the same, always changing but always there. .....the whispers of mine own and those whose lives I guard with my very existence. ....the whispers of the times, times passed, times to come, times present, times of prosperity and peace, times of famine and suffering, times of destruction and wars and rumours of wars. .....and the whispers of the silence.

I love the silence most of all. It is my silence, my time of quiet, of listening, for never is the Mother silent, always she has something to say, in the sound of her constant waves. And it is good to listen. I walk along the sands in my silence, my essence drinking in from the Mother all that I am, all that She grants me to be, and I am who I am meant to be....who I was born to be....who I was named to be even before I was born....a Child of the Sea....a Child of Elune.... .....of God. I do not have to think on this. I just know it. I become it. I am One with it. The great Elune and I become One. And it always takes me by surprise, that Elune should choose me for such, that I should be part of Her great plan, called to do Her biding, and be Her child, but it always and faithfully comes back around to be....this. The two become One. And I, unworthy to be, but made new because of who She is, stand forth in gratutude, as She loves me. Loves.....me..... She first loves me. She first.

Some days I walk along the sand. Some days I merely stand in the Mother's presence and gaze upon her beauty. On this day, I feel the need to touch the life of her sparkling waters and so I walk into them, smiling as they warm and caress my body. I turn and walk along in the sea where the waves begin their metamorphasis, commanded by Elune to turn inside out, turn from the dark to the white light, exploding with a fury of chaos as the choice is presented to them....change from your gentle, swelling waters into something else, something different, something they never thought they would become....or could become....all in the name of their own preservation....their salvation....for as they bend to Elune's will.....repenting....She pulls them back from certain death as they would surely perish, lying separated and alone, upon the shore with the the sun's burning desires beating down upon them. But they have chosen. And so Elune pulls them back into her greatest creation of this earth, this world, that She has caused to come into being....the sea....and they become One with the Mother again.

Soon the Mother brings to me her treasures and the waters around and behind me become filled with her life, making more ripples in the waves as they get closer to me. There are tiny fish and larger ones, small eels and sea urchins, jellyfish and manta rays, all swimming in harmony, and just to my left, dolphins play along the line of the waves, jumping the foamy barrier, for no other reason than to exhibit their sheer joy at being alive. My precious friends! They all have come to keep me company, and I laugh briefly as they swirl around, jockeying for position, each trying to get closer to my skin and brush against it, or swim against the fingers of my hands as they trail along the top of the water. It seems the whole of Mother's bounty, every creature within Her creation, has come! I should be euphoric with the love they bring and share with me!

I am, but it is fleeting, like a firefly in a jar on a summer's eve...I cannot keep it within me too long...its brilliance begins to fade with each pulsation of flash, and if not let loose, dies altogether to the dark. The joy dissipates and I cannot bid it stay. It is like there is a kernel of deep hardness growing inside, threatening to take me over, push me down and hold me under. The brightness of the afternoon fades, in syncopation with my mood, as clouds of purple swell within the skies. I stop, and face the vastness of the ocean - the beloved Mother - as she rolls and trembles, darkening with each crashing wave. I stand alone, eyes closed, head bent against the rising wind, asking Elune for what I need.

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"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

So it was the Eye of Ysera itself that Tyrande Whisperwind stole as she escaped the clutches of the mighty dragon and the Emerald Dream. Fashioned in the form of a precious silver and mithril bracelet, dragons were etched into the bands, and directly in the center, lay a perfectly round multi-faceted emerald....the Eye of Ysera.

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And while Tryande thought this to be a crushing defeat for the Dragon Dreamkeeper, in a way, she played the part that Ysera would have had her play, all along. Dissention, jealousy and mistrust were running rampant in the midst of the Kaldorei leadership, namely Tyrande and three of her Sons whom had joined with her to govern Aear Alda and be protectors to the Kingdom of Tides. None could trust the other, sure that their presence in the realm was for personal gain and glory, and not for the good of the whole. Tyrande sought to soothe the chaffing by equalizing the responsibilities, a balancing of power, hoping it would lead to a balancing of wills (very strong ones, ah, so much testosterone!) and an equilateral bond of governance. Some of this was of her own doing, for try as she might, she could not conceal her greater affection for her youngest son, the one called the Beautiful Blade, and this was known to the other two, as it was indeed throughout all the Kaldorei. She loved them all, but for Iniev, there was something set apart....for wounded in spirit and broken in heart even as he was, his was the surest, the truest, the most divine heart she had ever known. There was an arrogance to him, yet a mystery, fed by great intelligence, coupled with the strongest will of honor of any of the Kaldorei warriors, present or past. Truth be told, there was more than his own mystery, there was also one that Tyrande held deep within, so deep that not even Iniev himself suspected its existence and Tyrande kept it that way, for to have him or anyone learn of it, would destroy the alliance of her Sons, as well as possibly the rest of the heart of Iniev, what was left of it, and that, Tyrande could never bear. So she kept her mystery close to her heart and breathed not thought into it, lest any of her Sons probe her mind.

Because Iniev was her favorite, and because there was also a special relationship between Iniev and his brother Cestawan, and because the Third Blade recently returned to the Kaldorei after hundreds of years of exile for a wrong-doing he did not commit (and because in the meantime he had amassed and now commanded an army of quite considerable strength and power, not to mention he had also become a dragon-rider, something only one other elf in all the Kaldorei presently could accomplish, and that being Tyrande), in an effort to equate all things between her three Sons, Tyrande gave the Eye of Ysera to the Third Son. That proved to be disasterous. Iniev immediately became defensive to the point of paranoia, suspecting everyone of turning against him, Cestawan was overwrough to the point of serious illness and vacated his place at the alliance in deference to his own health (a position Tyrande was not opposed to), and Number Three Son just had a pissy nature that nothing seemed able to improve, let alone some stupid silver bracelet that only clanged against the hilt of his fighting sword. Sheesh!! Let anything interfere with a guy's sparring and you just get one foul-mooded (and foul-mouthed) Son.

Such ripples of discontent between Tyrande and her three sons sent waves of distress throughout the collective consciousness of all the Kaldorei people. The great strength of the Kaldorei is their affinity one for the other, their bond, which is a consciousness of all of them together, yet it can also be their Achilles heel. Through that bond flows their very life, from one to the other. The disharmony and distrust rampant in the Temple of Elune could not be disquised or contained for long and soon all the night elves were feeling its effects. Periodically Ysera used her "Eye" to scan the situation within Aear Alda and soon she, too, had learned of the serious rift occurring among the Kaldorei. During one particular difficult counsel meeting, it all unravelled. The Third Blade walked out of the counsel, effectively vacating his seat, taking his army with him....and the Eye of Ysera bracelet that his mother had given him. This so distressed Cestawan that he vacated his seat and left the Great Tree elfdom as well, vowing not to return until a lasting truce was in place and the Kaldorei were at peace among themselves. That left only Iniev the Youngest Blade and Tryande, who were not speaking to one another, he under the impression that the taking of the bracelet, Eye of Ysera, by the Third Son signalled his personal doom to forever reside within the Emerald Dream and Ysera's control, like his father before him. Ysera, watching all of this through the Eye, seized her opportunity. Her attack on the Great Tree was swift and efficient. The Kaldorei had little heart to fight against her, or put another way, to fight for Tyrande. With hearts so burdened, their magic was weak, they were vulnerable, and Ysera overwhelmed them easily. Most of the elves perished that day.

Tryande Whisperwind walked out to meet Ysera, admit defeat and surrender, in order to stop complete annilation of her race, but Ysera wanted only one thing from her: the Eye. Tyrande had to tell her that she no longer possessed it. Ysera was furious, naturally, and reached out to impale the defeated Leader with her immense talons, but Iniev stepped between them. Over Tryande's screams, Ysera took his offering, but chose not to kill him, deciding he would better serve her by being imprisonned forever in the Emerald Dream, there at her beck and call, for all the rest of time. A frantic Tryande tried to follow, but one must have a dragon to do that....and without the power of the bracelet of the Eye of Ysera....Tyrande had no control over any of the dragons....as they were all Ysera's offspring.

Any conquerer knows that to truly defeat your enemy there is one thing you can never leave them with......hope. Ysera's final act, before dissolving into the safety of her Emerald Dream with Iniev in her clutches, was to destroy the elves' Great Tree. The Kaldorei were beaten....and broken....and homeless. Fewer than four-score had survived. But so had Tyrande. A grieving wife and now mother, a defeated warrior, to be sure, but her sworn duty was to preserve the Kaldorei race above all. They no longer had the home of the great Aear Alda. It looked as if there was no future for them.

And there was not. One by one, the Kaldorei that survived now succombed to that most fatal of all diseases, for the softness of heart that lay within them. Their will to live gone, they just faded away. And one night, as the first light of dawn began to streak the horizon, Tyrande lay down to do the same....never to rise again.

But that was not to be....not....then.....

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Tyrande sent the pod of dophins swimming with great speed in the opposite direction of the swirling whirlpool, as she dove from the safety of their backs and plunged deep into the cold waters of the sea. She hoped their reverse churning would slow the fierce velocity of the whirlpool, and allow her to literally get to the bottom of things. There would be no use to try and communicate with the dragon in its extreme state of panic and agitation. Act now and discuss later was her only plan. Swiftly swimming downward, she followed the vortex of the whirlpool as it extended down, down, down into the murky bluegray waters, waters that as she went downward, darkened further.

Nothingness seen, she swam on faith in the Mother who had always been there for her, who now surrounded her completely. She was sure of what she did not see, sure of what she hoped for....as her hands touched and ran along the crags and creviced wall of rock...and still downward she swam....sensing nothing, so far into the deep she was. Seconds, minutes passed as she went on, until the rock wall seemed to fall out beneath her and disappear, her hands were left to flail through the watery dark, without anchor.

Suddenly she was pushed violently by a jetstream of water. Instantly she knew this was the source of power of the massive renegade waterwhirl. On a hunch, she opened her eyes, to see before her a beam of light emitted from the undersea floor upward. Water was being pushed from this hole in the ocean floor powerfully enough to speed it upward rapidly and create the whirlpool. She need only to occlude the hole. The sea world would then return to normal.

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She could do it with an underwater avalanche of the overhanging ledge of rock, if it could be jarred loose and fall to the floor. But how to create such a phenomenon in the sea" How would she do it on land"

Her magic was in the music, in the voice, in the tone, in the sound. Vibrations of the same in disharmony and discordance as an action would birth a reaction of splintering, fragmenting, breaking away. She had seen it on a lesser scale when unhappy tones had been projected at Iniev and he cringed away in pain. Her gift would save the Golden One and likely save them all.