Chapter 10 – Crashing Sand
The sky above Tsaya was alive with a dance of color, swirling in hues of pink and blue that stretched across the horizon. It was as if the heavens themselves were in a constant, shifting ballet, reflecting the turmoil and calm that existed within him. The horizon, glowing with the remnants of a day not quite finished, bathed the world around him in soft light, a serene yet dynamic space. He stood still for a moment, feet planted in the cool sand, feeling the wind on his face, warm yet sharp, carrying with it the tang of salt and an undercurrent of something else—possibility. The sound of the waves lapping at the shore played in his ears, rhythmic and hypnotic, as if the ocean itself was breathing along with him.
Ahead of him stretched a beach, endless and dreamlike. The stairs he stood on, made from materia, shimmered under the fading light, translucent and adorned with shells and bubbles that caught the light in a dance of reflections. Each step seemed alive, as though imbued with some primal energy, and as Tsaya moved, the steps beneath him whispered secrets, softly glowing with a life all their own.
“There is that aroma in the wind again…” Tsaya muttered to himself. “A new chapter weaves from the horizon.”
The wind carried something different now. Not just the scent of salt and sea, but a faint melody, a tune that felt ancient yet brand new, swirling through the air. The sand shifted beneath his feet, each grain seeming to move with its own purpose, its own secret rhythm. Tsaya looked up, and in the distance, he could see the large driftwood trees lining the shore. They twisted and contorted in the wind, their shapes morphing in and out of focus, merging with the gusts as if they were part of the air itself.
As the breeze picked up, Tsaya’s eyes narrowed, catching sight of something within the mist that hugged the shore. Shadows moved, rising from the water like ghosts, their shapes barely discernible yet unmistakable. Monsters—half-formed, but real—moved in the hazy distance, their figures stretching and twisting like the trees.
“What is that?” Tsaya whispered, his heart skipping a beat. Not in fear, but in anticipation. The air around him felt charged, every moment thick with meaning, as if he stood on the edge of revelation, a truth waiting to break through the mist.
His mind raced with questions. What could it mean? Was this a dream or reality-bending in on itself? He knelt down, his fingers brushing across a shell embedded in the sand. Its surface was smooth and cold, but within its spiral pattern, he felt a deeper connection, as if the universe itself could be contained in its perfect curve.
“Every moment houses the fractals of reality…” he mused, his voice barely above a whisper.
The waves crashed louder now, as if they were in tune with the rhythm of his heartbeat. Slowly, Tsaya rose to his feet, his eyes tracing the horizon where the sea met the sky, blending into a prismatic wash of colors.
“To see them at scale is the blessing,” he said, a soft smile tugging at his lips.
He moved forward, his steps soft, the crunch of shells beneath his feet echoing in the quiet. The beach seemed to stretch out endlessly before him, familiar yet strange, like walking through a dream. He let his gaze wander, taking in the details around him—the rocks, the scattered shells, each piece of the landscape fitting together like parts of a grander puzzle.
“It could be the rock on the shore… or the shells scattered on the path…” he said aloud, his thoughts weaving together with the gentle crashing of the waves.
As he walked, his eyes caught sight of a large, white spiral shell nestled in the sand. It gleamed under the setting sun, standing out amidst the beige landscape like a pearl hidden in plain sight. Tsaya approached it slowly, kneeling once more to study it closer. There was something magnetic about it, as if this single shell held the key to understanding everything—life, reality, the very fabric of existence.
“Each piece binds together the net,” Tsaya said softly, his hand resting gently on the shell. “How can I ever capture this prism in words?”
The wind whipped around him, growing stronger, pushing him forward as if urging him to keep moving, to keep unraveling the threads of thought swirling within his mind.
“I don’t want to say one can’t,” he continued, rising to his feet, “but one could weave and weave and weave… To never find the end of the thread. The doors get deeper the more we step.”
He looked out over the ocean once more, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath him, alive and buzzing with energy.
“The story opens with every breath,” he murmured, glancing upward at the sky, now streaked with intricate geometric patterns. Clouds twisted into shapes only to dissolve and reform again, shapes that felt both foreign and familiar.
“Geometry,” he said with a touch of awe in his voice, “you are a fascination. Fluid and yet bound by edges…”
The waves crashed harder, the world around him seeming to bend and twist as his words spilled out. Reality itself felt elastic, the boundaries between imagination and the tangible world stretching, blurring, folding into one another.
“The waves of your morphology are endless,” Tsaya said, his voice growing louder, as if carried on the wind. “Profane, static, and yet never still…”
Far off in the distance, shimmering shapes danced along the horizon, their light reflecting off the ocean’s surface. Aetheric crystals, like stenciled fragments of the sky, rose and fell with the breath of the world, casting an ethereal glow over the UV hills that formed and dissolved in the distance.
“The ripples of our myth,” Tsaya whispered, “fragile and yet tensile, bored into eternity…”
The sky darkened, storm clouds gathering at the edge of the horizon, hinting at the chaos to come. But here, in this moment, Tsaya stood rooted in the present, his body calm even as the world around him swirled with growing intensity.
“Washed away by the crashing sand…” he breathed, taking a long, deep breath.
He held the moment close, savoring it, knowing it would never come again in the same form. The wind howled, the waves roared, and the air itself seemed to pulse with life.
“Hold onto this moment, for it will never come again,” Tsaya whispered, his voice lost to the crashing waves.
The tide rushed in, swirling around his feet, cool and insistent, tugging at him to move forward, to embrace the unknown.
“From a single cell, we experience all that is…” he said, his gaze traveling over the endless stretch of ocean before him.
Possibility stretched out in every direction, infinite and alluring. In this place, form was fluid, changeable. Everything was in motion, and yet, in each moment, it was complete.
“As I stand on this beach, I see possibility…” Tsaya whispered. “Form becomes anything we can imagine.”
He closed his eyes, feeling the gentle pull of the waves around his ankles. To become what he had not yet been, he had to let go of what he was. The sea was erasing the known, beckoning him into the unknown, into something new, something different.
“I see much action in the waves,” he continued, opening his eyes to the endless expanse of water before him. “Much unknown…”
The waves crashed louder now, the ocean’s symphony filling the silence, carrying with it both calm and chaos. Tsaya stood still, listening, letting the rhythm of the world settle within him.
“When one can create anything that they choose…” he began, his voice faltering, as uncertainty flickered through him. “We must learn to trust what they see… We must let go of what we expect it to be.”
His eyes closed again, and he let the sea breeze wash over him, cleansing him, renewing him. Each gust carried away his doubt, replacing it with the steady beat of resolve.
“For all this is our journey…” he said softly. “The stream, the ocean… longer than one could imagine.”
His eyes opened to the sight of the waves crashing against the rocks, marking the passage of time. The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the beach. It felt timeless, this place. As though it had always been, yet was constantly reborn with each moment.
“There was a time when this garden was not constellated, and now there is a time when it was…” Tsaya said, his words lingering in the air.
“I’ve chosen this path that only leads to more unknown…”
Tsaya’s voice trailed off, his gaze sweeping across the vast horizon, where the sea kissed the sky. The beach felt like a threshold, a boundary between the known and the unknown. In this moment, it was not just a place of transition but an embodiment of his own journey. Every step he took felt like a crossing into deeper layers of existence, pulling him further into the mystery that had always been waiting.
His attention shifted to the forest beyond the shore, where towering trees swayed in time with the breeze. Their leaves rustled softly, as if they were whispering secrets of their own, keeping time with the ocean’s rhythm. The forest, like the sea, was alive, a living entity that seemed to move and breathe with its own purpose. It was both inviting and foreboding, a reminder that the path ahead was not just through water and sand, but through untamed wilderness as well.
“To stand for the forest on this ephemeral beach,” Tsaya mused, his voice steady despite the swirling thoughts inside. “That is the way of all things. But I put my mind and energy into those things that endure.”
His fingers traced invisible patterns in the sand, drawing out thoughts and ideas that had no words. Each line he sketched was part of a greater whole, though its meaning eluded him for now. He knew that there were some things that could only be understood with time and patience, like ink soaking into paper or the slow growth of a seed into a towering tree.
“Ink… kin… practice… and the essence of love,” he whispered. These were the pillars that guided him, the forces that shaped not just his journey, but the journeys of all things. They were the constants, the enduring truths in a world of shifting sands and swirling winds.
He looked up again, this time to the sky. The stars were faint, just barely visible through the storm clouds gathering overhead, but they were there—distant promises, shining through the veil of chaos. Even in the storm, there was light. There was always light.
“Neurological embassy,” he said, almost to himself, the words tasting strange yet familiar on his tongue. “The pillars that hold us up.”
As if in response, the plants around him swayed, their movements slow and deliberate, as though they too were listening. The silence between the wind gusts felt sacred, as though the very earth was holding its breath, waiting for something profound to unfold.
“To share is to bask in the light of creation,” Tsaya murmured, his voice soft but filled with conviction. Every word felt heavy with meaning, shaped not just by his thoughts, but by the very air around him. It was as if the world was speaking through him, or perhaps he was speaking on its behalf.
His gaze lowered, settling once more on the path before him. The large materia bricks that lined the edge of the beach were adorned with living sigils, their symbols pulsing faintly with an inner glow. They were markers, guides, perhaps even guardians. Each brick was etched with the wisdom of the ages, though Tsaya knew that understanding them would take time, perhaps a lifetime.
Shells and large hooks lay scattered across the ground, remnants of some forgotten purpose, yet imbued with their own quiet magic. The hooks, twisted and worn, seemed to hum with a deep resonance as if they had once been used to anchor something vast and powerful, now long gone. The shells, fragile yet resilient, whispered of distant shores and long-forgotten journeys.
“Quality…” Tsaya whispered, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Your timing has been here through all things.”
He paused, his smile fading into something more contemplative, more somber.
“While it may not be perfect,” he admitted, his voice filled with the weight of realization, “I trust that something beyond the veil is guiding me down this path.”
The words hung in the air for a moment, as if they themselves were waiting for confirmation. The sky rumbled in the distance, a low growl of thunder rolling across the horizon. The storm was coming, but for now, the air was still, heavy with the calm before the inevitable chaos.