<div class="floatleft">(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/616430571526029332/915447053864300564/swirly_swirls.png)</div><strong>Dwyn</strong>(she/her) (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=337368.msg16018727#msg16018727)<br/><strong>Time:</strong><em>Year 1, Time of Growth</em><br/><strong>Tags:</strong><em>Other Happy Spirits, Wise Old Elephant</em><br/><strong>Actions:</strong>Change is hard ... and at the same time not.  Huh.  Weird. Zone 14: Expanded Tide Pools (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEtUf-WWsAAuzGR.jpg)<br/><br/><hr/><em>"You must change things."</em>Umm, no thank you.  It whirled even faster in agitation at the thought.  It was HAPPY, why bother changing?  But then it realized no, it was already changed.  Water droplets had continued to gather against its form and swirled in slow lazy circles around it giving a weight and awareness and a sense of self that it had perhaps lacked yesterday.<br/><br/>Okay, so maybe change wasn't so bad.  It really did enjoy the water. Maybe it should go back to the shore and wait for the tides to shift again.  It was easier to think there sometimes.  And so it drifted along, resisting the urge to follow the other spirits as they moved off to find their own change.  The Wise Old Elephant had been very clear, she needed to find her own place to ...<br/><br/>WAIT.<br/><br/>She?<br/><br/>It had always thought of itself as just one... it.  But she felt right.  Felt like her.  Ahh, there it was again!  A pleased little burble disrupted the swirling water around her body causing her to shed some of it as she bobbed gleefully toward the ocean.  It did not concern her to lose those droplets.  The ocean was vast after all, there was always more water, and indeed soon the skies themselves opened up dropping that precious liquid upon the soil so that life on the island might again continue.<br/><br/>How beautiful and wonderful.<br/><br/>But she was supposed to change it? How?  How to make things different?  Make them better?  Sitting in her favorite spot it occurred to her that she wished the glowing tide lasted longer.  It was fun to watch, to play amid the surf as the luminance built.  But it was so fleeting, and the tide flowed back out again... but what if it didn't?<br/><br/>That thought stuck with her for a few days as she drifted along the shore and eventually she hatched her plan. A bit further up the beach she began the work.  Each time the tide came in she pushed at the salty water, forcing it against rock and sand, displacing more and more until natural wells began to form.  It was hard work.  This would be so much easier if she was an earth spirt, she could simply TELL it to move, but there was a sense of rightness to it as well.  Water didn't tell anything to do something, it just wore relentlessly away at it until finally it gave way and did what it was supposed to do in the first place.<br/><br/>Day in and day out, urging the tide to push further up onto the beach, pulling the silt back until there was only harder  rock formations to form natural pools for it to settle in.  Likely this would have happened naturally, but what would have taken years, decades, longer? time was still a hard concept for her to fully grasp, it didn't matter really.  With her coaxing and pushing and directing the water it took only a small fraction of that to achieve the same results.  And it was beautiful.  Not quite the glowing picture that she'd presented the baby elephants with last time, but she thought they would enjoy inspecting the various bits of ocean life that washed in and settled, at least temporarily in those shallow pools.<br/><br/>She was well pleased with her efforts when she returned to them, not seeming to realize that she herself was larger until she closed to one of the babies.  Her first thought was that it had shrunk, but no, seeing it next to the Wise Old Elephant, they were the same size.  She herself had grown.  Interesting.<br/><br/>"Hello .. I missed you..." and she had, that also was interesting but besides the point.  "I don't think I told you before but I'm Dwyn.. and you are super cute.  I made you a thing.  Maybe, if you wanna see it."  Nervous?  That was new too.  What if they didn't like it?  What if she had<em>ruined</em>part of the island.  No, it would be fine, who didn't love little pools?