<strong>Eshalu - wondering what it all means</strong><br/><br/>The sudden disappearance of the apparition startled her. She felt the tenuous mental link joining her with the presence who had clearly last drawn breath in ages past sever. Voices, sensations, barely intelligible memories all fading into a spiral of forgetfulness. Eshalu rose and limped back to the riverbank. The current seemed to wash away that which she had so tenuously glimpsed. She found the world of humans difficult enough to understand, but connecting with a mind of a time so far gone seemed frustratingly beyond her comprehension. Perhaps Aeryn or Reliyian could make sense of this. She certainly could not.<br/><br/>Settling back on a smooth rock by the embankment, she peered at the sky, wondering, for an instant, how life must have been in the phantasm's time. If they met today, what would they see in each other? Would there be any spark of familiarity, any shadow of shared experience? Perhaps. Her People and humans saw and understood many things differently, but some - the will to survive, the need for companionship, an appreciation of beauty, the desire for another - were strikingly similar. Maybe that was simply the universal language of life.<br/><br/>In the warm afternoon air, she felt the water dry from her skin. She thought of Reliyian and hoped the sorceress had not become lost. It felt strange having companions whose sense of direction she could not take for granted. Her armour and clothing were still drying and she was half-conscious that the phantasm had interrupted her before she could reach her peak. But strangely, she felt no arousal. The hungry desire awakened in her when she overcame the spider had almost evaporated, replaced by the melancholy images of the past she had just glimpsed.