On a narrow strip between stone and water, where unyielding tides milled barren cliffs into fine dust, they sculpted their castles of sand. Little grains that sifted through their fingers became their craft's material. Scattered rocks, smoothed by the countless waves, became their cornerstones. They channeled their effort and imagination into shaping their creations, and soon the castles became their life and their world. When they saw how high their spires had rose and how detailed and refined the reliefs of their walls had been made, they were so captivated by it that they desired nothing more than this constellation of vibrancy. In their souls was ignited a hope that their castles would last forever.

Then came bad weather, as it had many times before, and with it came the rising tide. The people watched in horror as the malleability that enabled their creations turned against them. One by one did their castles erode, and fall, and dissolve, leaving misshaped ruins at best and flattened ground where the waves crushed the strongest. They watched this destruction, and they felt grief, and sadness, and anger at the source of their loss.

But the waves could not hear their pain.

They started throwing rocks at their tempestuous foe. They began to curse it, hoping it would turn away. But it kept crushing against their shore and claiming its due, and that was when they first started to comprehend what they stood against.

They tried to raise walls of sand and stone. They hoped to stop the crushing waves with the debris from past erosion. Were they not standing against the force that brought forth this shore? If the rocky cliffs had long been defeated, what hope did the sculptors have? And so the tide washed past and over their little barriers, and the storm went on.

Then they began to dig channels, trying to turn the rising water away. Perhaps, they thought, it would consume the castles of others yet leave their own ones alone. But the waves were not sated, for the waves were a part of a world far greater than the castles of sand.

At last, when the beginnings of acceptance began to form in their minds, they pleaded with the tide. They flattered it, and they adulated it, and they asked from it that its flow become more forgiving. But though its warm waters coiled around their legs, trying to take their distress and wash it far away, it remained true to its nature.

So obsessed were they with trying to preserve their tiny castles that they did not think to raise their heads to the horizon from which the waters came.

Would they not see the might of that which consumed their work?

Would they not see the infinite embrace of the Ocean?

Penned by my hand on the 14th of Lupar, in the year 951 AF.