Mangrove
The forest was thickly tangled even at ground, or rather water, level. The tree roots, rather than going quickly and relatively unobtrusively from tree into the ground, as in most forests, instead arced through the air around the trunk, cutting through the water and finally passing into the silted soil in a vague attempt at mimicking normal plants. The water should have reassured Qayyim, but it felt wrong to her - too close to the sea, too still and too covered in trees.
There were two reasons she was persevering through the unnerving place. She wanted to find Ikkit and see if he would tell her anything more of the stones, and as forests went this wasn’t really a bad one - it at least had some water so she could swim and hopefully the trees above were thick enough that the Wanderer would feel at home in them. The second reason was that she had heard an esk dwelt in these waters, though exactly what they were like she wasn’t sure as the reports of them varied in nature and appearance so much she wasn’t sure whether it was really one, changeable esk or several who lived in the area. If it was several, she hoped they were friendly.
Qayyim had nearly given up on finding anything or anyone interesting when she realised that two of the trees she’d been looking at for the last half hour were floating, perfectly upright and healthy, through the water. That had to be an esk, the trees here might be strange but she was willing to bet that they couldn’t move on their own.
“Hello?” She called out, her telepathic voice quiet and uncertain. No answer, not even a change in the movement of the trees.
“Hello.” She tried again, mental projection louder this time, more confident. Very slowly a pale head rose up from the water by the trees and dark eyes looked appraisingly at her. The esk didn’t speak, but she also didn’t get any sense of hostility from it - just curiosity. This was reassuring since the head was as large as she was - technically distinctions of size didn’t really matter as a spirit, but her mind maintained stubborn fears of creatures larger than her. Qayyim waited for it to speak to her, but the esk just looked at her. When it seemed like the creature was about to lower its head back into the water, she tried again. “I’m Qayyim, I just want to talk.”
The head looked back at her. “Talk about what?” The mental voice was slow, each word coming with the impression that it had been thought through for some time.
Qayyim paused for a moment, her careful preparation forgotten in the face of the stranger. “The...the wanderers. And strange stones, which almost seem to be enchanted. I’m trying to learn about both of them.” She watched as the esk slipped into silence again, though this time there didn’t seem to be any danger of them leaving. Rather, she got the impression that the esk was giving her words careful thought, and would do so for as long as they needed.
There wasn’t any warning before they spoke, they continued to gaze off into the distance as they suddenly started talking with no sign of stopping. “I have encountered stones. Four of them. Strange things, with more life than is usual for such objects. I cannot say why, not with any certainty, though I believe one was Seventh’s and so I returned it to its keeping, the rest seemed contented with the homes they found.”
“You have encountered Seventh?” Qayyim leant in, eager to learn more about the esk who had created her, and who frightened her enough that a hint of unexpected frost would send her running in the opposite direction, leaving her to piece together information on it from second hand encounters like this. Even then she was still nervous, her usually calm mental voice trembling.
“I was transformed by it. The Seventh is a creature of great power, even if it is mostly beyond our knowledge. Like the water itself, it is a part of nature with as little time for petty concerns of life and death as a lake does. It deserves respect, rather than fear.” The large esk paused for a moment, and Qayyim almost expected it to continue but then the great head sank back into the murky waters of the mangrove swamp again, with only the eyes looking out at her.
Qayyim was left to contemplate the esk’s words. Certainly none of her investigations had shown the Seventh doing anything actively malicious, and she had been looking out for that. Instead the esk’s actions were just random, unexplainable, and in many ways that was what upset her most. You could tell when a river was going to flood based on the conditions upstream, similarly even the most treacherous areas had a reason for being like that - hidden undercurrents, loose rocks or just normal, non-magically created ice. Seventh would appear without warning, sometimes transforming creatures which got lost around it, sometimes not, and then move on just as suddenly. Theoretically it was bound by the same constraints as all esks, and could not physically harm her any longer, but that didn’t prevent it from using its enchantment, and she never wanted to hear those voices again.
She tore herself away from those thoughts - they weren’t doing any good, and she realised she still hadn’t managed to get the resident’s name.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I am….tired.” The great head still rested just at the surface of the water, the trees which grew from its back making an odd island in the patch of relatively clear water.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No. I am always tired. What do you know of Seventh? What are the memories which make you so afraid?” The tired esk’s mental voice was calm, mild curiosity and compassion the only emotions she could sense in it.
And so she braced herself and dug up the memories - retrieved so carefully and then hidden away again - of finding ice on the Nile, of how she had believed it was magic at first, and then found out for certain it was. She skipped over most of what she had heard when Seventh’s enchantment touched her, and what she still remembered of drowning. Qayyim preferred to speak of the new life she had been given afterwards, the simple joy she had felt in her new body.
The tired esk listened, mostly silent even when Qayyim left a break in her narration, interjecting only when they had something new to add, and then usually going off on a long digression which curled around the subject, outlining it and revealing depths Qayyim hadn’t been aware of.
When Qayyim eventually left the mangrove it was a few new ideas about Seventh, slightly less fear of the Wanderer, and the desire to return again when she could.