All-Patron Reward: Another Fragment of Phoenix

The earliest drafts of Fall of Saints, which became Phoenix Rising, started much earlier in the timeline than the final version, with all the characters considerably younger than when we first met them. This is nowhere more obviously true than with the smallest of our three protagonists. The first segments featuring him in the final version showed him gaining his second name... but in the early drafts, we saw him gain his FIRST name...

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First Name

Silver rippled above, yet more than silver. He looked at himself, brown-skinned curving shape with large golden eyes and a tail trailing behind, and through the silver he saw the Landhoppers, some in the Big Water with him, others on the land he could not, yet, reach.

Something yielding yet firm stopped his slow backwards drift. He wriggled around to look at the lacework of vines and weeds, held both by spell and by careful design. He blew a bubble in annoyance. All the Swimmers were kept in the Growing Waters by this simple fence, which also projected far enough into the air above to keep an overenthusiastic Swimmer from jumping over it.

“I’m not afraid!” he said to himself. “I’m fast!”

Not the fastest, he had to admit; some of the large Swimmers could outrun him easily. But he was so much smaller than they that none of them could catch him in the games. But no one would listen to an argument from a Swimmer who didn’t have his first name yet. One day, when he was a Landhopper, he could choose a name for himself, but his first name would be given to him whenever his own parents, or the Priestess, had decided he had earned one.

He just hoped that would be before he grew his first set of legs!

He swum down deeper, to where the net was anchored. Big, heavy boulders were sunk deep into the mud of the bottom, holding the net securely in the Big Water. He grasped one of the thick vines in his mouth and pulled. Slowly it separated from the others it was woven with. He pulled harder, putting the full force of his tail into generating more force. It pulled out even farther, pushing back the other vines and weeds attached to it, leaving a hole he could probably wriggle through.

As soon as he slackened his swimming, the net sprung back to its original shape. “Murk!” he cursed to himself. Of course he should have known. That would be the magic, keeping it from rotting away and from being pulled apart.

There had to be a way out, though. Rumors in the Swimmers always said that some of the Landhoppers had gotten out when they were Swimmers.

He swam down to the bottom, poking in the soft muck until he found a strong piece of wood, a twig that had just recently sunk to the bottom. Carrying this in his mouth, he returned to the great net.

The tip of his tail would just fit through one of the wider openings. Bending about the base of his tail, he was able to force the twig down along his tail and through the opening. Then he pushed sideways on the twig.

The net was forced outwards; he felt a twinge of pain from his tail at the pressure, and almost gave up. But he so wanted to see a part of the Big Water he hadn’t seen before. He rippled his body, and his tail slipped through a bit more.

He repeated the maneuver, again and again. Finally the base of his tail was through and he was forcing his rounded body along. It was harder now -- not only was the net tighter, but flexing the twig was nearly impossible without any way to turn part of himself in different directions. Suddenly it dawned on him that he could use his tail and push from the other direction. His tail shoved against the twig, and its front end pushed hard on his nose.

With a suddenness that startled him, he popped through the net and was on the other side, above the rocks that faded off into the depths he had always longed for.

He hung there in the water for a few moments; now that he was through, he wasn’t so sure. The stories about those who had gone to the Other Side weren’t all happy. There were supposed to be things waiting out there...

Then he saw a shimmer from the deeper water. A bobath! He loved bobaths, small tasty crunchy things that swam around in spirals until you caught them. With a twitch of his tail, he arrowed off in pursuit.

After the one bobath, he saw another, and then there was a whole patch of greenweed, which was not only good to eat but fun to play in; most of the greenweed in the Safe Place had been eaten down too small to hide in at all.

He swam out farther. Now he couldn’t even see the bottom, and felt cold rising up from below; he must be near one of the Places Where the Water Comes From. He remembered the stories about the huge creatures that lived down in those frigid depths, and suddenly felt a shock of fear. He spun about, wiggling as fast as he could, until the water began to warm around him again.

But where was he? The water tasted different. Funny, sharp, nasty taste. And there were wierd gurgling noises, and squeals and murmurs, from ahead...

A blast of heat washed through the Big Water, stinging his skin and making his eyes close. Horrified he turned and swam away again; he was near the Burning Waters!

But... where was the Safe Place, then? He tried to remember, but he hadn’t paid much attention when the Landhoppers were talking about the Big Water’s shape -- he was hungry then and chasing after a kiddamere.

Well, if he swam away from the Burning Waters and stayed near the shore, eventually he’d find the Safe Place, right? Well, there was always the River, but if the water started moving then he knew he was near the River.

He hoped it wasn’t far. He was getting tired. His tail ached.

Then he heard the noise.

It was a faint noise, a sighing, rippling sound, almost relaxing in its whirring constancy... but he knew that noise.

It was an Armorfang.

Even as he thought that, the monster came through the curtain of distance-fogged water, rear legs whirring, scarcely visible as they propelled the wide, oval-shelled body forward with that throbbing sound. Its forward legs, sharp and bladed, were extended outwards, reaching to give him an all-consuming embrace. Just behind those edged scimitars of chitin the polished beak began to unfold, ready to drain his blood once the terrible grasping legs caught him. The tiny black eyes glittered with hunger, and the middle pair of legs waved slightly, correcting its course, aiming claws and beak directly for his round, soft-skinned body.

He spun around, ache in his tail forgotten, and fled. The water rippled and gurgled around him with the speed of his passage. Yet behind the humming throb became slowly louder. Armorfangs were swift and, worse, maneuverable. He might be able to out-turn one, but only just barely... and one mistake would be his last.

He tore through a stand of greenweed; the Armorfang’s wider body would be slowed somewhat more by the rippling plants. Yet it wasn’t much to hope for. Some of the other Eaters of Swimmers might give up if he beached himself for a bit -- they would never leave the water -- but the Armorfang not only swam, it could walk on land, or even fly; sometimes a particularly hungry and foolish one would land in the Safe Place and try to catch a Swimmer before one of the Landhoppers caught it. It never succeeded, of course...

The Armorfang’s sound faded away. Had he lost it in the greenweed? He kept swimming, listening intensely behind him.

The humming buzz roared in his ears and only a panicked dive saved him as the monstrous Armorfang’s bladed arms ripped through the water where he had been a moment before. The creature had sped out of hearing range and circled around the weed patch.

Now it was a race, and one the Fang was almost certain to win. It wasn’t tired, and he most certainly was. Every muscle in his body ached, but the price of slowing down was death.

The hum crept closer, and fire suddenly lanced down his tail; one edged talon had nicked him.

The pain lent him a burst of speed, and he pulled away from the hard-shelled monster. Still it followed him, and his lead began to dwindle again. His gills tingled, trying to pull more strength from the water. Then, looming up before him, he saw the net that enclosed the Safe Place.

He couldn’t jump it. But...

At the very last possible second, he turned aside from the netting. The Armorfang bounced against the netting, slowed by the merest fraction, and he gained another few precious inches. The water seemed to boil behind him as he charged straight for the shore. Along the edge, floating on the surface, he could see the little three-lobed floating plants that dangled tiny roots into the water... and a slanted rock sitting, half-in, half-out of the water.

He aimed for the rock and went upwards. Into the alien air, pushed by his own speed and the slime-slick ramp that was the rock, and then down, bouncing on and over the netting, and down into the Safe Place.

Well, almost. Down into the brown mud of the Safe Place, covered in the little green weeds.

Behind him the Armorfang burst from the water, wings whining a song of death, and dove straight at him.

A whipcrack of motion split the air between them, and the Armorfang disappeared. He looked up, to see the frantically-wriggling legs of the monster disappearing into the wide mouth of his mother.

“Well, now.” his father said, looking down at him as he wriggled miserably in the sticky mud, trying to breathe air and failing. “Got out, did he?”

“Mmph.” his mother nodded and swallowed after crunching the Armorfang a couple of times. “And a smart little one he is.”

His father bobbed up and down in a nod, then pushed him back into the water. “And look at all the duckweed stuck to him.”

“Why, what a perfect name.”

He looked up, unbelieving.

His father laughed, a deep booming sound that echoed across the Water. “True, true. You hear, little one? Your name you’ve earned, and it’s Duckweed!”

Duckweed! Duckweed! 

He -- Duckweed! jumped from the water and flipped before splashing. 

He had his first name.