Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)

Commentary's welcomed, as always, and much appreciated.

{Oh, good.  :)  All comments strictly my opinion, and offered
in good spirit... but you know that by now.  :) }

Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:  
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html

Chapter 36 : And Let the Dark Come Down

     Shampoo nodded mutely and stood to her feet in the gigantic

{suggest} stood up {or} got to her feet

crib.  The giant woman seemed friendly, and was no doubt related

{"no doubt"?  This smacks of overconfidence even for Shampoo...}

to the one from the tunnels, but they were both unknown 
quantities at this point.

     The woman stepped forward and stooped to present Shampoo's
clothing.  It had obviously been washed, and the tears that the
battle of Watcher's Hill had left mended so perfectly that they 

{The elision of "had been" between "left" and "mended" is mildly
confusing...}

were invisible.  "<I am Mengyua.  My husband, Shengxyan, guarded
you from He of Names, and brought you here that I might tend your
wounds.>"

>From behind it, Shampoo could hear the sound of a hammer ringing 

{darn mailer >From'ed you again.}

on metal.  

     When Mengyua gripped the ring that served as a handle and
pulled the door open, a wave of heat washed into the corridor and 
stung Shampoo's eyes.  The sound of hammering continued for a
moment, then stopped.  The room beyond looked like a combination
of a forge, a carpenter's shop, and a jeweller's.  Giant-sized 
tools rested against the stones of a huge forge, across the room
from a scarred wooden workbench.  Shelves held a seemingly 
infinitely varied assortment of objects, from human-sized weapons
to delicately carved statues, to tiny rings and bracelets.  The 
massive form of the black-bearded giant from the tunnels stood by 
an enormous anvil, a hammer gripped in one hand.  In the other, 
he plucked the red-glowing shape of an iron from the anvil with
tongs, and plunged it into the nearby cooling trough.  A hiss
and a cloud of steam filled the air, and he extracted it moments
later and laid it down on the ground.

     Only after he had finished that did he turn.  Though the
room was hot and he wore a gold- and silver-trimmed robe of heavy
brown cloth, there was not a bead of sweat upon his brow, nor any
other sign he felt the heat.  "<Well-met, Maiden, though under
dark circumstance.  It is good to see that you are awake.">

{Comparative mythology... my first thought was Hephaestos and
Aphrodite, of course, but they didn't quite fit.  None of the
Norse gods or giants did either.  Goibniu and Brigit, perhaps?}

     Still not entirely sure what was going on, Shampoo cast a
hesitant gaze around the room before answering.  "<How long did I
sleep for?>"

{"for" may be cut, it seems to me.}
 

     Silently, Shampoo held out her arm, and rolled the sleeve of
her shirt up past her elbow.  The eyes of the giant were old and
sad suddenly.  "<Not yet, Maiden.  We will join my wife in the

{Suggest} old and sad, suddenly. {or} suddenly old and sad.

     Now she did take it with one hand, and tucked the sword
carefully into her belt.  "<I don't understand.>"

{Darn right, carefully.  That's a good way to lose a belt -- if
you're lucky.  There's a reason why scabbards were invented about
five minutes after swords were.  :) }

One tapestry in particular caught Shampoo's eye; a lone figure, 
too indistinct to tell its gender, stood atop the pinnacle of a 
mountain.  With its hands raised, it appeared to be calling up 
the fire-crested waves of waters that swirled around him.

{Anyone we know?  :) }

     Closer to the table, Shampoo was able to better examine the 
device of silver wires.  It had an appearance rather like as if
someone had made a great spider's web of silver, and then tangled 
it endlessly.  Three polished triangular stones of green jade, 
yellow topaz and black onyx were placed within the labyrinth 
shape of the wires, seeming to hang without support.  Flashes 
that did not seem like only the reflection of light upon the
metal passed continuously along the wires.  There was somehow an
ineffable sadness to the device, and Shampoo knew without knowing
why that it was older than any other constructed thing she had 

{"why", or "how"?}

ever seen.

{What a nifty... thing.  I may have to construct a replica.}
 

     It was too strange, all of it.  The last day had blossomed
into a series of events that she simply was not - it hurt to
admit her own limitations, but she wasn't stupid enough not to do
so now - equipped to deal with.  They had taken them from the
house, and done something to Kuno, and there had been mist and a
dragon and...

{Oh, good.  Before Nabiki can learn, she has to admit how little
she knows...}

     Again, Nabiki wondered how far Kasumi had gone into the
comfort of this madness.  Better, she thought sadly, then how she

than how

     "Yeah," Nabiki said quietly, feeling a telling and unwanted
itch at the corner of her eyes.  "Yeah, he was really brave."  

corners

     The water grew at last too deep to touch the bottom, and the
two of them floated on the surface now.  It must be a very large,

large  {excess comma?}

pool, Nabiki realized.  A small lake, even.  She didn't have any
sense anymore that the cavern walls were close in the darkness.  
They might well have floated in an underground ocean, and she

have been floating  {?}

would not have known.

     The sense that she and Kasumi were the only people in the     
world became almost overpoweringly strong.  They swam together,
hand in hand, with tiny dog paddling motions.  It was the kind of

dog-paddling

thing they'd done when they were very young, on family vacations,
when mother was still alive.  The only thing missing was Akane's 

Mother

hand in her other one, though Akane had never been very 
comfortable in the water, even with the two of them to keep her
afloat.  Kasumi had always led the way then, too.

{heh.  Of course she'd be a "hammer girl" when younger, too.  :) }

     It was hard to remember the kind of person her older sister
had been before their mother died, and Tofu moved into the
neighbourhood.  Those two events became almost synonymous with 
one another in Nabiki's mind; both had changed Kasumi in ways 
that had never been fully visible to her until now.  What would
Kasumi have been like if it hadn't gone that way?

{Don't ask.  That way lies unending regret.}

     The bottom of the pool seemed almost infinitely far below
their feet now.

{You know, that's a weird thing.  I've been swimming in water that
was only twice as deep as I am tall, but too murky to see the
bottom, and I've been swimming in water five miles deep, and there
IS a difference... and I've been swimming at night, and that's
different from both.  GOOD sentence to evoke those memories.}

rocks above to splash gently upon the surface.  The pond lay at 
the base of what appeared to be a small mountain, from underneath 
of which they'd emerged.  Spray from the waterfall, misty and 

{suggest diffidently} from beneath which

     Nabiki looked up, and realized then that they were inside,
impossible as that seemed.  A vast dome of green crystal
stretched overhead.  The ocean appeared to be above it; flitting 

{"Ocean" implies that they are not under the lake in Ryugenzawa,
that they are... elsewhere.  Is this what you mean to imply?}

dark shapes of fish soared by beyond the emerald barrier.  
Nervously, she saw that there were cracks in the dome, as if the 

as though the  {perhaps?  I notice that you use "as if" 23 times,
and "as though" not at all; is this intentional?  To me, "as though"
would seem to fit the flavor of your language better in many
places... up to you, of course.}

weight of the water was growing too great for it to hold.

into the pool.  "Yeah.  Real nice.  I just wish I knew where the 
hell we were, or how the hell you got us here."  Out of the 
darkness, some of the old feelings were coming back.

{Not good words to be using in this place, Nabsy... it might
get testy.}

     A small brown squirrel chittered at them from within the
bows of one tree, then leapt to the branches of another and

boughs

     And Mother was there.  Just for a moment, but Nabiki
realized instantly that somehow, a part of what Kasumi had said
was true.  For a fleeting second the woman seated in the centre
of the clearing, upon the lush carpet of the grass, was their
mother.  Not a ghost, not Nabiki realized; not anything like

ghost, Nabiki

that, no more than the image in a mirror is the reality of what
is reflected.

     Kasumi's calm face showed no response to Nabiki's anger.
After a moment, she smiled.  Her eyes had were distant, but clear

eyes were

and sharp; as if she looked at Nabiki, but from some place very
far away.  "I see now, Nabiki.  You didn't understand.  I never 
said we were going to see our mother."

{The otherworldliness of Kasumi here is wonderful.  It's perfectly
obvious to her what she means, of course, so obvious that it's
almost surprising that she realizes that Nabiki misunderstood her.}
 

black.  The animals in the grove had raised their heads to look
at her again, with love and sorrow in both the liquid eyes of
deer and the sharp gazes of wolf.  

gazes of wolves.  {or}  gaze of wolf.  {depending on whether "deer"
is singular or plural?  Damn the grammar, full poesy ahead!
(Seriously.) }
 

     She opened her mouth to say something, and then from far off
there came the sound of some vast explosion; the ground shook, 
and cracks ran crazily through the green dome that held out the
ocean.

{Ocean again.  I guess this IS somewhere else.}

     Precise and ordered as a military formation, the animals
coursed from the grove and into the surrounding woods.  From
above there was the sound of splintering, and a tiny, tumbling
chip of emerald crystal came falling down from above.  Slow as a
feather it fell, glinting in the sea-filtered sunlight, to land
at Kasumi's feet.  

{Whoa.  That must be a serious artifact.}

     Tears ran down the face of the woman in green.  She turned
and gestured with her hand.  Twenty feet away, the earth 
depressed, and water came bubbling in from the cracks to create a
small pool.  "I will send you through.  Give warning.  The Dark
comes again to the Valley of the Waters."

     Nabiki stared numbly at the hair of the woman as she turned.

turned back.  {perhaps?  It seems that she turned away to create
the pool, and turned back to face Kasumi and Nabiki, but it took
two readings for this to be clear.}

     Kasumi made the pool first.  More specifically, Nabiki
looked back at the last minute, to see Kuno slide one blade at
the last minute up the shaft of the broom and into Shinnosuke's

{Did you mean to repeat "at the last minute"?}

heart.  The boy's mouth opened in a soft gasp, and then he 
toppled off, sliding from the impaling sword with a wet sound.

{Ow.  Another good guy added to the casualty list.  You're cruel
to your characters, Alan.}

     The pool was a step behind her.  Kuno a step in front of 

{comma rather than period?}

her.

     Jusenkyou, though beautiful in the early morning as the sun
struck the pools and made them glow and the mist dispersed and
rose into the air, did not compare to Tang Jin.  Nothing did; 
despite what he had become, the Serpent was still quite capable
of understanding human concepts of beauty, and no place would
ever compare to Tang Jin.  The golden lake had shone with light
like the sun, still and calm within the cradling banks of green
rushes.  In the centre, the tiny temple had stood upon its 
island, and in the basin in the centre of the four pillars of
red-gold wood, the power of the waters had been concentrated to
the point where a sip of them was said to cure all ailments of
mind and body, and make the drinker young again.  The warden of 
Tang Jin, who he had once been in a time so long gone that it 
might as well have been another world, had been their guardian.

     Now he stood looking down at Jusenkyou, with the morning 
wind in his hair, and dew clinging to the grass at his feet.  In
one hand, he loosely held his sword.  Old memories threatened, as
they always did.  Small birds flitted from sparse tree to sparse
tree, singing in high voices to the sun; a swallow was engaged in 
industriously building a nest in one tree.

{The tiny details overlaid on the deeps of time work very well
for me.  Sometimes, afoot in the middle of nowhere, I'll suddenly
notice a few pebbles, and they'll help me understand the scope
of the desert.}
 

     The waters whispered to him.  Come, they said.  Back to me.

{suggest diffidently}  Come back to me.

     He drove his sword into the spongy earth near the pool,
amidst a clump of dark reeds.  Then, he knelt and plunged his
head and upper body into the water.  The pool was not deep;
stretching out a long arm, he searched through the silty tangle
of weeds at the bottom until his hand closed over a spherical
shape.

     At last.  Had he not gone so far from what he had once been,
tears would have sprang to his eyes at the joy that rushed 
through him.  The master howled inside his head, and it was then
that he knew.  Yoko had done it.  Laughter filled his mind, and
came coursing out through his mouth.

{I hope he rose from the pool first, or he'd be bubbling instead
of laughing, and that's not real dramatic...}

 Overhead, the Ironwing Clan
joined him.  Fools, he thought, still laughing.  You know 
nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

     Water dripped off his hand like rain as he raised the 
fist-sized golden pearl from the depths in had lain in for four 

depths it had

thousand years, and longer even than that in different form.  
The surface was mottled with swirls of pale and dark gold, and
had a glowing lustre to it.  Sold, its worth would have been 
almost incalculable.  He cleaned the clinging bits of weed from 
it, and walked on.  The next pool had been fallen into, and 
quite recently.  He could see the connection stretching off to 
the south.  

{It's the Pearl of the Dragon of Change, isn't it?  Oh dear.}

     This time, he had to dive into the pool and dig around at
the bottom before he found what he was looking for.  When he came
out of the pool, water shining on his golden hair, he studied it.
It was an almost featureless lump of stone, squat and rough.  
Three crude lumps atop it might have been meant to represent
heads; another two in the middle were likely breasts.  The 
story of the pool had been all wrong, of course.  Tales twisted 
over four thousand years.  What so few realized in the end was 
that form was unimportant; power was everything, in the end.

     A voice began to interrupt the laughter of the master inside 
his head, as he cradled the primal statue in his arms.  
Describing it as insane was not adequate; it had never even 
been sane to begin with.  The master retreated back from him,
letting the screaming howl fill his mind.

     His fingers stroked the smooth, water-weathered stone of the
statue.  "How many names do you have, my lady?" he whispered
almost respectfully.  "Morrigan?  Inanna?  Athena?  Ashura?"  The
voice calmed slightly.  "I know a part of you was in all those, 
as was a part of them."  The Ironwing soared overhead; he 
wondered what was taking Shouzin so long to bring the Guide and 
his daughter.  "They don't understand either.  You cannot escape
what you are.  It will all return to him in the end.  
Everything."

{Aiya.  I'd thought there was something odd about the "Spring
of Drowned Ashura", but this...}

     Her names came to him then, and her titles.  He reached down
and grabbed the golden pearl.  There were no words to scream.
Words were not necessary for him.  Will and hate were enough.

     A low moan, barely a whisper, came involuntarily from him.
With all his strength, all the rage and hate and pain of four
thousand years of walking completely and utterly alone upon the
world, the Serpent - who had been Yan once, but no more - brought
the golden pearl and the crude stone statue slamming together
over his head, so that both of them shattered into a thousand
pieces, and so he brought the Dark down upon the Valley of the 
Waters.

{A storm of building implications, suddenly focusing, suddenly
released.  Applause.}

     Ryoga heard Rouge scream, and looked up for only an instant
from Akane cradled in his arms.  The arrow had gone all the way
through her left forearm.  Blood was everywhere, and her face was
sickeningly pale.  

{Good thing they were using armor-piercing points.  If they'd been
loaded with broadheads, Akane would be having very bad blood-loss
problems right now.}

{Joketsuzoku would probably crucify me for the pun I'm thinking
re broadheads, though.  :) }
      

     Ryoga grinned and grasped the hilt with a gasp.  "It didn't
hit anything vital."  He could feel the blade grate on his ribs
as he shifted it; even for someone as used to pain as him, it was

as he,  {or}  as he was,

vanished.  Ryoga hoped Ranma - if... no, when they found him - 
would have come through this whole long journey more unchanged 
than Mousse had.

{"less changed" might work better than "more unchanged"}

{Oh, what a vain hope...}

     "You lucky we not use barbed arrows," Bai Ling said bruskly,

brusquely

moving over to where Mousse and Ryoga knelt by Akane.  "Break 
feathers off and draw it all the way through.  Tear wound less
that way."

{Good advice.}
     

     Ryoga frowned, unhappily confused.  "Why are you so helpful
all of a sudden?"

     "Law requires," Bai Ling said.  Her tone was that of someone
resigned to doing something because they had no other choice.

     "Law requires what?"
     
     "Law requires that wife help husband."

{Wahahahaha!  Oh, Ryouga, you'll regret how you treated Ranma yet...}

     "You man.  You think different.  With groin, not with head."

{So, Bai Ling, which end are YOU talking to?  :) }

     Father threw the water on it.  A tiny swallow blinked with
surprise on the floor where the monster had been, and then the
door crashed off its hinges, and three more of them loomed 
beyond it.  

{heh.  Nice choice of weapons.}

     From above, someone spoke.  Female, and - frightening and 
familiar as it was to hear it again - it was blessedly more
pleasant to hear than the growling, murky voices of the winged
monsters.  "<Hold, in the king's name.>"

{Woohoo!  Air cavalry!  Go, Kiima!  :) }

{Plum's a good kid: bright and gutsy.  Applause for your treatment
of this little-used minor character.}

     Yoko raised her hand.  A black line of light, thin as her
finger, shot forth.  It struck the Lady of Life directly through
the heart, and flung her back into the sea.  She hit with a
splash, bobbed once, and sank down within.  The kimono slipped
with a rustle of silk off the edge after its wearer.

{Too easy.  I can't help thinking that the Dragon's not as out as
Yoko thinks she is.}

     Cologne started, and so did everyone else.  Ryoga had begun
to think that Mousse didn't get noticed right now unless he
wanted to.  

wanted to be.  {perhaps?}

"Ranma's okay.  He's okay, Akane."  The relief in him was almost
unbearable; Ranma was alive, and from all signs, well.

and, from
 

     "I want to see him!" she snarled.  "Ryoga, let me back up. I 
have to kill Cologne for doing this to me!"

{I like the way Akane's spirit overpowers her common sense.  That
has to be one of the things Ranma loves about her... because if it's
not, he couldn't stand her.}

     "Pierce earth, pierce sky," he recited.  "Pierce heaven to
its core.  Hell answer to mine call, send down thy legions on 
pinions of iron.  Cold winds blow, let water and sky be joined,
pour down thy bowl of night upon the earth."

{Um.  More of his old prophecy?}

     Then, when one of them turned its head at her shout, she
realized it was worse than she had even expected.  The face was 

 even worse than she had expected.

{or, which fits your style better,}
 worse even than she had expected.

{or, if you're feeling pessimistic,}
 worse than even she had expected.

{Gee, this is fun!  :) }

one out of a nightmare, an almost exact match for one she'd seen
before in the faded drawings of old books.  They called them the
Souleaters, bound into the depths of the earth by Saffron in the
ages past.  

     Ranma laughed softly, and reached out.  His fingers traced
lightly along the wound, and all the pain vanished.  Then he went
into a coughing spasm, so severe that she had to grab his 
shoulders to keep him from falling.

     "Don't waste your energy on me," she snapped.  "Use it on
yourself."

     "I can't," Ranma said, straightening with a shake of his
head and a long breath.  "You think it comes out of nowhere?  
Using it on myself is pointless."

{Oh, very good.  Nothing comes without a price, and it's always
easier to wound than to heal.  Applause for this seemingly-minor
point.}

     He let the Guide get to his feet and brush himself off.  
This was what was left of the position of Warden of Tang Jin, he 
realized; a ridiculous, chubby little man in a ratty Maoist 

realized:  {?  I may be overly fond of colons...}

uniform.  It almost made him laugh.

     "<Jusenkyou has faced worse than you,>" the Guide said,
defiantly, with only a slight tremble to his voice.  There was a 

said defiantly,

little courage in the man, apparently.     

{Quite a lot, actually, but the Serpent can't see it...}

     "<You don't understand,>" the Serpent growled.  "<None of
them do either.  I will see this world die; I will see it cracked
and broken, and every living thing that walks or flies or crawls
or swims perish, every city thrown done, all that lives or is 
made by that which lives or has the potential to bring forth life
destroyed.  He will make them rulers of men while it suits him,
but in the end his promise is to me.>"

{Ick.  He's not evil, he's entropy.}

     She turned and walked away down the green carpet.  The lamps
high upon the walls were the shape of women holding balls of 

{suggest} were in the shape {or} had the shape

flame above their heads.  Lougui was waiting by a tall doorway at
the end of the hall.  The heavy iron door was swung open, 
exposing a long earthen tunnel.  

     Behind her on the trail, the Joketsuzoku walked in a long
line beneath the shadows of the mountains.  Travel had slowed
since the hole had opened in the sky a few minutes ago; she had
sent a scouting group back to Jusenkyou to see what was going on.
Vaguely, she realized that she was probably sending them to their

that she had probably sent them

deaths.

     The women around them were beginning to take an interest
now, though they were trying to conceal it.  Fang Shi gripped
the haft of her weapon tightly and tried to think.  "<I mourn for
the death of your daughter as well, Gao Chao>" she said in her

Chao,>"

most conciliatory tones.  "<But what is done is done.  We will
avenge her, and Lang Bei, and all the rest of our dead.>"

     Then she looked down, and words left her.  Below was the sea 
of the dead; hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.  They 
writhed endlessly, nakedly, over one another, and each lifted 
their voice in a wordless dirge.  Bloated and pale as worms, they 

{Sorry, "their" just doesn't work, damn English for lack of a
gender-neutral singular personal pronoun.  Suggest}
and all lifted their voices in wordless dirges.

{or}
and each lifted its voice in a wordless dirge.

swarmed like maggots, chunks of skin sloughing off as they rubbed 

{Suggest "tatters" rather than "chunks"; skin's not usually chunky...}

     Her gaze went down towards the sea of corpses, and she
received one answer.  Near the base of the rocky spire, a single
face she recognized occasionally emerged from the sliding dead
like a swimmer drawing desperate gasps of air.  Kuno's mouth was

{Huh.  He's not wearing the hood.  Interesting.}

open, but any sound he was making was lost amidst the moaning of
the dead.  His hands tried desperately to grasp the rough surface
of the stone, but whenever he got even a tentative hold he would
be drawn back beneath the writhing mass of the bodies, who seemed
to thwart his efforts with a mindless malice.  

     Horror and sickness almost overwhelmed her.  What in god's
name _was_ this place?  But she'd already answered that, hadn't
she?  It was hell.  Or something so like it that any difference
was one of semantics.

{I told you you shouldn't have used those words, Nabs...}

     She couldn't do it; another thing that she should do that

{suggest} it; yet another

was beyond her.  Even though she was in good enough shape, the 
handholds were tiny.  She'd slip and fall, into the sea of the 
dead.  Better to stay here, she told herself.  Leave him.  Leave
it all.

     Cursing Kuno, this place, and everything else she could
think of that had any connection to her current situation, she     
turned around and stretched her leg down to find a hold for her
foot.  And so she began the descent into the pit of the dead.

{Wow.  For some reason, this part grabbed me more than any other
part of this chapter, probably because it's so... personal.  It's
so much like an allegory for Nabiki's struggle for her own
redemption that I'm forced to suspect that the Dragon of Life
sent her to a place that was at least partially inside her own
head.  Two other reasons: Kuno's not wearing a hood, and Kasumi
evidently went somewhere else.  But if Nabiki can ever forgive
herself, and earn forgiveness from others, saving one of the
people she betrayed is a good start, and this may be the place
for her to do that.}

     "If I had been there, none of this would have happened."
     
     "But you weren't."  
     
     Cologne looked suddenly tired, ancient even in that young
body.  She folded her hands in her lap and drew a deep breath.
"What is done is done, and cannot be undone."

{Can't it?  Ranma or Kiima would disagree.  Of course, that may
be the ultimate reason Ranma is there: he refuses to believe in
his own limitations, and hence can prevail where wiser heads
capitulate.  Still, Cologne's being pretty thick here, in her
own characteristic way.}

     "Because he loves you, idiot girl."  It was said with so 
complete a certainty that for a moment it left Akane speechless.  
Cologne smiled benignly and shook her head.  "The young are so
clueless about the most obvious things."

     Coming from Cologne, who now looked slightly older than her,
it made Akane laugh.  It was true, she realized; everything she'd
hoped for.  The doubt, the worry, had somehow all been banished
by Cologne's affirmation of what she'd known in her heart for the
longest time.

{Good timing.  :) }

     Suddenly, she heard Ryoga let out a great shout of joy, a
sound of almost pure happiness.  Looking up, she saw three 
figures, two tall, one short, walking up the trail from the 
north.  A child, a man, and a winged woman.  The way the sun
struck them as it poured down from above the mountains, it took a 
moment for her to recognize all three.  Longest to recognize the 
man; he looked to have lost a lot of weight, and some change
deeper even than that had taken place.

     Then, against her expectations, he stepped forward and put
his arms on her shoulders, and drew her into a hug.  Only for a
moment, she hesitated, and then she wrapped her arms around him,
holding tight as she could to him, as if she would never let him
go, even though it made her wounded arm throb with pain.  She was 
crying, he was too.  His hands were clasped together on her back; 
she could hear his heart beating as she rested her head against 
his chest.  It didn't matter that there were other people around, 
that there was darkness seething in the sky, that there was a 
cold wind starting to blow across them.  They were a world apart 
in that moment from everything.

     And at last, again, after so long a time, after division and
parting, beyond the passage through darkness and light, under 
stone and under sky, beneath sun and stars, rivers join again, 
into a single river, into Oceanus, into the ocean river, flowing
down into the depths of the sea.

{Marvellous reunion scene... but things are going to get real bad
in payment, aren't they?}

{Gary beat me to the "action" reference, though.  Rats.  :) }

End Chapter 36

What can I say?  This is great.  I'm in to the end.

 
Vince Seifert    Network Analyst     seifertv@csus.edu
http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/  updated 1998Jun04
CSUS hired me to build their network, not to speak for the university.