A Snippet of Albia

It was a calm day on the volcano beach. Idly, the norn
scooped up a pawful of pale, almost white, sand. There
had been stories from long ago that said that where she was
now idling away her day had been renown for being prone to
the more than occassional eruption. She sprinkled the sand
on her green friend napping nearby, Tarrg. He grunted,
brushed off the sand from his face and rolled over and
continued with his nap.
The volcano, according to the ancient stories, had
reformed the world every time it erupted. (Of course, that
had to be expected when the small planet's *only* volcano
went off.) The first recorded explosion had resulted in
the "shee" (the race that had created them, the ettin, norn
and grendel, according to the same ancient stories.) leaving
Albia's inhabitants to fend for themselves in a new and
world that had all sorts of nooks and crannys. There
were still traces of their (shee) civilization then, in the
form of ruins the size of a city and artifacts. However, the
norns and grendels found a way to live in that-all-things-
considered-not-too-bad world. The ettin however were trapped
until the second recorded eruption.
Terr'an felt a tingle of mischief. She buried her friend
up to his belly in the fine, white-ish sand. The grendel
just continued to nap, oblivious to what his friend was doing
to him. (All in good fun, of course.)
The second disaster had brought about yet another dramatic
change to Albia and the release of ettin. The long lost water
dwelling norns had also "surfaced" as well. Aside from that,
it was the least remarkable of the changes. The third change
had reduced the amount of air exposed to almost nothing but
a couple extensive island chains and a very tiny continent.
The fourth had done nearly the exact opposite, almost
spelling the doom of the gill and Mer norns. There was still
an effect felt today from that long ago disaster. To this
day, the two water types of norns are born in different
oceans from each other. During that fourth "planetary face-
lift", the only water on the world consisted of two average
sized lakes on opposite sides of the globe. (Not counting
the peaked ice lands at the poles.) The fifth change had
happened about two eons ago.
For the first eon after the change, the volcano had been
known to go off every 100 years like clock work, but not strong
enough to change the planet's face again. For the second one,
however, it had gone dormant and hadn't made so
much as a peep since!
The rich history of his small planet far from his mind,
Tarrg woke up to the heat of being nearly totally buried in
sand. He shot Terr'an a wan look with his rich blue grendel
eyes and extended a paw to be helped out of his "bed". He
ruffled her blue dreadloks and they headed home for the
evening, in the forest nearby the ancient (though still
inhabited) Shee city.
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The cross breed looked at her pile of "inventions" and
went into her classic "hmmmmm" pose. The "hmmmmm" pose
consisted of her grabbing her favorite lavender curl and then
brushing it idly across her cheek, bitting her lip and holding
her chin with the other hand.
'Nalana (short for HyperDayDeNalaiaAnna), was an unusual
creature to say the least. No had ever seen her parents at
all, save for the all too quiet Hand that occasionally wondered
the Albian skies. What little 'Nalana could get from the
secretive Hand was that her parents were a Shee and a thing
called a "Human".
She had long since accepted the fact that almost all the
other creatures on Albia considered her a freak of nature or
science, depending on their opinion. It wasn't because she
had hardly any fur except for that on her head or that she had
no tail, or that her hair was lavender (that was a very common
Shee head fur color), it was her eyes that frightened the less
accepting people.
On Albia, it was almost impossible for find a creature
that did not have a uniform, constant eye color. Almost
impossible save for 'Nalana. Her eyes changed colors to match
her mood. In the cases that she wasn't exibiting an emotion,
her "normal" eye color, a green-brown mix, came to the surface.
Right now, her eyes were a bright orange, pondering.
All around her island cave abode (which she choose because
hardly anyone came there, not because of a feeling of rejection
from the others in the land), were blue prints and skcematics
for a machine. She had began envisioning it when she was a
child. If the Hand wouldn't give her answers soon, she would
go and find them herself! Her machine (she hoped) would help
her do that.


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