YAAAARRRR!!!! (lunges at Lccorp and eats their head) Ahem, well, now that that's taken care of...the setting and everything will all be much clearer in due time. Something to understand is that I write my stories as books, and that it would most likely make much more sense to you if you could just keep reading along to the next chapter and so forth. However, I'll let the one detail about the time period slip: it's basically...I hate to say medieval, 'cause then I think of knights and castles and kings and queens and all that, not that there aren't any in here, but it's not quite right. I'd like to say its a time period kind of similar to the Lord of the Rings time period, if you know what I mean, or something like that. And Emma has time to beachcomb because she does it in early morning, before her mother wakes up and starts telling her what to do, which I had hoped was clear enough (the early morning part) in the first chapter, but oh well. Things will hopefully make a bit more sense in this one.

I apologize for eating your head.

Thanks for reviewing!!

--Kogurae

---

Emma's sharp eyes scoured the stretch of sand before her, darting back and forth, constantly returning to areas previously inspected in the event she'd missed something.

All in all, the morning had so far proved rather uneventful. Most of the other children were down at the other end of the beach, wary of the jellyfish that frequented this end of the shore, harmless though they were. There was just something about something soft, slimy, squishy, and alive brushing against your bare leg that could send even the most composed midwife jerking up her skirts and splashing to shore with a blood-curdling shriek. When she had been still considered too young to go into the water and had had to remain on shore, this had amused Emma to no end.

But now that she was older, and had some knowledge of the legendary giant killer jellyfish that swam (or floated) through the far-off waters of the East, able to kill even the largest of whales, Emma could understand the fear.

Emma had decided at an early age she wanted to be an explorer and travel far and wide, discovering creatures and things no eye had set upon before. Or at least, no eye in Ashmoor by-the-sea. However, to be an explorer, you had to be quite educated and have graduated from a university, and while Emma worked harder at her studies than any others in the small town, education wouldn't be enough to get her into, say, a university. You needed money for that. Money was something Emma didn't have. And her stingy mother had already made it clear she wouldn't be paying.

And so each day Emma searched the shores, scouring them in what she knew was a vain hope she might find something valuable enough to afford such a pricey goal.

And each day, she returned home, defeated and penniless, resigning herself again and again to a life as a farm girl even as she fought with all her will against such a fate.

However, today was not to be such a day.

"Ow!"

Her cry of indignant pain brought Morgan trotting over from where the small calico had been sunbathing on a patch of beachgrass.

"What is it?" he asked, though he seemed more interested in the seagulls down near the water than his mistress's distress.

Balancing on her good foot, Emma scowled as she lifted the other up for inspection. A small cut was already leaking blood from the tender skin of the arch of her foot, the one part of the foot not hardened form years of shoeless beach-walking.

"Oh, nothing," Emma muttered darkly. She was already in a bad mood that morning, as she had found no evidence of the day's importance that Morgan had spoken of the previous night, and she now had a cut that would doubtless vex her the rest of the day and most likely rhe following one as well. "I just stepped on some stupid--" It was then a glinting at her feet caught her attention, and she gasped.

"It would seem you've stumbled upon a conch shell," Morgan remarked, raising an eyebrow. The cat's dry tone scarcely described the shell's true beauty.

It was a breathtaking variety of pinks and whites, the outermost parts a soft light pink that gradually darkened into a maroon and then deep violet in the inner shell. Its impressive, graceful spiral was lined with hundreds of small, sharp spikes, some of them pearly white and others a golden cream color. It was about as wide as a man's hand-length and about twice as long. Emma marveled at her wondrous luck as she turned it over in her hands, careful to avoid the spikes, already mentally pricing it.

"A beauty like this would certainly fetch a fair price at the market," Emma told Morgan, her voice hushed with awe.

"Mmmmm," the cat replied, his eyes riveted on it. Though he seemed not quite agreeable with her, as if waiting for something more, something more significant. Emma ignored the car's unimpressed attitude; she already had all but forgotten the bothersome scratch on her foot.

There was suddenly a small rattling sound from within the conch, and something much smaller rolled out, plopping quietly at her feet as if it was too insignificant to make a properly loud noise.

Surprised, Emma picked it up, rolling it over in her sand-stained hands after carefully placing the conch down at her feet. It was perfectly spherical, glittering fantastically in the sunlight, as clear as water and though Emma had never seen a white diamond, if she had, she might have said that was what it was.

Now Morgan was interested.

"My, my, my," he purred, eyeing it. "What an interesting gem you've got there, Emma. What do you plan on doing with it?"

Emma was so taken with the gem's simple beauty she hadn't even thought that far. Rather, she continued gazing at it, almost as if in a trance.

"Why don't you take it home?" Morgan suggested, his voice soft and gently persuasive. It you've ever talked with a cat, you know they can be very persuasive indeed. "After all, you don't want to lose it, do you?"

"Right..." Emma murmured, then with a slight jolt, she blinked and snapped out of it. "Right. Right." Dropping the small gem back in the conch, as she didn't want to risk there being a hole in her sack, she wrapped the sack around the conch, both to hide it from sight and to protect herself from its many small spikes, then cradling her burden to her chest, she sprinted back along the beach, her long legs nimbly carrying her over the sand in graceful strides.

And all the while, her feline companion stayed close at her heels.

xxx

It at first started as a small flutter, a sort of change in the air.

But it grew, quite rapidly, from a flutter to a series of flutters, and then from flutters to ripples, and then from ripples to strong, powerful waves.

It rushed across the land, whispering through tree tops and long grasses as an urgent wind, washing over those that could sense it for miles around, filling their hearts and minds and souls and bodies with a suddenly wakeful feeling, a call, a sense of urgency and a message not many could quite understand.

But there was one in particular who could.

Only minutes after the girl's touch had first awakened it, its waves of power reached the wizard Brindo in his tower far to the West, where he was recording in flowing script with an egret's quill the day's events.

He had that morning been called to council with the Order, to discuss a most pressing matter.

It has been said among the lesser creatures of dark that there has been a stirring in the North, the wizard penned, and by "lesser creatures of dark" he meant the less powerful, more disdained races, such as trolls, goblins, hobgoblins and the like. Many say the "Great Master" is awakening, and while I myself have sensed no great disturbance, I am too far South to be certain. Only the styads can be trusted to say for sure. I have arranged to ride North to them myself, and I will be leaving the tower in the hands of my trusted and faithful apprentice, Morkin. One thing is for certain: if the Storm has indeed awakened, it can only bode ill for us all. If I ride hard, I may reach the styads in a perhaps a fortnight's time and

It was then that the wind reached Brindo.

The wizard shot to his feet in a most un-wizardly manner, setting his quill down with a snap on the table, and strode to the tower window, throwing it wide open.

The great wind rushed into the tower room, blowing things about, upsetting piles of parchment, blowing open books, lifting quills into the air and whirling them about; indeed, the wind quite nearly took Brindo's bent wizard's hat right off his head.

But to the mess behind him, he paid no mind; as to his hat, he merely planted a gnarled hand on it to keep it on his head. And as the wind passed through and around the tower, the great wizard at last understood the message the wind had carried to him, from far in the East, where the ocean shores marked the border between land and sea.

xxx

"But Master Brindo, what of the council?" Morkin protested as the wizard strode down the hallway, his great blue robe flowing about him, and out into the gardens, heading for the stables. "They will not be pleased you've acted without their consideration!"

"This action depends on speeed, not permssion and validation," was Brindo's gruff response as he crossed under the garden arch onto the stable grounds. "As for the council, those old fools sit around all day muttering under their beards. i could be haflway around the world by the time they decided what was for lunch." Morkin would have pointed out that Brindo wasn't much younger than most members of the council, and that furthermore, it was rather unwise to speak ill of one's elders, but Brindo was not in a mood for a cheeky apprentice.

Morkin sighed heavily as he followed the wizard to his steed's stall. Recognizing his master's determination as he led Bastil, the steed, out into the courtyard, Morkin gave up reasoning with his Master.

"Master Brindo," he asked, trying to keep exasperation from his voice as he saddled Bastil, "May I at least know where you are going, and when you will return?"

"I ride for the Eastern Shores," Brindo answered, swinging himself up on to Bastil with surprising ease for his two hundred years. In his left hand, he grasped the reins, in his right, his staff. "When I may return I know not for certain. Watch the horizon for me, my boy." The wizard drove his sandaled heels into Bastil's sides and they were off, galloping swiftly for the eastern horizon, the steed's powerful black-and-white striped legs churning the dust.

As he watched them go, the apprentice could only hope his master's journey would end well for him, for he too was beginning to feel an ill wind blowing from the North.