My mother keeps on asking me why I have decided to embark on this journey across the ocean, into the vast unknown beyond the Great Wave. As if asking several times will change the outcome of my response.

She picked up one book after another and wistfully caressed each leather-bound cover. Here she would be the beautiful merchant girl, there she would be the damsel rescued from the clutches of a dragon. And there, there she would be the princess who finds true love by kissing a frog…

She paused. That particular story sounded feasible enough.

The Clairvoyants were the first to speak of the calamity. Cloaked in black from head to toe, these two mysterious individuals roamed the kingdom, casting their warning in every town:

When the Seven are but one, the world’s balance will be altered, and our fair kingdom shall fall to ruin amidst the chaos.

She observed the foam around her—gathered together into a shapeless Pangaea with no rhyme nor reason—and searched for a semblance of meaning within, the way we do when we look at the clouds above. But she could find none, and thus she did what we can only dream, for the clouds are out of hands’ reach: she resolved to make some shapes of her own.

“My boat came to our shores, and three days have passed since. You know that is the most I could wait. What’s important now is that we celebrate together while we can.”

You who call our kingdom home,

You who long the earth have roamed,

Now is the time to return to foam.

Take down your sails and don your scales,

Dive deep beneath the land of whales,

In the next ocean’s blue,

Start anew.

Clad in golden robes, a young man floated among the stars. Reclined with his arms behind his head, he scrutinized a large ivory sphere, polished and pristine, some distance away.

A young girl found a note from her best friend written on a dry leaf and slipped in through the crack in her window.

Nemy, I have something to show you. Meet me at my family’s farm after sunset. -Mara

The Goddess froze, eyes fixated on the deck in the boy’s hands. “Fortune?” After a long moment of unbearable silence, she turned back to her food and resumed her feast with noticeably less vigor. “Young Boy, You Should Know That Fate Does Not Affect Gods.”

The boy flinched and turned his gaze away submissively. “And I do not question that, Almighty Goddess. Still… I would like to try.”