[Reverie Isle] Finally Above The Waves

[Kavala]

Continued from here.

Spring 512 - Off and on all season!

The Konti slipped from the water, her figure gliding up onto the smooth wave-washed rocks like a seal surging up onto a rocky shore. Once she hit stone, she got her feet under her and pushed upwards, until she was on her feet standing gleaming in the sun. Iridescent scales cast dancing lights onto the rocks around her as the pale form looked around, surveying what needed to be done.

Just getting this far was a monumental achievement, the Konti thought, as she walked the length and breadth of the newly formed Island. She could tell how large it would be, what it would look like with the sea parting around it, and the joy of seeing her own special place come to life filled her. Reverie was finally above the waves.

But it was time to get to work, not stand around admiring her labor. As it was now, the Island was above the high tide line but just barely. Tons of stone still needed to be added to the structure, moving it upwards and making it stronger, more the fortress than the flat resting place for seals it was now. Speaking of seals, the Konti realized she wasn’t alone standing there. The creatures littered the far side of the stone, aggressive normally though passive to a Konti who did little more than pace out plans for additions to the island she herself created when they weren’t paying much attention.

So Kavala paid them no mind either and began the strenuous process of raising the island even higher, above the waves by adding layer upon layer of stonework. It was the same technique she used beneath the surface, but since they weren’t submerged she had a far easier time with it. Res was extruded, spread, and then changed to stone. The stone she used was patterned with greys and blues and greens so that no matter what time of day, the little isle would blend into the surrounding coastline, a sort of camouflage at sea. Sure, people could see it, but Kavala hoped the overall effect would be that they would have a HARD time seeing it if they weren’t looking for it. The higher she built, adding to almost the full two acres of the surface, the more exhausted she got. When the stone was high enough off the waves of high tide, she cupped her hand, pooled res, and formed a long thick piece of chalk.

Then, once the chalk had solidified, Kavala began sketching on the new stone, laying out where the stairs would go, what parts would be terraces, and what parts would be the internal living area of a sea cave she had planned for herself. The chalking out took some time, but before she was done she had a roughly horseshoe shaped island with two stairways leading downward into the waves where boats could be tied off safely on the leeward side of the island.

[Kavala]

The steps rose up to a series of terraces and wrapped around the island past a section on the southern side where she’d form the stone into a sea cave. It then continued upwards where it terraced out and made a large flat space where a pavilion with no sides could be set up in the summer. Kavala almost decided to leave it where it would be cloth, but as she studied the structure to be, she decided that it might be best to make the roof stone and simply give it a brilliant color to mimic that of a pavilion. Stone lasted longer, making an outdoor wall-less pavilion that would provide shade and shelter from the elements in the winter and summer.

Making the steps wasn’t has hard as say taking the patience to make the ridges up the ramp from Sanctuary’s Within. Instead, they were large blocks of res formed into rough stone – rough for footing – that were wide enough and deep enough to make a long leisurely climb upwards to someone either burdened with a child or perhaps supplies to restock the cave. Kavala started on the southern stair first, beings that it had the least amount of steps and was one giant sweep broken by a terrace that was going to lead into the dwelling rather than a series of terraces like the northern side was.

And as she slowly worked on it throughout the days, she found that she could do about five stairs per day without getting headaches, nose bleeds, or any other ill symptoms combined with the work she was doing on shore. So five stairs it was, at a time, as she had about a dozen steps up to the first terrace. So it took her roughly three days of building steps and building up the island to match.

Once she got the steps in place, she laid out the terrace and worked on its flat expanse, building material upwards from the sea floor to match the rise of the steps and fill in the area around it. That took more time, probably ten days, to build up from where the steps curled up to within halfway into the island where she decided her rough cutoff point was going to be. Then, once she’d worked on the south side, she went back, built up the north side to match the south side, and then worked downward putting in two smaller terraces and two smaller stairways.

[Kavala]

That project alone took her another twenty days. She came out to Reverie every day, though the time of day she managed to escape often varied. And she’d climb her steps, surveying the work she’d done, then bend down, generate res, and fill in the cracks or gaps or whatever felt uneven of poorly done as she built up the stone. Then, she’d find the wall she was working at, for now the island had a wall that was slowly traveling from south to north, and build onto the wall, thus building upwards. She leveled it out about twenty five days into the project and finished her steps on the north side to the low terrace, the one that would be in the most danger during floods or bad storms. Working from east to west adding to the wall and building the island up helped tremendously. She’d move forward and back like the loom of some giant reimancy weaver and cross stone over stone walking back and forth, occasionally taking a step back as the wall grew, and expanding northward.

When it was time, halfway through the season, she made the last ten steps patiently up to where the pavilion would rest. The steps were then duplicated on the south side, leading that overtall terrace downward past her first set of steps. Kavala worked south to north, weaving stone, and then went back and walled off the stairways to make them safe for children to traverse. Then she smoothed out the rock on the terraces by ‘paving’ them with a fresh layer of smooth decorative rock designed to be tough enough to withstand pounding storm waves in the form of blue and green granite.

The last terraces where considerably higher than the midlevel ones or the singular northern low terrace. They concealed a long high ceiling sea cave that rested beneath the waves. Kavala hadn’t hollowed out the cave prior to making the stone. Instead she’d went back, turning stone to sand carefully, as she scooped out the inside where the living quarters would be. She hadn’t known, truthfully, enough about architecture to actually plan for the living space as she was building. All she knew could be perched on a thimble. So taking no design chances, she’d built the island solid then came back and allowed out the living spaces the way she wanted them.

This one was no different. The cave ended up being high ceiling with two entrances… one from the first southern terrace. The second would be a sea cave that one could walk on foot within from the living quarters to the sea cave onshore at Sanctuary. Kavala did not look forward to making the tunnel, but she had no choice but to do it herself.

[Kavala]

Once the living quarters were hollowed out by changing stone to sand and discarding the unwanted sand by dumping it into the sea, Kavala was ready to decorate, add to the terraces, and put in walls for safety. The living quarters had taken twenty days, hands stroking stone, extruding djed, and changing the nature of what It might have been ten days later, or fifty, she wasn't sure. She just knew coming to the Isle daily was something she looked forward too, needed in fact, to feel whole.

Sometimes she visited twice, though after her initial work she never called the res again. Kavala tried at first, but the nosebleeds and headaches stopped her. Once, when she was obsessing about a particular pattern of stone, she started hallucinating that Vanator was there, speaking to her, and then later her mother. Her mother's apparition had made her cry, openly, sobbing like there was nothing left to live for. The Konti hadn't realized how much grief she held inside in regards to her mother and the premature loss of her childhood.

But despite that, the magic still called to her. The island called. And the name Reverie was born from it because that's how Kavala felt when she was out there, all alone, sculpting stone. It was so beautiful, pooling djed in her hands, pushing it out across the existing stone, willing it into the same substance below it, blending the stone perfectly. As she worked she started braiding the stone in knotwork like the Drykas used to decorate, covering the island with it. She braided stone up the length of the stairways and across the thick stone railings she made. It circled the outside entrance to her Sea Cave and layered the heavy door she built from stone and hung perfectly with clever stone hinges. The cave was snug, ready for furniture before she knew it, everything done except the tunnel to Sanctuary.

The smaller terraces she took time with too, building them to make sure the view was perfect and revealing. The lowest terrace she did not place a railing around. She wanted it laid out so that seals and sealions could sunbathe if they wanted too. Stone over stone, the djed was spread, and then infused with veins of pyrite and overlaid with clear quarts to make it stronger. Kavala fell in love with making stones through reimancy and turning the djed she had to spread anyhow into elaborate patterns. It made her happy, in a way she hadn't been happy with for a while, because the magic was her companion and her savior and in a lot of ways it loved her like others could or would not.

[Kavala]

The Island was almost complete. She just had one more part to build, the Overlook, and the stone pavilion that stood on top of it. Tasival had gotten old enough to swim strongly and she'd started taking her son with her. He seemed to understand that his mother was growing an island from the sea, for she was often out here and from the lookouts on the walls of Sanctuary that held views of the sea, he could see the island slowly emerge and build itself up from the surface of the waves.

He was walking now, so Kavala kept a close watch on him. But the Akontak child gave her someone to talk to as she worked, someone other than the magic, that she knew was less than healthy. She'd taken to talking to the djed, giving it an identity as she used it, praising it for turning out well or scolding it when the color or texture was not correct as she built the stone beneath her hands. Extruding the djed came easier now, smoothly, and she could raise stones fast, willing them into being. She likened it to a giant child working raw claw without having to touch it. Kavala only ran her hands along surfaces now to get her res flowing and the stone solidifying. She could raise whole sections of railing in just days. Railing was probably a bad word for what she surrounded the Overlook. It was really a waist high stone wall that surrounded the outlook keeping the sea at bay and the people on the outlook safe from accidentally falling into the sea below.

It took her ten days to fill out the wall, making it just the way she wanted too, infused with multiple colors and textures swirling around it. On the outside she kept to her grey blue and green theme, but on the inside it shone with violets and emeralds and deep sapphires. Kavala was quite proud of the rich jewel tones, though sometimes she had to go back and adjust the color the day after because she'd been off producing it and tired from too much work.

When the Overlook was finally done, Kavala had just one project left: The stone pavilion. She'd need, for her design which was slightly octagonal with a square coming off the center... she'd need eight pillars. The pillars she wanted eight feet high. She estimated it would take a day to do each pillar, but the reality was that it was more like two. She started off by chalking out the ground where she wanted them to rest, carefully measuring with a measuring tape and chalking line, then she started on the pillars building them up in one uniform shape at a time. She securely sunk them into the ground by growing them out of a slot carved in the already produced island and then running them skyward by projecting res upwards and molding stone as she went. The pillars were massive, and the work was exhausting. Kavala managed only about a half a pillar a day and then sometimes not even that for she'd decided to decorate them with vines etched in stone climbing up their length.

Each pillar took a lot of effort, the detail work the hardest. She'd long forgone the chalk in exchange for free form molding the stone into the vines in random patterns she felt was more organic looking than those looked carved and placed evenly in patterns. Kavala was better with it now, calling the res in waves and pushing the stone upwards into existence. She paid attention to the details of the stone, using her reimancy like a jeweler would, tracing stone types pulling examples from her bag of tumbled rocks and repeating the flowing patterns in the rock. The pavilion she patterned after Rainbow Obsidian, so it was dark and ethereal with flecks of rainbow coloring striking it as the sun did lightening up the structure. It was almost meditative, infusing the stone with the will to be the obsidian.

Kavala left her stamp on every aspect of the island. It took the full season to work on its structure, getting the surface of it habitable, the places she needed to call her own above the waves. She still had to landscape, but she was less concerned about that than she was about finding a way to move furniture and decorations out to the isle. She'd have to employ a Svefra for it. One with a good ship and the ability to anchor offshore and use the steps she'd carefully constructed. That would be her next goal, a goal she was certain would cause Reverie to be completed.

Continued here ---- > [Reverie Isle] Secrets Out At Sea

[Gillar]

You've put an amazing amount of detail into this portion of the process leading toward the final raising of an island and the crafting of a uniquely original domicile. I applaud you and grant the following awards: Reimancy - 5 xp Architecture - 3 xp Construction - 3 xp Planning - 3 xp Lore: Reimancy: Techniques of World Building - Knowledge gained from merging one's res with the earth thereby shaping the land and bending it to your will. Layering res for the purpose of manipulating earth to form landscapes suitable for human interaction.