As the moon passed overhead, I took notice that it passed in the forefront of the Rupture, the immense tear that was always so visible in the night sky. Not for the first time, I wondered what had truly caused it and what it was. Was it an intentional occurrence? Would it have lasting effects on the world that were too subtle to notice over the course of a human lifetime? I hadn’t been living in this land when the rupture happened, but it was one of the major factors that brought me here.

I was fairly certain that its consequences wouldn’t have disastrous long term effects, but there was no way to tell for sure without more information. I had gotten as close as I physically could to the phenomenon, but even standing on the tallest mountain and stretching my neck out as far as possible yielded no conclusive results. In fact, it didn’t even look any larger than before, even though at that height I could see the curvature of the planet. Fascinating sight. One of the questions that had always bothered me about the Rupture is that startlingly little had changed since it occurred. Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true, because so much was different now than it was then. My point is that I couldn’t contribute any of the change to the Rupture, which seems incredibly odd to me. Shouldn’t an event with such astrological significance change things?

I was interrupted from my musings by the sound of something I couldn’t immediately place. It was a throaty, choking sound, and when I tried to place it, I realized I could no longer see. That was odd. My vision had blacked out. Feeling my surroundings, they were very wet and… sharp? Oh, goodness. I had been eaten again. One of my weakest attributes is that I get so easily distracted by my own thoughts that I completely lose touch of everything that’s going on around me. But at the same time I couldn’t put the blame wholly on myself. After all, I had already seen most of what there was to see, so my mind was the only new and interesting thing I regularly had access to.

I was doing it again: thinking when I should be concerned with not getting eaten. It was probably my own fault. Natural selection of white fur can only take rabbits so far when you’re standing in the middle of a snow barren field. I shouldn’t be surprised that whatever had just been strolling by, going about its day, had found its way to a free meal. Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. I was certainly no free meal, regardless of how vulnerable I appeared. It occurred to me that I was considerably heavier than this would-be predator would have accounted for, and in its attempts to swallow me whole, had only succeeded on thoroughly encasing me in saliva. I wondered if any creature killed its prey by drowning it in such a manner. Was it even possible? Surely it could be. Perhaps a mammoth could do that, if mammoths were carnivores. Their mouths wouldn’t me large enough to swallow anything whole, though, even if they were. Surely there was another creature more suited to such a task.

But I was losing track of myself. I had to rid myself of this poor beast or it would dehydrate itself all over me. I concentrated my form and shifted it into a hawk, forearms expanding as they grew into wings. I was released from the beasts jaws immediately. I’m sure it wasn’t too happy about realizing whatever it had in its mouth was not whatever it thought it had in its mouth. As soon as I was free, I took note that it was an arctic fox. Probably a big one, if I had to guess, but I couldn’t remember the last time I was this close to one to really know for sure.

As I lifted from the ground, I decided to head south. This land was too dangerous for contemplative pondering. Besides, there were huge beasts here that controlled the winds. Wyverns, the humans called them. I wasn’t sure I could easily brush one of them off if it wanted me for dinner. Why did I even come here?

Oh, that’s right. I was trying to gather more information about the Rupture. I had heard there was some distant land north of Aluvalia, where I currently was. I had never been there myself, which was intriguing. Nearly three thousand years on this world and I had only recently heard of a piece of it just a few hundred miles offshore of Torreth. I turned around. This land may not provide me with any more information, but it stood to reason that I was more likely I’d find out something there than I place I had already been.  Besides, I had never been there. That fact alone was reason enough. I had been everywhere else, after all. Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true…