This is not actually my work but the author gave me the OK to post it here and after what it did to me I felt I had to. This is a story of a world unlike our own, a story of a world that was itself alive: it had spent countless life times shaping its oceans and fostering the life they brought to it in solitude. Once long ago the world called out into its seas for a creature with whom it could share its stories, an elf answered its call and looked upon the world in awe. In the years that followed the world recited stories of tragedy and calamity, of love and hate, of life and death, the sea elf recording it all as a diligent scribe, all the while shocked speechless by the tales it told. Years upon years elapsed as the scribe recorded the experience of the world, from when it first carved the land and filled the oceans to its first discovery of life and how it nurtured that first ember. As the world's memoir grew, so to did their friendship; the elf confided to the world her deepest secrets and dreams to travel the oceans in return the world told her of them in greater detail than any other could have. One day the world asked her to stop writing for it had a favor: it was dying, the world she had grown so close to was on the verge of death, it asked the elf that when the day came to pass wherein its voice fell silent she would not weep but rather embark into the oceans and spread the stories she had recorded to whoever would listen and to not stop until she had reached every corner of the globe; laying her pen aside she looked into the world and accepted its request. And so a day came when the world's voice failed to reach her ears, on that day she left with a heavy heart and the memoir of her friend in hand to travel the oceans, reciting the world's many stories to anyone who would listen to her words. Some acused her of blasphemy and rejected the tales as childish illusions, but they did not stop her for she had made a promise to the world itself and she would not stop until it was fulfilled. Days grew to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years but she did not cease her travels until she had reached every trench, reef, valley and mountain under the seas and finally once she had the elf felt that the world had given her more in a single life than she could have ever asked for. More years passed and when the elf looked up at the faces gathered around her deathbed she smiled and looked down at her young son, holding the world's memoir out for him to take. Having been given so much by it she told the boy that she had a debt to the world that could never be repaid and asked that he would one day return the stories to the world's grave. Many more life times passed and at last the world awoke anew, it looked out into the oceans at death; the valleys, trenches, reefs, and mountains that had harbored life for so long were dead, the bare skeletons of their former inhabitants littering the ocean floors. As it gazed upon the dead the world called out for its scribe, praying that she had survived, calling until its words turned into a desperate wail; it did not understand what happened and it was afraid, it called again for the elf praying against all faith that its friend would come to comfort it. The world wailed until its voice was so racked with sorrow that it could only cry for all the life that had been and that never would; eventually the cry too ended and it gave in, accepting that she too had been claimed; again the world was all alone in the oceans it had crafted for life. It was not as the world had thought, a faint ember burned in the dark, a single life still clung on, as more tears fell the world called out to the light, begging it near. The light was the elf's son, still clutching the memoir his mother had written. The world pleaded with the child to tell what had caused such a calamity; the boy turned to the barren oceans and told the world of it's memoir's true effect, the creatures had looked upon its tales and realized their true insignificance, after that revelation they simply stopped living. The world asked the boy why it had not given up; as the boy left he turned to the world and said "it does not matter how insignificant we are, we still [i]are[/i] and that is enough to afford us the chance to change that." The world watched him go and felt life begin to sprout from the oceans once more: it resigned itself to merely observe the new beings, its solitude would prevent such a calamity from occuring twice.