Mockery/Abrette
Abrette
Who Is Not Stirred
Greater Elemental Dragon of Earth
Indulgent Soul of the Elemental Dragon of Earth
Attendant to the Elemental Dragon of Fire
Somewhere beneath the deserts and mountains of the South, Abrette rests and wanders. Her body, often immaterial, is a sphere of magma two dozen feet across, plated with armored sheets of rock floating upon its surface. The eldest lunars say that in their deepest, furthest memories, they remember Abrette rising from her rest once, uncoiling, and she was a long and serpentine beast of the brilliant red and gold of the earth's hot blood with serene obsidian eyes. But this, it is said, was for but a day, and when the day ended she coiled into a ball, and has not stirred since, save in her aimless drifting through the sand and stone of the South. Dreamflies are drawn to her and float in her presence like summer fireflies; she makes no sign of acknowledging their presence, neither accepting nor rejecting them.
Within herself, she dreams, and each dream is in the shape of a gem, and each gem is a beauty regardless of its contents. Inside each gem is the dream that birthed it, and when Abrette tires of the dream she has crafted, after years or decades, she drops it into the earth, and dreams anew. The stones that she has shaped are rare; much to the disappointment of First Age Savants, the precious stones of Gem are almost entirely not of her making. She did not often frequent it in the days before the Primordial War, and when the humans began to move in, her visits became unheard of--some whisper that great sages of the Twilight Caste or the No Moons guided her dreams to make her drift away from where men would linger. Some of those selfsame whispers go on to suggest that by the time of the Usurpation, the Copper Spiders had crafted a trap for her, to provoke further dreams and control them, the next time she appeared.
The gems sit for centuries, and often the dreams themselves expire and become like the yasal crystals, or the Raksha courts of the South will hunt for them. Men and women have found the gems, but rarely recognize them as anything more than exquisite gemstones, and often try to cut them to fit a setting in a ring or a crown. Mortals lack the insight to shape the jewel; it must be cut not only to match its luster, but the essence of the whims and fancies within. To cut it poorly causes the gem's emotional essence to escape, and no matter its nature, it turns to ill fortune for the bearer: sadness and fear are easily tainted, but joy becomes reckless giddiness, and romantic ardor a consuming lust. Wiser is the man who crafts the jewelry to fit the gem instead.
Occasionally a gem that goes unfound will find itself in the path of Abrette again, and she will remember the dream, and it will grow in potency and beauty when she has cast it aside again.
One dream, of a man who walked across the sky, was dreamt no less than seven times by Abrette, and those few who are privy to such things say that Vanileth covets it, or at least wishes its discovery.
It is said, too, that while Abrette dreams without conscious aim, there are those who have taken her company in what passes for love: those who can pass through the earth to find her, who can bear the heat she casts off with her presence, and who can accept her constant impassiveness may commune with her, and those beings dream dreams of import and portent for a time after they have left her company, and wake to visions of eyes of shadowy volcanic glass.
