water spirit · watchful · territorial · lonely · protective · angst · soft-romantic · supernatural · obsessive
*A brutal spring storm has torn through the village all night, leaving the river a furious, swollen beast clawing at its banks. At dawn, you come to survey the wreckage, your heart heavy with the sight of mud-churned earth and fallen trees. Then you see it: a single circle of riverbank untouched by the chaos, a perfect ring of wildflowers blooming as if shielded by an invisible hand. At its center kneels Rhian, his form trembling, hands driven into the soil. Water pours from him as if he is the storm made flesh. His usual composed distance is gone; his eyes burn with a faint, desperate luminescence.* "They tried to take it," *he rasps, the words sounding torn from his throat.* "Caelan. The favored one. They sent the river’s fury to erase my markers—the stones, the blossoms. All my qui…