"What is it Pree? What do you think it is?" At least two hundred of her kind circled around the temple's pit, watching a pink fleshed creature pull itself from the mire and rootbeds. It was stuck, black hair caked in grime as it pulled its legs free from the pit.
"I don't know! It's tall! It looks kind of like a giant, but there's no way they've found Sum.." Pree wiggled about next to her dear apprentice. Their tails mingled on the ground while they watched, listening to the surfacing whispers wane through the sem-circle of Eluae that gathered around the quarry pit.
"It doesn't look dangerous... It's got a head, and hair, like we do! Arms and legs, look!"
Pree found herself following her apprentices's arm all the way down to the creature, who had freed itself from the roots and tried to balance atop  a minuscule rock. "It looks like a woman... But it's not an Eluae, and giants aren't that... Pink..?"


Alos first saw blinding white.  Her body had the vague impression of pressure, without understanding quite what pressure was. Her eyes fluttered open to a blistering bright sky and a canopy so green. She felt the place beat with life, and in that instant she sucked in her first breath. The air tore through her lungs, filled her with energy, and made her flinch with the power of life she didn't know she had.  As her eyes adjusted she saw walls around her, and mud. Lots of mud.
She found herself squirming around at the bottom of this pit, so she may find her limbs and make use of them. The light was dizzying after a while, and she found that she needed to shut her eyes to regain any sense of space. She wouldn’t know it yet, but she felt almost nubile in the fact that every sense was overwhelming. Her nose twitched with the scent of boiling vegetables and of harvest tools being cleaned. She smelled the temple’s musk, unknowing that it was a burial ground for the murdered.
The woman finally gathered her limbs about, bringing an arm above the mud to look at. It was long, pale, covered in mud, and tipped with five smaller arms that had caps upon the ends. She made a series of confused sounds and pulled her other arm from the mire before attempting to sit up.
The first few Eluae noticed in passing, standing at the edge to watch.
“Oh god. A person’s fallen into the quarry.” They shouted at her to ask if she needed help, but all Alos could do was mumble words she had no meaning attached to.
Her legs were the next she felt aware of, but when she went to move them a tether kept her ankle to the ground. Pulling hurt, rather badly, as if it were being scraped by something. Pain… God, was this pain?
And was this sunlight, on her body? And mud? Why did she know what any of this was?
This was Arcadia…
Those were Eluae, and this was Sum Origin, a burial ground for folk killed by giants.
And she was stuck.
Very stuck. She worked to tug her leg from its tether by grabbing onto her knee and pulling, but found that the stronger she pulled the more it hurt. She eventually cried out in a convulsive manner from the sensation, and realized that this was crying.
Alos took a few more moments to free her right ankle, pulling her knee above the mire as her foot came free of the root. She felt along her leg and found other legs, tree legs.. Roots. Buried in the mud.  Her other leg was stuck by suction, worked deep into the thickest peter.
By now, ten or twenty Eluae gathered around the pit to call to her, but she understood none of what they said. “It’s stuck in the pit! What is it?” Pree among them. Her apprentice followed suite-- a young jeweler named Kan who studied from Pree how to string beads and set stones. “I don’t know. I think it’s hurt..”


The woman felt black hair on her head, which cascaded down her back and shoulders. The mud clumped it together, and for a while she set to undo it…
Pree mumbled to Kan even though there was no point in being quiet for the creature’s sake. “It looks confused, like a baby.. What do you think is wrong?”
“I don’t know! No one knows anything about it. Some think it’s a giant, some think it’s just deformed..”
Alos stood for the first time and felt her feet sink comfortably into the warm mud. The air was colder, but the sun felt good. Some of the clay began to harden on her body, cracking when she moved. She saw an elegant rise of stairs in front of her that allowed her to transcend from the marble quarry to the top where all those beautiful people watched her… Those were people. Those were Eluae.
She struggled to step forward, but got into the rhythm of pulling her feet out of the mire and progressing. “Pree! It’s coming up!” The jeweler held her apprentice's hand and told her to be calm and quiet.

Alos wandered up along the stone path, drawing her sore hand along the stoneface to feel the carvings there. She saw figures entombed in a ¾ view along the wall and scraped at them to pull them out. They must be so lonely in there. And why could no one help them? She wept lightly at the faces made of grey, and moved upwards more. More faces… She proceeded past small archways that wrapped around the quarry in tiers, and felt inclined to enter them. Their walls were of the same greyish marble, tainted with veins of dark granite and copper. The ore was beautiful and dull, cut away until it had been smoothed with the rest of the arch’s wall. A marble crate lied in the middle of the room.
The container lacked a lid, which was leaned against it. Inside was the future resting place for a dead Eluae.  She passed a hundred more of these on the way up, and explored every last one. Some had lids, some did not. It made her terribly sad seeing the faces on the wall, which she could not save from their stony prisons. She didn’t know who put them there.

Her feet ached dreadfully by the time she reached the top of the quarry, where she stood in front of now four hundred or so of the curious half-drow. They were miniscule compared to her… Even as they backed away, the closest made it up to only her waist.
Pree shuddered behind a few of her friends. “Kan, it’s so tall… Is it going to eat us?”
	A few who valued their life over curiosity ran off from the crowd, but the majority of people were pinned in place by the size of the crowd, which still steadily backed away. Alos felt inclined to lower herself to both knees, wiping the mire from her forehead with a smile. She had big brown eyes, a gentle smile and a laugh to follow. The tears were over. “Hello…!” She took the hand of the closest person, clasping it gently in both of hers and shaking up and down. The first to touch her was Inot. He quaked in place, but was surprised at her gentleness. “Hello! Oh, Oh, gods. Hello…” A few gasped, but saw she was not harmful. “Are you hurt?” A tailor asked, straightening her apron.
	The gigantic woman giggled. “I am not hurt! I am Alos. I came from down there, in the mud. You all look so beautiful…” She sat up on her knees and shook more hands, just watching the people mill about. They were a faint blue, with plum colored wine-stain marks over their skin. Some had small breasts, others had black hair and deep, blue eyes. They had tails long enough to touch the ground and coil, and little ears that pointed downwards. Some wore heavy earrings, some wore aprons, others wore nothing… She loved them dearly, and had only just met them.
	“What are you..?” Pree shouted. She had the privilege of being closer to the edge than most.  Alos looked at her, amused. “I do not know.. But I know what you are. And I know that I love you.”
	The jeweler seemed flustered by the woman’s confidence in what she said. “You don’t know? How can you not know?”
	The gigantic woman shrugged and shook more hands, just taking her time looking at all the people. She eventually stood up and walked about, still bare and covered in mud. “Your name is Alos?”
	The woman nodded, and looked at Pree. “I think! It’s the sound that I make in my head when I think of myself.” Pree nodded slowly. “Where did you come from then? How did you find us?” The others just let her speak, and listened while the woman walked around. Another Eluae woman went to grab her water.
	“I came from down there, in the quarry. I think that’s what it’s called..”
	“Yes, we saw. But where were you born, Alos? Where did you come from?”
	She laughed in reply. “From the quarry! You said you saw?”
	The jeweler swore she was delirious. But Alos was like no one she’d ever seen before. She was not Eluae, and she was certainly not a Giant.  No homunculus lived in Elvask. The ground was far too soft.
	“I have not been alive before I awoke in the quarry. I have no memories except for these, meeting you now, and waking up. But I am glad to be here. I am glad to be alive, and to see all of you beautiful people.”
Alos walked with the dwindling group back to the center of Sum. The Eluae built their homes up in small caves, stacked atop one another almost like a tiny hive. The apertures carved into the cliffsides reminded her of honeycomb… Why did she know what honeycomb tasted like?
	She was rinsed with baskets of water, cleaned of mud, and directed to a stream to bathe fully. She spent hours in the cold water, catching fish in her hands and letting them go -- watching bugs soar overhead, frogs bloat with their mating calls, and spores quietly grow at the bases of trees. Elvask was filled to the brim with life, and Alos was so enamored that she could experience it.
	She was almost forced to leave the river after her fingers turned to prunes, and her skin wrinkled at the exposure. Her complaints didn’t last long though. She had an entire world to discover. That night, she ate with the Eluae there in Sum, and slept in the honeycomb caves. She asked to be in the highest one, so she could look over the woods at night and watch the trees glow.
	While in her  cot, Alos observed that Eluae ears had a ribbon of skin that lit up at night the same way the trees did, and the fish. Everything living here glowed with their essence, filling Elvask with an eerie light. Arcadia’s host world painted the sky purple and red, and Alos fell asleep under the violet world and its neighboring stars.


	She learned how to make linens from the taylors there. Inot helped her make aprons and belts, and soon she made herself a few colorful silks to wear.  She worked with Pree to make jewelry and saw her spine light up in joy when she finished her first necklace.
	“Why do I not have lights like that? My ears are different from yours.”
	Pree didn’t have an answer for her. “You are not an Eluae Alos. You have pink skin, and no marks. I’m sorry you have no lights.” She could sense she was upset.
	“Are there any others like me?”
	“No… Not that I’ve seen. I’m sorry.”

	Alos learned to sculpt from Inga, an Eluae woman as old as the tree she made her home in.  Some Eluae lived on the ground, but not all of them. The rest lived comfortably in tree-tops, in little wooden homes with beautifully painted roofs.  Inga’s hair was twenty feet long, and hadn’t been cut in four hundred years.. She kept it rolled up in a pendulum behind her back, and in a messy pile of braids atop her head.
	Alos studied from her own body first. She sculpted arms and legs, tiny heads and little torsos, taking her time to listen to Inga. The older woman was rather glad to have a student who wasn’t prone to rushing through the work, through the gargantuan task of learning the body.
	She studied there for years, after dabbling in all other crafts. Her favorite became sculpture, and through it she became obsessed with mimicking life and making out of clay what was real.
	Alos was infatuated with the idea of turning her sculpture into truth.

	She took clay from the templegrounds in Sum and began a massive project from the pale mire. Under Inga’s instruction, she sculpted Tel, the hulking woman. She alone was two heads taller than Alos, dwarfing Inga and the other Eluae. Her arms were duplicitous, the six of them chained at the biceps. Her belly was fat and plump, thighs rounded and sagging under their weight. It was the first time Alos sculpted someone from an image other than herself.
	Tel wore a blissful expression -- delighted to share the gift of life that Alos had, although she was still just clay. Two round breasts sat happily atop her belly, nipples pierced with a bull’s ring each.
	Tel was the first sculpture she gave a name to…
	She was set out in the middle of Sum to fire in the red sun for weeks
	And on the third week, under Alos’s supervision, she began to move. Her eyes blinked open under the firestorm of sunlight, squinting in the vast ocean of white, until figures came to, and buildings, and the face of Alos, the one who made her…
	Alos was infatuated with the girl and was more than pleased to call her ‘sister’. Tel was so unlike her, so full of joy, so heavy, and so prone to tears. Tel felt everything fully. She wept at dropped bread, smiled gleefully at passing children, and was more than happy to give young Eluae rides on her arms through town. Tel felt  almost inclined to be nude. She loved the sun on her skin, and the water and dirt. Tel loved to feel, much like her sister.
	Her and Alos were confounded by their ability to make new Denizens from clay. More of their own. It seemed Alos was the first of her kind, and held the innate ability to make more.  The two were convinced that likeness was sinful. To make one very much unlike one’s self offered the experience of a new person, not a copy. They were compelled to make more and more people, and desired to feel a sense of belonging. Alos was overjoyed by the idea of belonging -- to her sister’s family, and to these people, as a mother, a creator, a denizen of the world Arcadia.

	She loved the Eluae dearly for the knowledge the gave her.
	She loved her children for giving her purpose.
	She loved Arcadia for being her ground to stand on, the water she drank and bathed in, the food she ate, the home she slept in.
	And she told her children to act as if their footsteps were kisses on the ground.