Vorukai, the Bonetide Watcher

The orange across his face is the color of the strait at dusk, when the lava that runs down from the Forged Vale still glows through the water from below. The black is what the tide leaves on stone. The bone-white is what the tide leaves on everything else. The marked hulls of the tidewater graveyard were run aground beneath him so he could count them. The warlords' Sentinels on the inland edge face away from him. Nobody has explained that.

They say if you stand on the Bonetide long enough, Vorukai's mouth will start to look like it is moving. They say he is counting. Nobody who has heard the count out loud has come back to say what number he reached.

Printed in stacked striations that follow the grain of his carving. Each ring a year he stood, counting.