[thelabradorr]

anemoi’s name. jörund
prompt. It was the wreckage that had drawn him.

The first object revealed itself easily—a Yggdrasil seedling, delicate and out of place among the decay. Its roots clung to the damp remnants of a clay pot, trembling as though sensing the storm’s lingering presence. He nudged it carefully with his bill, the faint power of the World Tree whispering promises of renewal. But the seedling seemed afraid, as though its fate had been severed.

Diving deeper into the wreckage, Jörund surfaced with a runic war banner, its soaked fabric clinging to splintered wood. The runes glowed faintly, their meanings—protection, sacrifice—now muted by failure. The air around it grew dense, heavy with unspoken grief.

The last find lay submerged: a rune-carved bone talisman, warm against his flesh. Its twisting runes thrummed like a heartbeat, alive with unease.

[Adamented]

anemoi’s name. Gleo
prompt. A broken bottle with a letter from a scorned lover, a broken sage scented candlestick, an a wooden spork

[Melonbread]

anemoi’s name. Lang
prompt.

• The ship's log, a thick tome bound in leather. Heavily water damaged and corroded by salt, the pages are warped, yellowed, and mostly illegible. The only words she can make out are bearings, times, and measurements: wind speed, wind direction, angle to the horizon. On one page, scribbled in the margin, numbers for a three-point fix. On another, half a poem. Composed by a bored night watch, perhaps? Junk, but interesting to puzzle over. The pages are brittle from the salt; she will have to hold it very carefully in her claws.
  
• A small folding knife tangled near the mainmast, just under the crow's nest. The rope it's caught in is fairly standard: twisted and braided hemp. The running rigging is in decay, but the standing rigging has fared better, coated in tar as it is. The knife is nestled against the upper shrouds, which has kept it from falling to the deck. Why would it be up here? Fallen from the pocket of a deckhand grappling with the rigging, trying to reef the sails, perhaps? The handle is simple, just roughly-carved wood, but it will be a good memento.
• Something glitters in the gloom below deck. She has to swim to get to it, and it's briefly obscured by the silt kicked up by her movement as she gets close, but she waits patiently for it to settle, and picks the object out. Back in the sunlight, it reveals itself to be a gold pocketwatch. The hands are stopped on 3:07. The mechanism would have failed soon after meeting water; the ship must have sunk very early in the morning. A precious clue.

[Discontinued]

anemoi’s name. Lucid
prompt.


Saltwater burns, they say. It corrodes and reduces the strongest to nothing but a shred of itself. It's the pawn of the ocean, a weapon in it's smallest and mightiest form. To see a shipwreck is nothing short of common in his eyes, every step along the silky grey sands providing a view of one or two before the tides take back their prize. A breath leaves his lungs, sharp and uncaring, as he passes by the creaking boards of the latest victim. The moonlight only serves to highlight another mundane disaster, another simple broken thing.

But in the corner of his eye lingers a glimmer of gold between the planks, a sight that tugs at the curiosity he buries. With one step, no two... or was it four, he found himself slinking between the gap left by the jaws of nature. Inside it's dark, cold and damp, the lingering scent of dead fish and something far too human burning in his nose. He grunts in disgust, but continues on, that feeling pulling on him like a thread set ablaze. On the nearest shelf he finds a small chest, bolted to the board to keep it upright. With a simple smack it opens up, revealing an offering of silver coins. It's nothing interesting, he tells himself, and moves on.

The next thing he finds is a small plush thing. It's surface is covered in sand and drenched in water, the poor thing having seen far better days. It's almost cute, in a way, for being a false creature. It looks like something a child would enjoy, maybe even play with in the times they found themself alone. He continues forward, weaving between a few broken boards, wanting to know where the thing that called to him could be.

Soon enough, he finds that golden thing; a locket resting against a pile of sand, only a margin of its original beauty still left to admire. He pokes at it with a claw, making himself believe it's nothing worthy of his time after all. And why not? This thing is of human hands - a tool for something dumb and unworthy of an anemoi's attention. So he flips it back over to its resting place, not caring for wherever it truly ended up. That is, until the sound of it opening caught his attention. Slowly, he turns, his long tail curling in close. Inside that locket was a vintage photograph, so tiny yet so alluring. It houses a human family, a male and female pair with their offspring, he assumes. They look happy, holding each other close like they meant the world to one another. The child is even laughing, it seems. How it survived the saltwater was beyond him.

He wants to scoff, to ignore the way it warmed something in his heart. He tries to ignore the way he scoops that locket up before continuing his search. He's determined to forget that he found many interesting things in that shipwreck... many beautiful, human things that told a story he would never find himself truly forgetting.

[Dark Mill South]

anemoi’s name. Wolfen
prompt. Holding his breath, Wolfen allows his head to sink below the surface of the dark water. Let's do this., he thinks to himself as he begins to count the seconds, powerfully pumping his limbs in locomotion to dive down deep and feeling grateful for all of those dumb swimming lessons he detested when he was young. The salt water burned at his eyes but he resisted the urge to keep them shut, rapidly approaching the shipwreck and swimming just as beautifully, gracefully, and strongly, as a dolphin might. He observes the shipwreck and finds a hole ripped wide open on the hull of the once beautiful vessel, giving him more than enough access into the captain's quarters. His front paws find purchase on the threshold of the hole and he propels himself forward, launching off of the wood for one more speed boost as the seconds continue to trickle upwards and time trickles down.
He was almost out of time and breath, but he had come this far and was here, so it was time to act. And act quickly he must. His gaze quickly went to the captain's desk, rummaging through the drawers and pulling out anything he could find. He didn't pay much attention to what he was grabbing, if it was shiny and if it was here, it was coming back with him to the surface. He found a water logged satchel laying nearby and just stuffed it full of what he had grabbed, throwing the leather strap over his chest and turning around, propelling himself out of the captain's quarters and towards the surface, his eyes locked on the light breaking through the surface.
His head broke into the free air and he gasped loudly, wheezing a few times as precious oxygen filled his lungs once again. He rubbed at his sore eyes with his front paws, treading water for a couple moments as he gathered his breath before swimming back to shore. Once he was back on the beach, he took the satchel off of his chest and dumped it out onto the sand to survey and take inventory of what he had managed to grab:
1) A peculiar book bound in leather with symbols all over the cover that he didn't recognize. He picked at the cover carefully to open the book, fully expecting it to just fall apart and be so waterlogged it was completely lost, but to his surprise and awe the book both held together, and the pages were legible. Legible, but he still didn't recognize the symbols and writings within which depicted drawings of strange animals and plants that he didn't recognize, they looked so foreign and alien as if this was a documentation of another world entirely. He blinked his eyes together a few times, shutting the book and setting it aside, he was curious to see what else he had brought to the surface but the book lingered on inside of his head.
2) A jeweled astrolabe followed next. An astrolabe is a navigational instrument, but one made of gold and encrusted with gems would be both valuable and a symbol of status, Wolfen picked it up to examine it for damage and defects, rust, anything like that but again, this item was strangely beautiful and perfect. All it needed was just a good cleaning and some TLC, and then it would fetch a marvelous price. Whoever this ship's captain had been had clearly been important and onto something.
3) A silver chalice was the next item that Wolfen inspected. At first it was kind of boring, it was just a silver cup and compared to the other treasures it seemed rather worthless and uninteresting. He took another look, rubbing some of the seaweed and debris off of it and holding it up to the bright sun and squinting as he suddenly noticed some writings and engravings on the chalice. The writing was in another language, and it seemed to be in the language of the book he'd found. As he peered closer and closer and rotated the cup around in the light, a very clear beam of light shot out of the chalice once it had been cleaned off. The chalice was filtering sunlight and turning it into a pure white beam, almost like a flashlight. He shone the beacon around in curious awe, wondering to what purpose the chalice had been originally intended for.
At the end of inventorying his items, it felt like he had way more questions than he had answers, looking back off to the ocean where he had dived down. He would go back.

[redtruck]

anemoi’s name hedera
prompt a scuffed silver compass in need of polishing, a waterlogged captain's journal, and a perfect, unblemished marble that shines just too bright in the morning light
redtruck 701230

[SilkenDragon]

anemoi’s name. Calidris
prompt. a gaudy, golden wristwatch, covered with bright gems; a surprisingly well secured and sealed crate packed with spools of ribbon; a box of assorted, handmade wooden stamps

[molotov]

anemoi’s name. Lucid
prompt.


Saltwater burns, they say. It corrodes and reduces the strongest to nothing but a shred of itself. It's the pawn of the ocean, a weapon in it's smallest and mightiest form. To see a shipwreck is nothing short of common in his eyes, every step along the silky grey sands providing a view of one or two before the tides take back their prize. A breath leaves his lungs, sharp and uncaring, as he passes by the creaking boards of the latest victim. The moonlight only serves to highlight another mundane disaster, another simple broken thing.

But in the corner of his eye lingers a glimmer of gold between the planks, a sight that tugs at the curiosity he buries. With one step, no two... or was it four, he found himself slinking between the gap left by the jaws of nature. Inside it's dark, cold and damp, the lingering scent of dead fish and something far too human burning in his nose. He grunts in disgust, but continues on, that feeling pulling on him like a thread set ablaze. On the nearest shelf he finds a small chest, bolted to the board to keep it upright. With a simple smack it opens up, revealing an offering of silver coins. It's nothing interesting, he tells himself, and moves on.

The next thing he finds is a small plush thing. It's surface is covered in sand and drenched in water, the poor thing having seen far better days. It's almost cute, in a way, for being a false creature. It looks like something a child would enjoy, maybe even play with in the times they found themself alone. He continues forward, weaving between a few broken boards, wanting to know where the thing that called to him could be.

Soon enough, he finds that golden thing; a locket resting against a pile of sand, only a margin of its original beauty still left to admire. He pokes at it with a claw, making himself believe it's nothing worthy of his time after all. And why not? This thing is of human hands - a tool for something dumb and unworthy of an anemoi's attention. So he flips it back over to its resting place, not caring for wherever it truly ended up. That is, until the sound of it opening caught his attention. Slowly, he turns, his long tail curling in close. Inside that locket was a vintage photograph, so tiny yet so alluring. It houses a human family, a male and female pair with their offspring, he assumes. They look happy, holding each other close like they meant the world to one another. The child is even laughing, it seems. How it survived the saltwater was beyond him.

He wants to scoff, to ignore the way it warmed something in his heart. He tries to ignore the way he scoops that locket up before continuing his search. He's determined to forget that he found many interesting things in that shipwreck... many beautiful, human things that told a story he would never find himself truly forgetting.

Congrats. He’s all yours! Truly a captivating entry, I loved the story you told through the items and the view into Lucid’s character, the visualizations were excellent!

I absolutely adore the creativity that went into everyone’s entries, the items of choice are truly intriguing and it was a difficult decision to narrow down. Thank you all so much for your participation! Nevertheless! I have a little something special for the runners up.

I will be rewarding eggs to the following;
thelabradorr, Melonbread, Harm&Ease

if you are unfamiliar with eggs, they are essentially tickets, these can go towards the upcoming nursery I have in the works to be turned into for custom/semi-custom anemoi.

[BlueEyedKite]

Ahhhhh Discontinued, always a tough cookie to beat. Congratulations fabulous writing!

[Melonbread]

Congrats! And thank you for the runner up! ^^