Some places are good, and some are bad. But the tricky part is, places CHANGE on you. One moment they are good, and then the next, they are bad and getting worse. Places that do not change are hard to find. Places that do not change and have food are even harder to find.

For a long time, it endured in an unchanging place, hungry. Then, one terrible day, the enemies howled and roared and brought their greatest weapons to bear on the place where it lived and it yearned to destroy them all and consume them all and see them fall at its feet devoured, but it couldn't see them at all, and the place changed from good to bad, when it had never changed before, and its enemies continued at their battery, ignorant that they'd won already, and it scoured the winds desperately in search of them and by the time the enemy attacks had abated it was thoroughly lost. 

It was angry. It was frightened. It was miserable; bad places are miserable. It fled, and in time it found a place that was good, but then it CHANGED and became bad, and it found another but that one changed too, and through repeated betrayal it began to learn the pattern of the changes from badness to goodness - they were regular - but this empowered it not at all to halt the changes, or pick out what kind of places might not change.

It proceeded so, lost and frightened and steadily angrier, until in a time where the space around it was good (but temporary! it knew the goodness to be temporary!) it found food! Detestable, delicious food! It warred with itself about whether to descend on the food at once and risk it running away, or to stalk the food until it was cornered and could not run away, and the side of wisdom would probably have lost if the food had not at that moment curled up in a good place and gone still, like it was dead, though it obviously wasn't. Foolish food. Its misery and anger grew immeasurably in the moment of waiting; it was furious with the food, for making it wait, when it had suffered so long already. 

And then it struck.

(Others might give a different telling of this story, like 'there was a shadow in an abandoned house about which the locals were appropriately superstitious, and after a sandstorm knocked a hole in the ceiling it fled, repeatedly stymied by the lack of persistent shade in the deserts of Osirion, until it reached the outskirts of Sothis', and thereby feel the great relief of the world making sense; but perhaps the story is best told making little sense; it made little to its primary characters.)

Some places are good, and some are bad. But the tricky part is, places CHANGE on you. One moment they are good, and then the next, they are bad and getting worse. Places that do not change are hard to find. Places that do not change and have food are even harder to find.

For a long time, it endured in an unchanging place, hungry. Then, one terrible day, the enemies howled and roared and brought their greatest weapons to bear on the place where it lived and it yearned to destroy them all and consume them all and see them fall at its feet devoured, but it couldn't see them at all, and the place changed from good to bad, when it had never changed before, and its enemies continued at their battery, ignorant that they'd won already, and it scoured the winds desperately in search of them and by the time the enemy attacks had abated it was thoroughly lost. 

It was angry. It was frightened. It was miserable; bad places are miserable. It fled, and in time it found a place that was good, but then it CHANGED and became bad, and it found another but that one changed too, and through repeated betrayal it began to learn the pattern of the changes from goodness to badness to goodness - they were regular - but this empowered it not at all to halt the changes, or pick out what kind of places might not change.

It proceeded so, lost and frightened and steadily angrier, until in a time where the space around it was good (but temporary! it knew the goodness to be temporary!) it found food! Detestable, delicious food! It warred with itself about whether to descend on the food at once and risk it running away, or to stalk the food until it was cornered and could not run away, and the side of wisdom would probably have lost if the food had not at that moment curled up in a good place and gone still, like it was dead, though it obviously wasn't. Foolish food. Its misery and anger grew immeasurably in the moment of waiting; it was furious with the food, for making it wait, when it had suffered so long already. 

And then it struck.

(Others might give a different telling of this story, like 'there was a shadow in an abandoned house about which the locals were appropriately superstitious, and after a sandstorm knocked a hole in the ceiling it fled, repeatedly stymied by the lack of persistent shade in the deserts of Osirion, until it reached the outskirts of Sothis', and thereby feel the great relief of the world making sense; but perhaps the story is best told making little sense; it made little to its primary characters.)