Book Excerpt

Aravan rode out of the dawn and into Mithgar in the early days of the First Era, coming to the youth and wildness of this new world, leaving behind the stately grace and beauty of ancient Adonar. When he emerged he found himself in a misty swale, the grassy crowns of mounded hills all about. He was not surprised by the cast of this terrain, for the crossings in between are fair matched to one another. But unexpectedly to his ears came the distant sound of shsshing booms. Intrigued, the Elf turned his horse toward the rolling roar, riding southerly among the diminishing downs. Upward his path took him, up a long, shallow slope, the sounds increasing, the wind in his face, a salt tang on the air. And he found himself on a high chalk cliff, the white bluff falling sheer. Out before him as far as the eye could see stretched deep blue waters to the horizon and beyond. It was the ocean, the Avagon Sea, its azure waves booming below, high-tossed spray gilttering like diamonds cast upward in the morning Sun. Aravan's heart sang at such a sight and his eyes brimmed with tears, and in that moment something slipped comfortably into his soul.

Dennis L. McKiernan, The Eye of the Hunter.

I like that last line, "something slipped comfortably into his soul." In this case it is the love of the sea, and I think that many of us share it. How many times in dating profiles do you see the hackneyed phrase "I like the mountains and the beach?" People are drawn to them. Stephen R. Donaldson wrote of this longing in his Thomas Covenant books, encapsulating it in verse spoken by a Giant:

Stone and Sea are deep in life,
Two unalterable symbols of the world.
Permanence at rest
And permanence in motion,
Participants in the power that remains.