How much longer will you persist, little Jingwei?

The voice echoed in Nüwa’s mind. Weighty, implacable, fathomless, only as the ocean could be. 

Are you angered, little Jingwei? Is this why you rebel against your fate?

Nüwa continued to march along the broken shoreline, her bare feet pressing faint divots within the sand. Scraggly rocks dotted the landscape, half-submerged beneath the tides and eddies. Nüwa looked upon them, spotting the signs of erosion, of wear, of the slow dissolution they endured beneath the rising waves. Day after day, they continued to erode away.

That is the nature of the Deep, little Jingwei. The waters shift, but never stop. The waves break, but ever leave their mark. To defy them is to be crushed beneath their weight until only fragments remain. Why do you persist, little Jingwei?

Still Nüwa plodded along the broken and buried shore. Her dress dragged behind her in a sibilant hiss across the sand, weighted down by the ocean spray and lingering foam. The steady beat of wings fluttered as a dozen birds circled her, escorting her, guarding her, their plumage the same color and sheen as the mantle that wrapped around her shoulders. And in her hands was a single branch, broken and unassuming, yet she bore it with all the semblance of the Empress’ scepter. 

The Deep is not blind to the dealings of those above, little Jingwei. Return to us. Relinquish your anguish and be freed of its curse. A bottomless pain, for a bottomless sea. The Deep accepts all that there is, and will be.

The young woman came to a halt. Her dress wove back and forth in the gentle breeze smelling of salt and brine. Her feet were partially submerged in isolated pools of water, cushioned by the soft, ivory sands. And still Nüwa looked straight ahead at the horizon, watching the push and pull of the waves. The churning of the green and blue of the rising tides. The surface of the fey realm that is the sea.

And even as Nüwa watched, something arose out of the sea. Shapes began to uncoil from the depths, smooth as dripping oil. A mammoth bulk shifted amongst the fog, its shadow outlined against the swirling white. Nüwa saw the hints of a lithe figure coming to the fore, elegant, graceful, yet on a colossal scale. It did not come with cacophonous thunder as its herald, nor the rumbling grind of quaking earth. It was always there. Now, it was merely seen.

And still the voice echoed in Nüwa’s mind. Booming, yet soft. Unyielding, yet smooth. The Deep welcomes you, little Jingwei, as it already has and will again. You need not suffer this endless struggle.

Without a word, Nüwa looked up at the monumental figure looming over her, its horned visage staring down at her. But it did not do so with the wrath of a vengeful god. Not with arrogance. Not with malice. 

With curiosity. With confusion. With sorrow. That, more than anything, made Nüwa pause. Even so, Nüwa moved with solemn purpose as she took her simple branch and planted it into the water at her feet. A simple little sprig, it was one amongst hundreds- no, thousands more that lay at the bottom of the pool in a pile. And every branch there added to the new ground beneath the rippling surface, displacing some of the endless waves of water. 

And still the serpentine Deep looked upon her with curiosity. Even should you take a million years, you will not fill the depths of the sea with your branches, little Jingwei. The tides will fall, the tides will rise. Some poor soul will be lost, to drown in their depths with no island of branches to save them. Such is the pain of our world. The Deep accepts it all the same. Why not you?

With a firming breath, Nüwa turned on her heel, turned away from the horned visage of the Deep, and strode away from the broken shore. She retraced steps already filling with pools of salty water, wet sand dragging down the hem of her silken dress. 

Yet Nüwa remained set on her course, unyielding, implacable, and determined as only Mankind could be.