Chapter Two - Thunder and Lightning.
"I've had some prophetic visions in my few years. I can't truthfully say any of them were brought on by mushrooms," Zander answers Victoria with complete candor. "They mostly come to me in vivid dreams after passing out from moderate, healthy consumption of alcohol."
"Here, I'll give you an example! In this dream I was sitting on the rocks, not too far from shore, with my feet in the ocean and no shirt on, natch. The ocean was warm when it swept in, cool as it slipped away. I was playing a tune, mellow and liquid like the water. The tide provided the baseline."
With that, Zander puts fingers to strings and starts playing the song from his dream.
"We spotted the ocean"
"at the head of the trail."
"Where are we going"
"so far away?"
"A pale mermaid with brilliantly oversaturated crimson hair splashed out of the water and rose between my legs to give me an eye to eye look. She was wearing a purple seashell bikini top and that didn't seem strange at all. 'Zander Val Bunjur?' she asked, deep blue eyes wide with naivety and wonder."
"'The one and only,' I answered."
Zander keeps playing the instrumental parts of the song while he tells you all about the rest of the dream.
"'I'm here to deliver a message for you, Zander Val Banjur. There is an intelligent relic you must find - the Rod of Sol. Find it and bond with it,' she said. See? If this was just some dream and not a vision I wouldn't be able to remember all these details so exactly. I have a hard time remembering which day it is most of the time. But that's neither here nor there. Lemme tell you the rest of this vision."
"'Rod of Sol? Is that some sort of euphemism?' I asked her. You have to admit, it sounds more like a lewd joke than an actual artifact of the heavens, doesn't it? But she didn't know what a euphemism was. She just blinked and smiled at me."
"Then I asked her if it would keep me from turning into a demon, which puzzled her a lot. 'Well, I guess it might,' she said. 'I mean it's an artifact full of Sol's divine positive energy, right? But that's not really what it's for.'"
"'What is it for?' I asked."
Yes, Zander is still playing that tune about the ocean from his dream. I will let you know if and when he stops.
"She just shrugged and said she didn't know. That was good enough for me, so I asked her if she wanted to make out. 'Yes,' she said nodding her head enthusiastically. 'But I don't have any, um... parts, in the fish half, you know.' Then it was my turn to shrug. I set down my guitar and gave the mermaid a kiss on the nose."
He takes a long drink before continuing to sing.
"Walk on the ocean."
"Step on the stones."
"Flesh becomes water."
"Wood becomes bone."
Zander seems more interested in playing and singing the song than in explaining how this story will help them in any way to keep the world from coming unravelled, but just when you're all sure he'd continue off on some unnecessary tangent Zander plinks off the last few notes.
"I've got a plan C too, if the mushrooms don't work, or you don't want to try them. Maybe there's a diviner at the temple of Luna who can catch the moon's reflection just-so off a pool of holy water so as to get a vision of where we might find Skuld."
"Or charm a forked stick to guide us towards her. Just a little push in the right direction by Luna and we'll do the rest."
