Paradise lost, Paradise found

 

A mangrove forest at the shoreline of the Black Marsh.



Huts in the trees whose roots built up the floor of the forest, only salty water under it instead of real ground.



But that is more than enough for the Argonians who live there, jumping, hangling, climbing through the trees in which they have built their town, even grow plants which cling to the mangrove trees, collecting fresh water in their tankard like, bulbous growths whenever it rains.



Water  that is used by the argonians, fruits  harvested from the different plants, leaves and young stems that are eadible. The forest is their paradise, keeping them safe from the dangerous sea creatures that can not travel through the net like root system that grows under the water, safe from the predatores that live in the marsh and also have problems with the mangrove trees and the big talking tree, Hist or Mother Forest as they are called by them.



But there is one thing that differs them from the typical argonian like the snake tail instead of feet differs the naga from what is deemed the typical argonian.



Feathers mixed between the scales, the younger ones fully scaled, maturing and growing more feathers the older they get, smaller and more agile than other argonians because of them living a life in the trees, as long as they can remember..or as they say the Hist has grown the different argonians from different parts of herself.



From the roots grew the Nagas, slithering like the roots from which they were born.

Archeins, powerfull, bigger than other races, fierce stock of lizards..they could be hardly felled, less hurt by weapons because of the withstanding trunk from which they sprung.

The Paatru came from the knots that formed where one tree could grow saplings, bulbous creatures,full of toxic sap and just like the knots in the safer inner net of the roots, they lived mostly in the inner parts of the Black Marsh..their skin could be easily pierced, but it was not wise to do so.

The Agacephs, the twigchildren...tricksters



And than there were Sarpas..and before mer- and humankind had spread themselves over the lands, they were born from the feathery leaves, the fluffy clouds of thin fibre that carried the seeds of the hist.

Because the hist could donate fruits and nuts to the argonians, or release fluffy fibreclouds when the pods sprung open, carrying the seeds over the waters, depending on her own mood.







Exotic they were,but that wasn´t the only thing that might have drawn others to them.

Some called them the children of the Sap, because the sap carries the most magic of the hist, but maybe also just the kindest magic, smooth to the taste of people with magic in their blood.



Their attitude was the most childlike, most playful of all the different breeds of Argonians, sheltered by the trees, living high above the ground, safer than most parts of the Black Marsh. But maybe they were just playful by nature, not because they knew less of the dangers of the marsh, because they did.



They even knew the dangers of the sea, living at the coast, playing around with the young brood of the sea serpents, still small and only some metres long who were able to seek shelter between the roots of the trees.



The young Sarpas befriending the young sea snakes, forming a bond with them and when they grew, one took the other out into the sea to play with them.

That both could breath under water and were resistant to poisons made them strange siblings.

And some, when turning mature, grew wings.

Both snake and lizard. Maybe a gift of the sap, maybe nature itself...maybe their own bodily magic.



On sunny, windy days they could be seen, playing with each other, skidding over the waves, propelling themselves in the air and sailing for a while before diving back down under the water.

Maybe they were both children of the sap and some Sarpas told stories of how the sea serpents were born from the seeds of the Hist, the seeds that flew in their feathery hull far behind the horizon to come back as young sea serpents. And that was why they sought protecting from the roots of the forest, the mangroves interwined with the hist, interwined with the Argonians, their tree dwelling siblings.

 

But soon a danger came to them, they knew nothing about.