Why is the sea salty?
Once upon a time before the Darkness, the ocean we call the Great Wet Desert wasn’t a desert at all, for its waves and winds were gentle and predictable, and its water was fresh like that from the ice of the North, and it was full of sweet fish and delicious seaweed. Ships could sail around it and never starve or thirst or be threatened by a sudden storm.
During the Darkness on the coast of Coricia lived a Holder who was known for being a stingy and ruthless lord, and he had in his service an Ammatar governor known for being equally stingy and ruthless.
That man’s clan sailed the sea, and they were equally stingy about it as they were about everything else; they controlled all ships and all ports and all trade in that Holding, so that they alone and their lord that they bought this right from benefited and grew rich and fat, while every other tribesman and -woman in the area grew poorer and poorer and starved.
When the Midsummer feast was approaching, a tribeswoman and a speaker for many clans in the region went to this stingy governor, and she said: “In the name of all that is holy, hear me. My people are starving. We’re starving and it is Midsummer. Make any request you want but have mercy on us, give me something to feed them with, at least this one night, that should be one of celebration. Or I swear on God and on all gods, the people will rebel, and the township will burn.”
The stingy governor did not like the idea of his township and easy living burning to ground, so grudgingly he ordered some food to be sent to the slaves of the Holding, in celebration, and then he said to the woman: “You got what you wanted, now go to Hel, and never come back into my sight.”
This was not the request the speaker woman had expected, but she had given her word to follow any request, so she went to the ocean’s shore, wandering it and wondering how she could find an entry to the underworld. When she was sitting at a great rock and considering if she should just jump into the water and hope she would be dragged to the world under the bottom of the ocean when she died, a great shark rose from the ocean and to her amazement it spoke to her.
“Why are you crying, daughter of the Tribes?”
“O Great Shark, I owe a favor to fulfill a request to go to Hel, but I do not know the way to that underworld.”
“You have paid that favour by coming to me, for I am Hel the Great Shark. But never before have I heard of such a favour; how did you come to owe it?”
The tribeswoman told the Great Shark the story, and the woes her people were suffering in the hands of the stingy Holder and the even worse governor. The shark grew pensive. “How terrible it must be to have been born a human,” it said. “Here, I will give you the gift of endless bounty. Here is a small mill that once was lost in the sea by a careless person of your kind. Put some pebbles from the shores of the great ocean in it, and with the spell I will teach you you can grind the sand into any food or drink you like. But keep it secret, keep it safe! It is not a tool for greed.”
And the shark coughed, and out of its mouth flew a small hand grinder, like the ones you would use for corn or coffee. As instructed, the woman put some pebbles into it, and the shark told her the magic words, and she said them, and asked the mill to make her bread and cheese, and those things appeared, and when she had eaten her fill, the shark told her how to stop it.
She thanked the shark, and she took the mill, and her people never had to starve again.
Come next Midsummer, again, the only thing keeping the people alive was the mill. By now, many people knew the woman had something from which sustenance flowed, for no matter how careful she was, bread and butter and herring and apples can only be eaten if they are known about. So many people came to her and they said, please, sister, we have nothing to have a feast on, can you help us?
She felt sorry for them and she told them to come back on the Midsummer night, but be careful, and there would be a feast. She spun bread and meats and fruit, and wine and ale and stronger spirits, all sorts of sweet things and savory things, and little snacks that people loved to eat even after they had eaten enough, and set out to have a feast. But of course, that could not be kept secret, and when the feast started, also the stingy Holder sent his governor and guards to figure out what rebellious act it was that allowed this extravagance to go on.
When the woman saw the governor on site, she withdrew, for she had not forgotten the request she owed, “and stay out of my sight”. But while she was away, the governor spoke to the people present, and a lot of them were drunk, and some wanted to boast, and some were scared, and too many of them told him what they knew of the mill. And with enough bits and pieces, he ordered the woman arrested, and demanded to be given the mill and shown how it could be used, and then he took it with him.
The governor of course already had enough food and drink so he did not need the mill for that. Instead, he put it on one of his trade ships and filled that only with empty sacks and barrels, and sailed out. When he was arriving in the city we now know as Mithuris, he took out the mill, poured some sand in it, said the magic words, and commanded: “Mill, grind me salt!”
The mill started to grind out salt. It poured and poured out of it, filling all the sacks and barrels. But it did not stop there: it just kept on going, salt falling on the cargo deck’s floor, spilling everywhere. “That’s enough now, mill!” the governor said - but he had never asked the woman how to stop it, and she had not told him.
Salt kept filling the ship. The crew begged the governor to throw the mill into the sea, but he refused, searching frantically for a way to stop it instead. When the ship started to tip to one side from the weight of the excess cargo, the captain of it had had enough, and she ordered the mill to be taken from the governor and indeed thrown into the ocean, lest the ship be lost.
The crew like the crew of any ship - space or sea or air - obeyed their captain first and any visiting dignitaries only as the captain tells them to, so they overwhelmed the governor and took the mill and threw it away and it sank to the water - still grinding salt.
The Great Shark felt it fall and it became very angry at the ungrateful humans who had not kept its gift safe as it had instructed, and it thrashed and turned and splashed its tail in its anger. A great storm rose, and the ship already tipping under the salt load tipped further, toppled over, and sank, taking with it all the salt, all the crew, the captain who acted too late and the stingy governor who owned the mill.
And there, even today, in the bottom of the Great Wet Desert, sits the salt mill and grinds salt. And that is why no matter how many fresh rivers run and fresh rains fall into the ocean, it will always remain salty. And the Great Shark is still angry with humans, and has not spoken to our kind since, and its unpredictable spirits make the ocean unpredictable, and that is why sudden storms and scissor-tooth sharks and great serpents are now a threat to all who sail it.