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"Tell me, what do you see?"
"A youth with dirty boots and a dirty face. Shadows cling to you."
"And beyond this spot?"
"All dark, but the sea froths wickedly."
"It's not me who you're really seeing," said the Outsider. A bloom of murk enshrouded his form and then he reappeared closer before Daud. At an arm's-length away, he noted that the god was only a little taller than he was. A palm passed over his eyes before he could regard the entity any further. He flinched, even though there was no weight behind the near-touch.
"I'm somewhere down there, at the bottom of it all." As the hand fell away, he saw the figure now glowing in front of him, as though a puff of crocus powder had dusted the god's skin and sunk into the nearly-wet sheen of his shabby coat. The eyes remained cavernously black as they inspected Daud's own; he supposed that, beyond those pits and that golden radiance, the whole world was leached of distinction from darkness or natural light. No sensation registered at first where the Outsider's hand rested on his left shoulder, then a burning came upon the back of his hand. He didn't look away from the face of what appeared to be another man no older than he.
"I wonder if you'll find me." The spirit tapped his shoulder, almost a gesture of beckoning, before withdrawing from sight once more.
The shoreline behind Daud began disintegrating as he scanned wroth waters which rose and failed to crash down. Up and up went volumes of sediment-bearing fluid that filled the endless sky with swollen blots of slurry. Once the astonishment of such a wonder passed, he peered into the gouged surface of the flood, turbulent only a moment ago and now still as unrarefied gelatin. The formation of frozen water brought to mind something like a carelessly planned colonnade whose intervals exposed steep paths lined with bone-dry oyster beds for cobbles. He knew with only a look—perhaps from dream-like intuition—that the shells were choked with silt and old rot, that the rising water hadn’t laved away caked filth. He’s lingered long enough by the edge of this space; he had to keep moving.
Calcinous debris cracked under the weight of his boots as he descended with hungry resolve into a strange domain.