The Augur

I remember meeting an Augur as a child. Her eyes were lit with the spark of the gods as she told us children the story of her kind. Sent from the starry reaches above in their gleaming white coffins, the Augurs were bestowed upon this world by the gods to shepherd us; to give us hope. Their eyes can see through the tides of time, both past and future. They speak of a time when the world was whole. When grass and water covered the world, and when all men walked the surface. They also speak of our promised future. A time when the plates will reconverge, and the wound in our world will heal. Time is a cycle, they say.

The Interlopers were betrayed by time. They hail from a future which will never come to pass. They have been damned to walk the fields of glass for the remainder of their lives. Their bodies may be steel, but once they have depleted their great batteries, they will be rendered still forever more. Unable to return to their own time nor reproduce, their kind is doomed to extinction. Their despair drives them to envy humanity; to covet that which they can never have. For while we may be humble flesh, we have hope. We have hope for our promised future.

Despite the cracks in her porcelain skin, I remember thinking the Augur was beautiful. She spoke falteringly, like a skipping record, but all of us were so enraptured by her words, that silence was her only accompaniment. When she was finished, the adults tried to usher us all out of her tent, but I remained. I asked her if I would see the promised future. She looked down at me with glowing cyan eyes and beckoned me closer. I came so close to her that I could hear a faint whirring emerging from within her silken robes. She whispered to me:

"Child... your end is coming. I have seen it... but worry not, for your next beginning is also coming. All things must end, but so too must they be renewed. In this life, you will struggle. But it may not be so in the next life... Though you know the outcome, every effect must have its cause. Before the promised future can be seen, it must be made... Go. Help restore this world while you can. You may not see it in this life, nor your children, but the next iteration of yourself will..."