Iddin looked down at the clay, its texture a sudden, vivid memory. He closed his eyes. He remembered. Not the idea of a punishing god, but the chilling, suffocating grip of the water. The gritty taste of silt in his mouth. The hollow, gnawing ache in his belly. And the moment a stranger, whose face he never saw, pulled him onto a piece of drifting wood, the grip of that hand more real than any prayer.
That night, Iddin sang a new song.
It was not a song of gods and wrath. It was a song of cold water and trembling hands. It was a song of shared hunger, and the desperate, animal will to breathe. It was a song of the warmth of a single, small fire kindled on a hilltop in the vast, wet darkness, a tiny beacon against the end of all things.
He did not tell people to be afraid. He did not tell them to be humble. He sang of how they had been cold, and hungry, and terrified, and how they had survived.
When he finished, the people were not cowed. They were quiet, a profound and shared silence. Some had tears in their eyes, but they were tears of recognition, not of fear. They reached for the hands of their families, feeling the solid, living warmth.
The ghost of the flood was still there, but it was no longer a monster sent by the gods. It was a memory of a hardship they had faced, and endured, together. Iddin had learned the storyteller's true power: not to preach, but to make people feel, in their bodies and their hearts, the profound, messy, and beautiful truth of what it means to be human, and to survive.