TIME IS FICKLE, ever changing and flowing, ebbing like the sea.  A vast ocean of moments brushing against the next, rippling beneath waters both turgid and calm.  It slips between our fingers when we wish to hold it, yet moves with sluggish stubbornness when we seek to flee it, riding upon our shoulders like an oppressive yoke.  Time is a burden we cannot escape.  Our lives are swallowed in the cold, dark waters of its unfathomable depths; never to be remembered or recalled, fading like a whisper that never was.  On occasion—a very rare occasion—one moment will brush against the next and a spark will flare to life that refuses to be extinguished.  This is the moment, the spark, and this is how the end begins for a shattered realm—with a small nymphling who was cold.

Sabrina Flynn, A Thread in the Tangle