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Rivalry haunts humanity, bringing forward warfare and destruction. Destruction devastates, encouraging rebirth. Amongst the changes, the survivors withhold the ability to
control warfare. Thus, they control rivalry. Thus, they control humanity. The most powerful seven survivors were called the guardians. Each of them possessed abilities unfathomed by any basic understanding of reality. They held such strength and intelligence, it had been accepted that they could defeat even the most formidable of deities.
Such power was only comparable to the patterns of nature, thus nature granted the guardians their names. Storm was a fiery man with a sharp tongue. In war, he was said to attack as relentlessly as gale force winds. He rarely left much more than blood in his footsteps. Rain was an ardent swordsman. Any blow from his katana came at speeds no eyes other than his own could follow. The two guardians were the most powerful, not counting the executive power, a man who was appropriately named after the Sky that covers all.
Many score years into the reign of the guardians, an unfathomed calamity struck humanity. Rain was sick. Rain was on the verge of death, and droughts starved humanity. Tornados rose and fired massive gusts in their attempts to quell the anxiety, the worry. Storm did not want Rain to die. The landfalls of massive hurricanes brought no rain, no peace. Rain stopped laughing. He was too sick. The wars stopped when all that was bled was dust. The world waited for the laughter of the rain.
Only the guardians took on the search for a remedy for Rain's ailment. It was unlike anything ever diagnosed. Rain would lye alone, surrounded by sadness. He'd developed insomnia, but was too weak to be considered conscious.
Storm, the bravest of the guardians, ventured into the valleys of evaporated lakes, the screaming bones of the dead earth snapping under his feet. He would suddenly stop, and remind himself of his goals: to hear the giggles of laughter the rain made as the drops crashed upon the earth.
Slowly, the sound struggled from his memory. It had been so long, and the earth begged for Rain. Frantic, Storm struggled to remember the sound. He screamed, he cried, he sobbed. Then, he laughed. He realized it was the sound the rain made. The sound Rain made.
The winds of many storms carried Storm's voice through humanity. They screamed with him, they cried with him, they sobbed with him. Then, they laughed with him. Laughter surrounded humanity, and the rain began to fall from their voices. Laughter rang through the earth's ears. The rain laughed, humanity laughed, and the guardians laughed. The storm had encouraged the rain. And Rain laughed.
He entered the mass of humanity and found Storm knee deep in the laughter of the rain. They smiled in each other's directions. They embraced, closing the space between their faces as they restored the balance of nature. The elements in which they represented were empowered by the love and laughter that rang in the wind, and in the rain. The rain had been reborn from the memories. Laughter was now indebted to the winds, Rain now indebted to Storm.
The Rain controls peace, which quells warfare. Peace creates laughter, which calms humanity. And all is regulated by the wind's gentle caresses to the memory that holds it.