"Ofelia's Apprentice" is a coupling of two poems claimed from the diaries of a
young Geomancer, Nephi, apprentice of the Maker of Mountains, Ofelia y'Bolgari.
The two styles, first a villanelle and then a series of haiku, can in fact be
read aloud as prayers or chants, so precisely are they written. Given the
ritualistic slant of Geomancers in practice, perhaps young and impressionable
Nephi took inspiration from some archaic tome when she recorded her private
admiration for and apprenticeship beneath this Lady y'Bolgari and her eccentric
experiments.

[1: The Soil and the Clay]

The soil and the clay,
We tend it by our hands,
And for the reaping pray.

She teaches me the way
To sow the fertile sands,
The soil and the clay.

Oh Bhalegu, obeyed.
We've called upon the sands,
And so to reap we pray.

The stone must thus decay,
And by its roots demands
The soil and the clay.

Now wait is all we may,
So we clasp our dirtied hands
And for the reaping pray.

Ofelia knows the way
To nurture by our hands
The soil and the clay,
And for the reaping pray.

[2: Dissection of the Maker]

Amidst strange gadgets,
Ofelia's in her lab coat,
Hands stained black as soil.

Jars of this and that
On an old rickety shelf,
Emit bizarre smells.

Blue blooms unfurling
As a vine creeps up the wall,
Plucked off one by one.

A tome lays open,
"Taxonomy of Illwater,"
Bookmarked with a bone.

A beetle scampers
Out of a watering can:
Our next specimen.