Small sand elemental

A small sand elemental was a souvenir item received from completing a quest at the Wavedancer event in 2005. It is an ambient-style pet that is housed in a pale crystal shard that is worn around the neck. The elementals are not attuned and can be easily passed off to another owner, even fully trained.

Description

a small sand elemental patterned with alternating waves of dark and pale blue hue

The elemental is a miniature swirling storm of multi-hued sand, its millions of sparkling granules constantly shifting and spiraling in ever-renewed patterns of ethereal brilliance.  Its surface melds and constantly reforms in undulating ripples, while each granule appears to shift through the myriad hues of light and dark in a heartbeat.

Feeding

Feeding sapphires to the sand elemental is done as positive reinforcement for morphing and for following the owner's commands.

You extend the sapphire towards your sand elemental.

The sand elemental opens its form up into a wide funnel, its interior swirling and alighting with faint, tiny orbs of bright flame, and you drop the sapphire into the spinning cyclone, which is immediately ground up into tiny motes of sparkling dusty particles and incorporated into its being.  The elemental then reforms into an amorphous, shifting orb, glittering happily with its new meal.

Discipline

When the sand elemental refuses to obey the owner's commands, discipline needs to be administered. This is done by using water, a substance the elemental shows extreme dislike of. Discipline should be applied when the elemental does any of the following:

• Flaying your hand
• Causing localized quakes
• Bashing at you relentlessly
• Running back to its shard when not put inside by you

You pour the clear-hued liquid from your water onto the swirling surface of your sand elemental, causing it bristle and spike up irritably! 

Loresong

The sand elemental shifts and swirls, its sands grating against one another to form a faint, high-pitched sound that echoes about your mind for several moments.
Roundtime: 7 sec.

The sand elemental continues to sing in its strange, melodic voice of sand against sand and for a moment you catch brief glimpses of something fiery and red and all consuming for a scant few seconds.
Roundtime: 10 sec.

As you focus your voice and stare at the sand elemental, your eyes are drawn to its swirling interior, and you find yourself lost in the haze of sand... until you are no longer staring at the elemental, but are somewhere else -- crimsons and russets bleed restlessly at the edge of the world, and mingle like ribbons overhead in fantastic, gargantuan waves of pristine beauty.  You feel yourself drifting carelessly through the earth, bumping along rocks and encountering different soils -- heedless to everything as you have no body, only a conciousness that streams through the earth in swift heartbeats.

Then the vision ends.
Roundtime: 8 sec.

You once again find yourself lost in a vision comprised of the sand elemental's swirling body...

You drift along the currents of earth, and find yourself being pulled somewhere, heat surrounding you like an intense forge as a blinding light blocks your vision.  You feel the sensation of ethereal being fading into corporeal existence, and your conciousness is bound to a physical form -- one comprised of hot earth and a twinge of flame.  You flow in this new existence, never leaving the confines of the cavern you've arrived in, merely waiting and bathing in the essence from the tiny rip in reality, growing slightly as the years pass.

Then the vision ends.
Roundtime: 9 sec.

You once again find yourself lost in a vision comprised of the sand elemental's swirling body...

You find yourself back in the cavern, feeding steadily off the essence bleeding from the nexus within -- others are there, as well, waiting until they too may venture out into the sands.  But then, something changes.  You sense presences that are only dimly aware or not at all aware of the flow, and you find yourself drawn to them, somehow.  One of them reaches for you in your small hiding place, and you assent to their wishes, allowing them to hold you in your shard.

Then the vision ends.
Roundtime: 7 sec.

Delving deeply into the elemental, you get a sense that it isn't very good at carving, isn't very good at holding objects, isn't very good at digging, isn't very good at creating a sandstorm, and isn't very good at morphing.

Also, it appears that it is fairly disciplined about flaying a hand, isn't very disciplined about hiding, is fairly disciplined about misbehaving, and is fairly disciplined about casting quakes.
You feel as though you have reached the end of the elemental's song.
Roundtime: 10 sec.