Return of the Hand

   "Eema! How are you?" I said, standing by the Horn of Love.
    "I'm hungry." My mernorn friend replied, using the springer to fling herself on shore.
    "Come get some coconuts." I led her to the coconut tree and ate the juicy fruit. "I'm intensely bored." I said.
    "I'll get a toy." Eema responded and jumped into the Borland Ocean. She used the elevator to go down and pushed a spring, holding a ball. "I got you a toy."
We played with the ball for a while, then I tossed it back into the Borland Ocean. I then noticed a Kai Norn walking over near the Borland Ocean, on the other side from us. We rarely saw Kai Norns around here because they didn't travel much. They were never crowded, I'd heard. She walked over to the lift and went up to one of the upper levels. She walked over and got down on the island.
    "Hand awoke." She said. I stared at her. The Hand? It had been asleep forever. I'd heard that long ago it was awake. Some other ettins had found books it had written about what norns, grendels and ettins were like then. Apparently once we weren't immune to glycotoxin. We'd always liked the taste of Deathcap, which is deadly to everyone else. But at that time it was deadly to us too. Everyone got amnesia at adolescence, and the non-aquatic norns didn't realise they couldn't swim. Without the Hand, we'd never have lived. It made glycotoxin good for ettins, and radiation good for grendels. It got the Kai Norns and Mernorns from another Hand, in another world. Awake? It was impossible.
    "Gigi wants everyone who can breathe air to meet at the incubator." The Kai female said. "And the amphibious ones can talk with those who can't for us later."
    "I'm a mernorn." Eema said. "I'll get the other young mernorns to come, and the amphibious ones."
    "I'll tell the Boney Grendels. They wouldn't tolerate you." I said. The Boney Grendels found norns annoying, but liked ettins. Therefore, since I was an ettin, it would make sense for me to go to them instead of her. She looked hesitant, and I realised she'd not been planning for Boney Grendels to come. "They were created by a Hand named Lis Morris." I told her. "In another Albia."
    "What?"
    "There are other Albias. The hand left some books mentioning them. Kai Norns were maid by Lis Morris and a hand named Wafaru. So were Mernorns."
    "Really? I think you should bring those books along to the meeting."
Eema dived in the water and I took the lift to the volcano.
    "Hi." A boney grendel said: "Better hurry, you don't want to get radiation poisoning."
    "I want you all to come to the incubator for a meeting. The hand is awake."
They stared at me. "The Hand?" a few said. Others spoke in grendelish to each other.
    "We're coming." Their leader told me. I responded that I had to go. Then I went and told my family about the hand. Etnetn, our leader, agreed to bring the Hand's books along, and we went along to tell the Shee statue dwellers. They didn't believe in the hand, and refused to come. They had some books written by shee, which said similar things as our books, and they believed ours to be hoaxes. So we went to the surface and walked over to the desert. We found a scorpio norn who showed us the way to the incubator from there, since it was a bit complicated. We passed a cheese vendor and snacked a bit, since we hadn't eaten since we left the swamp. It tasted okay, but not as good as Deathcap. Then we went to the incubator level and saw the Hand floating around tickling creatures. It tickled me once, and I giggled. It felt wonderful to be tickled, and calmed me down. I saw a Boney grendel pestering a scorpio/kai mix. The hand slapped him, then tickled him. He left the norn alone after that. "Eema!" I called. She had a pad of paper. All the amphibious ones were taking notes for the aquatic ones.