(127) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

Each wave rose like a mountain only to collapse into an abyss. They were no longer waves of water but the hunts of Titans, sabres of foam brandished by the Invisible. Salt flew through the air like the dust of an apocalypse, stinging space with an acid bite. The ocean, that giant with a thousand arms, struggled against nothing, against everything, against God perhaps.

The sky, dark with an inky blackness, opened from time to time upon a sepulchral light. Lightning, at first long and silent, then cracking like celestial whips, came to rend the darkness with their white claws. Every flash seemed to engrave a curse upon the brow of the world. Then came the thunder, which did not roll: it fell and shattered. It was like anvils plunging into the void, the voice of an abyss speaking to nothing.
And all around, the universe fell silent.
No bird, no breath from the earth, no murmur answered that excess. The storm reigned alone, without witness, without echo, sovereign. It swept onward, immense, devastating, and sublime, as pass the fits of wrath of a nameless god.
It was then that the Child was born anew.

Excerpt from Lucian's Journal

Between upheavals more or less radical, the inhabitants of the Archipelago, now known as Terra Archipelago, unwittingly take part in the great game of appearances and disappearances. Thus it was that, during one of these perilous and turbulent interludes, Pinocchio the Other emerged in the hollow of an enormous wave... in several pieces.
— Do you not see that disjointed marionette, even beheaded, drifting in the trough of the breakers? Could it not be that Pinocchio of whom I once heard so much?
— Do you think we might rescue him?
— On the one hand, I do not know whether destiny intends it thus, or whether it would be better—and perhaps more beneficial—for him to find his own way...
— And on the other hand?
— On the other hand, given the circumstances in which we ourselves find ourselves... I do not know whether we would even be capable of it.
— Shall we simply wait and do nothing?
— I fear it may be our only course. In any case, you can plainly see that, in these desolate places and for reasons as obscure as they are inscrutable, nothing remains of him but a handful of perfectly scattered fragments, which seem very far indeed from being able to form a complete—or even merely viable—whole. With a little good fortune, once the nature of this place has recovered its own balance, and once we ourselves have regained our footing, we may find them washed ashore upon a beach or resting against some kindly rock in a far more natural manner.