On Earth, we have tornadoes, and waterspouts – basically, tornadoes over water.
The way they move sometimes, one wonders if they are living beings, capricious alien creatures from another realm that choose some for utter destruction and spare others … or, just whirl and play around in broad places, leaving scars of their passage on fields far from human habitation, like sky cattle gone on a romp below.
Earth's waterspouts are not actually alive, but the Water Watchmen of Aqir are … a family of them like the ones you see above could drain San Francisco Bay or Chesapeake Bay or any of the Great Lakes in two trips were it not that those systems are open to the oceans.
Aqir's orbit is a long, narrow ellipse, giving it two very hot summers, two very cold winters, two springs, and two autumns. The first half of each of the springs and autumns are stormy, and the latter half, nearer to the summers and winters, are calm, just warming or cooling into whatever extreme is coming next. The challenge of the extremes is having liquid water available, and the challenge of the stormy halves of the springs is having too much liquid water available as rain recurs and all the heavy snows of the winters melt.
Enter the Water Watchmen of Aqir, who take up the excess liquid of spring runoff and rains and take that into themselves and move it around the planet as needed. In the winter and summers, one can see them at night, lying upon the top of water they have released into dry lake beds to slow down evaporation, or lying on cold lakes to keep them from freezing.
Khadijah and I visited Aqir during the winter which was nearest to Earth in its orbit, and to see Aqir's moon rising through the winter mists and shining upon a vast lake covered with Water Watchmen was an experience that could only be rivaled by winters at the poles of Earth – it was like the Northern Lights had taken to the waters instead of the sky:
People who like Alaska and Antarctica and the cold worlds of the galaxy love Aqir's late autumns and winters, and people that like the hotter climates of the Earth and the hot planets of the galaxy love its late springs and summers, but the violence of its early springs and autumns make it so continuous humanoid habitation is sparse – those seasons are the element that puts Aqir beyond endurance except for those studying it and its ever-vigilant Water Watchmen, their families and bands ever keeping the water of the planet in balance, and thus the planet itself inhabitable through all seasons.
Our Allafhantine friend in real estate, Mr. Babar, eventually gave us a hot tip on investing in a winter resort on Aqir, and he was right – winter, because of its beauty and relatively warm water, won out.
“Where else in the galaxy can you go and hang around in a swimsuit in freezing temperatures?” my bride said to me.
“Well, you can do that anywhere and make me happy,” I said and enjoyed her giggling, “but I do want you to live and not freeze to death, so Aqir, owing to its mighty stewards of water, does win out!”
The Water Watchmen are pure fractals made in Apophysis 2.09 to which I added a blue eye each ... the scene is a combination of a fractal moon and another fractal I laid down to give a shining surface to the winter water, and then airbrushed in some mist -- simple, but effective!