Young Writers Society

There was an era before time in which the world was cold and barren, and the goddess InO treaded over an endless water that reflected nothing. She walked alone, always peering into the depths beneath her. She kept in her hands at all times two lights; one was bright and clear and humming with the quietest, most hopeful music, and one a dark, deep blue. Its light, though dimmer, was cherished no less. Its voice was but whispers, incomprehensible, but certain.

After walking for eternity, trying to find the end of the water and the beginning of something purposeful, with nothing but her lights and her own voice for companionship, her heart grew heavy with loneliness and, wearied, she fell to her knees. Her body was plunged into the deep, sinking lower and lower until she let out a great cry. The bubbles from her mouth took form on the surface, and the dark light left her hand. Though she grasped for it, she could not catch it, nor could she see where it had gone. And so she remained in the deep, disturbed by the darkness and the pressure, until a second cry, this one in mourning for the dark light, poured forth from her mouth and into the water. The bright light was thus torn from her, and though she did not try to grasp it, its absence felt as though it had pierced her.

InO sank deeper and deeper, eventually falling into a sleep that relieved her of the pain of grief. She did not wake until a light, brighter and stronger than any she had ever known, could be seen from behind her eyelids, and a solid warmth wrapped itself around her body. Her eyes opened, but all she could see was the intensity of the light, and so she shut them again until she felt the surface of the water break over her face. When they opened for the second time, the light was dimmer, but no less strong, so she could bear to look into it. What she saw before her was the song she had been singing as she travelled- all of her cries for life and a companion- infused with the lights, bound into one living being by her grief.

The light brought her to where her breath had created the land and laid her down, and she saw that it had expanded over many miles, until even her knowing eyes could not see the end of it. It was dark and cold and barren, except for a fire that burnt in the middle, hot and high. The Light spoke to her of more beings like himself, created when the Lights collided, and of another form of being was created when the sparks from the collision met her breath. Those creatures were like her breath itself, hidden and kept secret, and tied absolutely to the ground where her breath had first reached.

He told her that the Lights had called themselves the jetoy, and that he had been the first of them, so they had named him AOn. They spoke then of many things, and as they spoke, the land InO’s breath had created took on colour that poured forth from her mouth, and the light that poured forth from AOn’s, and it was in this manner that InO’s loneliness was eased. They became lovers then, and worked together in a secret place, entangled with one another. It was when the first cries of ecxtacy rang forth from the lovers that they brought forth a son, who they named eldEr. He was a being of pleasure, joy and life, and thus his breath brought forth life, and his hands and feet would walk over the dead places and bring forth the Strong Quiet Ones. From these came all other plantlife, cradled in their roots, growing bigger and more certain as eldEr grew. InO and AOn tended to their son’s creations until he was old enough to understand them.

There came a moment in eldEr’s future, when he was tending to his garden to bring forth new shapes and shades of green, that a Secret One fell from one of the Trees. The Secret One was wounded, and thus visible to eldEr in his vulnerable state. For this reason eldEr took the Secret One into his arms, nursing him until he was healthy again. It was during their time together that the men came to fall in love with one another, and eldEr took him to a secret place, where they delved into each other in the fashion of eldEr’s parents.

Their secret place was beyond the reaches of his garden, cold and dark. In this place where the Secret One told eldEr his name for the first time, and it was hein, and the name was as cold as the untouched regions in which they laid together. It was through their breaths entwining with one another that their own children were conceived, reflecting the cold of the land and hein’s body. The beings that came from their mouths were the senhAden, creatures of spirit and wind and of snow.

These beings took up refuge in the land beyond the garden, for the warmth of the air within its borders burnt their skin and brought it to water. The barrenness was thus named the Coldlands, and InO and AOn covered it in white and granted the realms beyond them light, and a purity that ran as deep as their fathers’. It was here that hein remained, mastering the art of the wind until enough of himself was in it for the wind to be alive on its own accord. He nurtured it and helped it to grow, and bid that it keep his children safe.

eldEr, isolated from his offspring in the garden, despaired and took counsel with InO. She brought together both fathers and those Secret Ones who had been appointed to help nurture eldEr’s garden. They drew together to cause a shift in climate, gradual and careful, and helped eldEr to train the garden’s growth to adapt and flourish with these changes. So it happened that the Seasons were created, and that the senhAden were able to enter the garden once every year.

The garden and all those in it prospered, and the Fire was tended carefully, as it was thought to be the land’s sustaining force and its source of light. New colours were created in moments, new plants springing forth as eldEr and his Secret Ones explored the seeds and fruits that came into being. They dedicated areas of the Garden to different things, and hein and AOn began to form the landscape to suite what was on it. The life underneath its surface began to buzz with such an intensity that it could be heard by all of the beings standing atop it, and the whole garden vibrated with the intensity of it. The land became unable to hold such life, and expelled what it could not contain in bursts of colour and music. The creatures it created were a variance so wide that eldEr could not count them all; they varied greatly in colour, form and size, broken off into groups of similar animals which laid and dined together, be it on the Garden’s fauna or on other creatures.

It was from these bursts of life that the first Human was formed, spit from the ground near where the Fire blazed. And then came others, expelled from the earth in various regions, and they came in all colours and all sizes, though they all were very similar. These creatures were the ones which most reflected the nature and the appearance of the Great Beings which had come before them, and were nearly identical to the sen’hAden.

-As written in "Book of Beginnings" from the "Books of History" in the Dashaer Royal Library