A Mind, Lively and at Ease
First there was only the empty space—chaos, but soon that cosmos ended. With it’s death came the Endless Lands, dry and desolate, their Shadow Clouds, and the peerless Moon. The high Shadows accompanied the rayless, expansive terrain until they grew irritable and bored. These clouds struck each other in rage, ripping themselves apart and bleeding onto the lifeless ground below. With each tear of their shadowy forms, rivers sprung across the barren soil to flow and run freely. Some rivers joined together into leagues, spawning vast oceans. The rest became close families of lakes or remained solitary from their kindred. Each vein carried the Endless Land’s lifeblood, essential in all living beings and universal in name and number.
However, the Shadows still wouldn’t stop warring with one another—clashing against their brothers and sisters. Great piercing sparks flew and escaped their crowded and brooding tension, striking the rivers and their children lakes. Thus, the water absorbed each lightening shock to gather power. Using their newly gained energy, the rivers, lakes, and oceans began life on the Endless Lands, animating the clay to form great multitudes of beings.
Finally, seeing the new diversion, the remaining Shadow Clouds dispersed in many distant directions to watch life grow and change. As they separated, the light they hid for millenia shone through to the endless frontier. The ancestors of the Trees came into being as the light’s gift to the earth. The Trees propagated, growing and nourishing plants for company, and they all provided shelter for the rivers and their children. The light brought warmth to their cold forms and attracted the new living beings to bathe more directly in its path. The waters nurtured their offspring, allowing some beings to move beyond their wet nests to the rocks and the green wilderness. The Trees welcomed their new dominion, ruling over their inhabitants with the solemn justice of their windwords. The Trees, as the Endless Land’s lungs, gathered their voice for spreading truths. Together, they convened to send their windwords skyward to the old and wise Moon, asking for rain and evening so they may rest from the light. The Moon, luminous with insight, granted soft night and ebbing tides to the gracious Trees.
Some beings, like the crocodile, were cast back to the water for their rude heresy. The crocodiles challenged the Trees to prove their leafed divinity by walking beyond their roots. As the Trees uprooted from their ground, the crocodiles feasted upon the creatures left behind. Seeing this deceit and guile, the Trees sent the guilty reptiles to the eldest river. Since then, crocodiles are forever asking for forgiveness in the bright light as penance.
Other creatures came back to their mother rivers and lakes, seeking their family and the enriched waters. The dolphins, having discovered all that the Endless Lands offered, vowed to spend their remaining days playing together, fueled by happy memories of their ancestors. Likewise, never venturing beyond their mother’s bosom, fish floated blissfully as stunted youths. The rivers, lakes, and oceans embraced their special children, gifting them with all the succor and sustenance of a mother’s blessings.
Seemingly boundless time passed in harmony; the Trees remaining noble and just in their sovereignty. Their windwords echoed across all land and water to encompass the forest of life. Many creatures learned to climb onto their tallest branches, looking to join the Trees in their celestial hearing and sight. Those creatures, in their lazy life above ground, slowly forgot how to listen to the Trees. Monkeys filled their heads with fruitless social quarrels, growing vain and boastful. They fell from the Trees grace, unknowingly. Their children forgot how to climb, as did their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When all was forgotten, man became. Restless and lacking the protection of the high Trees’ limbs, their legs carried them far and wide searching for answers. They asked the Endless Lands, rivers and oceans questions, but without the windwords, their search was futile. Their ears never heard the Trees’ whispers, riddled between leaf and branch, again.
Something I wrote over the summer for a creative writing workshop in response to a creation/mythology prompt. I really enjoyed writing it.
