an; old - 12/25/09
and recently dragged from my computer pits.
succession - inspired, at the time, by Negative Creep; her stories are lovely.
Each world possesses 'a before'. There is always an 'a before'. Before the dawn of time, before the boy became a hero, before myths were created and legends were made. Before.
Before there was ever such a thing as gods and goddesses, there was land. There was land, and there was vegetation. Somehow life was created in a place that wasn't forbidden, and that place mysteriously created a line of hideous, majestic beings, one by one.
If it was by some magical, unnatural, supernatural force, working in its undulated ways, no one can be certain. Whether the earth rumbled and fumed, or the grassy plateaus and sand dunes came together and mated, creating and making, is unknown. If Mother Nature and Father Sun kissed the cliffs and the clouds, sprinkled their immortal dust upon the ruggedly ragged rocks, insurmountable cliffs, it is, and always will be, a mystery and a speculation.
They created their home in those great, diverse lands, peaceful and without care, without anything to pose a threat to them.
But as time passed, and people lived, they roamed. And since people are curious beings, certain cats were slain with titles of ignorant fools, unprepared and unfit to live if they could not hold their own against living.
Yet, as more and more of this occurred, people soon realized the reason was not weak spirits or unwary souls. Disappearances started with individuals. But they evolved to groups, and groups evolved to tribes. And none of the bodies, it was told, were ever found.
These fateful murders led to horror, and this horror led to a necessity of deities. What else could take away and create beings of their own specific choosing? What else would be in charge of the light in the sky and the blessed workings of the human mind? Who could possibly destroy existences without a trace of their essence left? Who was behind all this?
The land was a designated, murderous lair—it must be!— filled with unimaginable, bloodthirsty creatures, created by gods for reasons only they would be able to comprehend. It became forbidden in the minds of the humans, but it had been cursed from the start. Before the dawn of time.
So, as people crawled away and generations ticked by and by and by, the stories were distorted into a mass of mythological blubber.
But those myths had in them the secret to bringing back life. Those beautiful secrets which were dark and ethereal and only for children, they created a loophole and a connection to the divine interventions of the world.
But through the distortions and myths, there is a story of a man. Of a young man. It is said that he was the one and only survivor of a slaughter, being orphaned from his tribe, a witness to an unspeakable crime. An anomaly, a legend.
It is said that a man from a neighboring tribe, an onlooker of sorts, was sitting outside of his thatched teepee, making spears for the chief. As he glanced across the land, the wind blowing a distinct, gut-sawing stench, he saw a figure of a man, limping with audible pain. The spear maker could not tell where the man was from, or what he was carrying in his arms, so he stopped with the sharp, wooden stick in his hand and called forth.
When the man did not react to the attention, the spear maker called forth again. And so did the man walk forward, still.
And this spear maker, an ignorant fool, a cat, threw down his spear and ran to the man with a bundle in his arms.
"Halt, man! You are suffering from battle wounds and a limp! Please, brother, let my tribe take care of you," said the spear maker.
The man stopped, but he did not turn around, and all the spear maker could see was his back. And there was a sheath of some sort, braided hay cradling something as infinitely precious as the bundle the man was grasping. There was a dark grey stain, fresh and wet, bleeding through the loosening threads.
"I am afraid you are mistaken. I do not have any wounds." He fixed his posture, rolled his shoulders back. He kept walking.
But the spear maker, unperturbed, ran in front of him. And when he saw the look of the man's face, he stumbled a step backward.
He spluttered a tribal curse and asked, "Brother, what forsaken thing has happened to you?"
"It is not what happened to me, but what has happened to another," and before he could step around, the spear maker protested loudly.
"Stop with your riddles! Give me an answer I will not soon forget, or everyone shall never know of your existence." This man was not good with threats, for he gained the unfortunate traits of the less intimidating bunch.
Or so, it was said.
The man passed over him a look with his haunted, eerie eyes. And he seemed to come to a conclusion.
"I have slain a mountain. I scaled it, and I won." The black streaks on his face darkened to a rich ebony as he looked down on the bundle in his arms. "But I lost as well."
The spear maker looked on in disbelief, astonishment. If there was a way to live on without fear, a way to beat the boundaries the gods had set up…
This was a magnificent turn of events.
"Dear Shiva, man! You must come and speak with the Chief! Tell us how, and we shall live in peace!" He clapped the man's shoulder, but instantly pulled it back. It was cold.
The man blinked, and his pallid complexion was sour and clammy. He shook his head, and he started to look angry.
"No," he said. "No. This is something I must do. I must." He looked down at his bundle with a guarded glance. "For her."
The spear maker, in his befuddlement and impatience, grabbed his shoulders and shook him relentlessly, ignoring the chills running up his back and the acid burning into his hands. "Man, do not be a fool! We can help you fight!" But his energy and new found righteousness congealed with his blood. The man was sneering at him, and in his mouth contained growing fangs.
The spear maker stepped back and put his hands up in front of him. "Ye gods man! What did the beast do to you?"
He growled, "It is not what he did, but what you are keeping me from doing." His eyes were changing from a bright sky blue to an indelicate yellowish hue. "I will kill the rest, and I will bring her back to me. I will bring her back! And together, we shall live forever." He hugged the bundle closer to his chest. "Forever." A smile stretched his lips apart in a fiendish slit. The gleaming sunlight on his teeth—fangs—produced a subtle shadow of undermining power, as if hidden underneath was a spirit not fit for this world.
He turned his eyes up to the spear maker. "Be gone with you!"
But the spear maker was an ignorant fool, and he couldn't decipher such dangerous signs. "Brother, at least give me your name and a day to let yourself rest. At least tell my chief of your accomplishment. The land needs to know of this!"
And the man knew he was an ignorant fool. "Tell the chief yourself."
The spear maker looked wild, desperate. He was too low in the tribe's caste for them to believe a word he said. No one would. So the spear maker fell to his knees in a degrading plea.
And so the man told him to bring the chief to him. He would not stay for a meeting inside a sunless tepee and he would not stay long. The reaction to this answer brought a gratuitous smile to the spear making fool's face.
"But brother, please, let your name be known to me! Evidence for the world to hear! You are the master of feats, a true warrior. Let it be known!"
The man glanced down at his bundle once more, and it is said the spear maker could feel a slight rumble shaking his feet, and a blink of a shadow pass across his face. But he looked up to the sky, and there was neither a bird nor cloud in sight.
Then the man showed his eyes again, and it was all the spear maker could do to not shy away.
"I am called Dormin."
And when the spear maker ran back to the spot with the Chief, there were only deep shadows, a few strands of hay, bleeding black blood. And there was no man.
It is said the spear maker was banished for false misconceptions and glinting insanity in his eyes. Perhaps whoever this being he met with wasn't a man at all, the people considered, hearing his mantra of happiness and peace, no fear no fear, and examining the hay left behind.
Perhaps it was the Anti-god himself.
But the spear maker was an ignorant fool, and nobody had a mind to believe him – not in an outward sense. In their conscience, however, there was many a thought and many a spark of conviction.
It is a known fact throughout the kingdoms that light and dark coexist as one. As the sun beats down upon the earth, the shadows rise up from their depths and mix into the land. As the sun descends and night wakens, it embraces the light of the moon as a centerpiece, to hold up until it weakens and gently drops it into the ground once more.
It has been a fact since before the dawn of time.
And before the dawn of time, there was land.
But this land was cursed. It was cursed from the start, with colossal beasts of the proudest of legends. They were not meant to slaughter, bleed, or fall. They were meant to protect.
But this...this was only all before.
And now, in this world filled with ungracious omens and heretic deeds, who should believe such stories of fantasy and myth? Of self-destruction and unbreakable boundaries?
Lord Emon sees a dangerous glint in that boy's eyes. He is quiet, reserved in all the right places. Lord Emon knows he is not ignorant and he is not a fool.
But he leaves.
And it continues.