In the beginning a cold, gray depression settled upon the backs of the newly formed Irkens. Naked, hungry, and shivering they huddled in crevices too small to draw the attention of the vicious Life.
Now, my young ones, can you imagine what that life must have been like? Waking up each morning hungry, licking slime molds off the walls, when you were inches away from the most perfect garden ever created, when you could see and smell it with your own senses? Sometimes the Irkens became so hungry that their ribs were countable through their skin, while less than fifty meters away from a wondrous meal.
Should they dare slink into the forbidden gardens of the God life to fill their hungry middles, they risked a painful and bloody execution. For should the merciless God return early, he would seize up the tiny Irkens and devour their squeaking forms in a mouth of fire, punishment for having supposedly driven away his beloved.
Among the Irkens, forgotten for his tiny stature, was a smeet named Carvin. Carvin adored the goddess Death, and hated the tyrant God life. He hated watching his sisters cry, their bellies swollen with hunger. Despite having just barely passed out of his first years, he was determined to put an end to the beast that had spilled blood upon his mother's robe.
While crawling within the deepest caverns he had found a substance that looked like the ice covering the surface of Irk, but more fluid. The light danced on it like a snake in agony. He was drawn to it, his eyes brilliant and wide. Slowly, he dipped his fingers into the pool.
He retracted it instantly, screaming in agony. The liquid ice was not beautiful, but deadly. It burned his body to the point where the skin had been stripped from his fingers. Wincing in pain, he wrapped his mangled claws in torn pieces of the robe he wore to protect his fragile young body from the cold of the deep caverns.
Now, if he had not been a clever child, he would have run screaming from that vat of snake acid and never returned to look back. But even as his fingers smoldered, Carvin was thinking. If the deadly liquid could be that painful to him, perhaps it could be used against one more powerful than he.
After much thought, the brilliant Carvin came up with a plan. He began making jars from damp clay. In his early attempts, he learned painfully that the wet clay burned him almost as badly as the liquid ice. To protect himself, he used torn rags from his robes to create form-fitting wraps for his hands. Today we give Carvin credit for creating devices that allowed the Irkens immunity to deadly acids by calling then "Carveens," the Irken word that translates into the human "glove."
Carvin worked long at his clay shaping, until finally he crafted a beautiful, ornate vessel. He had allowed his earlier pieces to dry in the air, but they crumbled and returned to the dirt from which they came. The answer came to him as he watched the Saura rise. Fire, it seemed, would harden the dirt into something permanent. After all, he had been taught that the fires of the Saura had hardened the original dust and shaped it into his homeland of Irk.
Over a period of nearly a week he dried his vessel over hot flames, being only able to cook the dirt to hardness during the night when Life was not wandering around, able to detect the smoke from his fire.
Finally, his bottle, and the first true Irken artwork, was completed. He paraded his vessel among the other small Irkens. Proudly, he announced that he had created an object so beautiful and yet so small that the even the all-powerful Life could not do any better.
When word of this "mystical object" reached Life he was furious. He tore through the camps of the frightened Irkens, destroying them, sending up homes and lives in flame. He demanded the object and its creator be brought before him.
Carvin rushed to the God's feet, holding up his clay pot. The God looked down at it and laughed. "That's the thing so beautiful that I could do no better?" Life grasped Carvin by his tiny antennae so hard that a kink formed in them. From that day forth, all male Irkens bore life's handiwork on their heads in the form of a kink at the end of the antennae.
Carvin looked fearfully at the God, his knees knocking together. "It's… it's not what's on the outside that's beautiful, it's what is on the inside, where only a God could see it."
Life snorted. "We'll see about THAT!" he announced, flying into the jar.
Within seconds, Carvin had plugged the entrance to the jar with wet clay, plunging the jar into a box filled with wet clay that he'd prepared and had his sister hide beneath her robes, to throw to him when he called for them. Life was surrounded by wet clay, through which he could not pass without being severely burned.
Carvin ran as fast as his legs would take him to the side of the deep pool, always being careful not to fall and drop his box. The God's foul tongue reached Carvin's antennae, burning his mind with their filth. Such words are beyond the swearing you young Irkens use, beyond even the worst star-ship sailor, for when Gods speak words of that nature they burn with a flame of hatred as hot as the Saura. It took all Carvin's young strength to ignore the God's threats of ripping out his lungs through his eye sockets until with one final heave, he threw the box into the pool, where it sank to the bottom, taking Life trapped within an air pocket to the depths with it.
Joy spread among the Irkens. A great feast was held, with dancing and playing in Carvin's honor. The Irkens no longer had to be afraid to walk abroad, or eat from the delicious gardens. The God was gone, defeated, and they were free. In Carvin's honor they covered their rough hands with Carveens, and ordered that no male or female Irken should walk abroad without this protection over their rough, unsightly claws.
It was decided among the tribe leaders that Carvin should be held in high regard, as a savior of the race. None, not even the highest of tribal leaders, save Carvin would be allowed to come within a mile of that deadly pool where the God rested.
Defeating Life did not bring the Irkens peace. The tribal lords, as soon as the feasting and celebration of the defeat ended, immediately began warring over the best places in the luscious gardens Life had given rise to.
If you were an Anashi, you could have the round, red and white plants and the tall, silver-white stalks that were sweet to the mouth. If you were a Gorad, you could have the long yellow plant and the ground-growing leaves. Still yet, if you were a Thee, you could have the insects that crawled in the wall, making sweet-tasting liquids. It wasn't uncommon to see one Irken stabbing another over the simple offense of staring longingly at a plant or insect you were not allowed to eat. Trading, or even communication other than war, between tribes was forbidden and breaking that taboo was viewed as treachery.
Carvin was horrified to see the Irkens slaughter one another. Had not Life murdered enough of them and decorated the walls of his caves with their blood? Why must the Irkens be as cruel as the absent God to one another? Why did they feel the need to take Irkens who could very well be their brothers and sisters as slaves and beat whip marks into their skin?
Taking up his sisters and his mother, his father being long dead, Carvin retreated to a life away from all this chaos by taking up residence alongside the pool where he'd banished the cruel God Life. He stayed away from the political struggles, despite the pleading of great Irken tribe leaders that he, their savior, should join THEM in war against all other Irkens. Turning them down, he survived on only bitter tasting plants that grew along the edges of the liquid ice.
However, being far wiser than any other living Irken at the time, he saw the need to unify the tribes of Irk if the species were to survive. So he took a wife from the fringes of society, not affiliated with any particular tribe or race, and carried her away to live with him beside the pool.
Within twenty years they laid their first egg, hatching forth a beautiful young girl smeet. Carvin named her "Tanzia."
So, shall this be continued or not?
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Beta Reading and de-writers Blocking of me by Cyndy, author of Peculiar Institution.
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Mythology Art: [Add the usual http and www to the address when copying the address over, they won't show up on fanfiction.net as complete addresses.]
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Institution Art by me:
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