The following is an excerpt from ‘The Book of Faynon and Other Histories’. Property of the University of Kothmar.
Faynon. This is what our planet is called. It is named after the God that we believe created it, and us.
Faynon. He is also the leader of the Gods and Goddesses who, together, created every living thing as well as the weather, oceans, the sun, the moon, animals, plants and many others. Their most interesting creations were named Man and Woman. The following is what we believe happened in the past so that we may be here today. It began before the creation of our world.
In the celestial heaven where the Gods and Goddesses lived there was a garden of multicoloured lights where stars were grown and glittery dust floated carelessly to coat everything it touched with its soft luminescence. The Goddess Vsala, wife to Faynon, often came to her garden to avoid the constant bickering of her kin.
Sibling endlessly argued with sibling and parent constantly fought with child.
Vsala picked out a star from her garden and raised it aloft, watching it rise from her hands to take its place among its brethren. She gave a soft sigh and glanced about her garden to see something that had been underneath her newly risen star. Carefully, she dug deeply into the star food that surrounded the object and she pulled it out. In her hands she held a clump of something that was grey, heavy and malleable. Vsala stared in wonder at a thing she had never seen before. Breathless with excitement she took it straight to her husband and gave it to him.
Now Faynon was the wisest of the Gods who accepted the offered gift from his wife and examined it closely with his one good eye, as the second had been willingly sacrificed by him to gain knowledge that Faynon brought to the heavens. From there the great god broke the gift into two halves and put the first half aside while he moulded the second half into a perfect sphere then commanded that it grow. The others of the pantheon watched breathlessly as the sphere complied and quickly expanded until it was the same size as the father, Faynon himself. Pleased with his work, Faynon glanced lovingly at his wife who caressed the sphere. In the wake of her fingers sprouted patches of green and blue. She marvelled at the colours and touched every inch of the object until the sphere was covered in blue and green masses of every colour and variety. Faynon watched this with amazement and realised that this sphere was no ordinary new plaything for the family. He retrieved the second half of the grey mass and divided it evenly among the Gods and Goddesses. He commanded them to each make a thing that could live on this orb he named Faynon.
Faynon’s children and siblings went wild with creativity. They created the birds in the sky, the great felines and canines in the forests and the fish of the sea. Vsala created the trees and the flowers, the currents in the ocean and left the wind to Shuuw, her temperamental daughter. Laughing with delight, their boy, Sun, began to dance around the orb, his shining face giving Faynon light. Not to be outdone by her elder brother, Moon, began to copy him, her face glowing with her own softer light.
Then Faynon did do something none of them had thought possible. Taking a piece of himself, he mixed it with a piece of the grey and created two creatures. They were strange looking creatures who lay motionless on what Faynon had named ‘ground’. Carefully, he breathed upon his creations and watched them rise. The creatures stood on their hind legs and began to walk. He then spoke to them, freely giving them the gift of speech and knowledge. They then did something no other creatures had done, as Faynon had not endowed the other creatures with the same knowledge. They began to pull down trees to make houses, and hunt animals for warm clothes and food. The pantheon was further amazed as the creatures payed homage to the God who had created them. The others began to do the same as had Faynon and many creatures were newly created. Joshula created Mrawlers that were catlike. Vsala created Dryads, her own personal gardeners of the land. Her sister, Elvelya, beautiful fair haired Elvelya with delicately pointed ears, eyes a deeper green than any forest and hair of white gold, created a fair haired people she, as her husband breathed life into them so that their creation may be shared. Faynon’s son created Dwarves, a short and powerful people that lived under the ground, mining the precious material within the depths of the orb.
Other races claim that they were created before we Humans, making us an afterthought. We will not dwell on that absurdity as we assume their copious amounts of proof must be fabricated.
Each God and Goddess created something beloved to them and watched over their pets. It was then that Faynon’s brother, Kalash and jealous of his elder brother’s success, did creep upon the sphere while the rest of the pantheon slept, and from there with the aid of his sons he added his own creations. On the sphere they created, pestilence, poisonous insects and plants, violence and chaos. Soon, everything was corrupted with that violence that spread like a plague across the creation, Faynon. Then Kalash did take and corrupt some of Elvelya’s creatures named after their Goddess, Elves. The Elves he stole changed as he touched them. Their skin turned as black as night and their hair became as white as virgin snow. Kalash claimed those Elves, now named Dark Elves, as his own. As the sons of Kalash burned, tore and made deserts of searing rock and places of sinking sands or noxious swamp, Kalash taught the world about blood. Then once their work was done, just as quietly, Kalash and his sons left the orb.
Too soon, the sphere became boring and the pantheon began to bicker once again. As the Gods were arguing Vsala cried out and pointed at their pets. Their creatures were fighting and butchering each other filled with violence, jealousies and evil thoughts. The pantheon, instead of trying to fix their pets, began to lay blame. Kalash smiled as he watched from a place of secrecy. Their accusations became louder and more vehement and their creations began to copy them. They and their pets threatened to rip Faynon asunder.
At that moment a new voice that was louder than their own commanded them to stop, and the pantheon found themselves unable to do anything but obey.
“BEHOLD,” the voice shouted. “MY NAME BE ALORIEN AND THINE
IRRATIONAL BICKERING DOTH TIRE ME AND THREATEN TO TEAR YE WORLD ASUNDER. THINE ARROGANCE HATH FORCED ME TO WILL THYSELF INTO BEING TO MAKE YE ALL STOP.” Alorien pointed to the orb. “ALLOW MINE CHILD TO SHOW YE WHAT I COMMAND AND WHAT I CAN BRING TO YE ALL IF THINE PETTY QUARRELLING DOST CONTINUE.”
Ponderously at first, then steadily, the orb began to turn. The pantheon watched their creatures reproduce, grow old and die as new ones took their place, only to grow old and also die, again to be replaced by their own offspring.
“SHOULDEST THOU QUARRELLING NOT STOP, I SHALL INTRODUCE MY CHILD TYME INTO THINE WORLD, WHERE YE TOO SHALL BECOME OVERCOME WITH ELD AND DIE.”
The pantheon stopped their wrangling under the threat of something far more powerful than even they. All begged Alorien for forgiveness and to stay they levelling hand of his child, Tyme, upon their pet.
“NAY,” Alorien disagreed. “MY CHILD SHALL REMAIN FOREVER IN
SIGHT TO REMIND YE ALL TO BEHAVE, AND WHAT SHALL HAPPEN IF YE ALL DO NOT.”
With his final message delivered, Alorien departed and the pantheon knew not where he had gone.
Eons later, Sun did spy Alorien. The new young God, Alorien, spent most of his time asleep, still trying to recover from the effort of willing himself into existence, and creating his child that was more powerful then all of the pantheon combined, which was subject to only Alorien and the universe. Sun called to his parents who arrived to look upon the strange God, only to discover that he had vanished once again.
Every so often there was a sighting of the wilful and sometimes erratic God who did not seem to follow the same rules the rest of them were required by their mother, the universe, to adhere to. That probably irritated the gods, only the universe knows how much their constant spying irritated Alorien.
Faynon slowly turns and still circles today as our lives and deaths remind the pantheon of what will happen to them should they fight once more. As can happen, we must suffer to be the example of their own follies.
PART I Outlawed & Despised
