Ashes, Ashes, The Stars Fall Down
Once upon a time there was nothing but darkness. This darkness was absolute and so deep that not even the sun itself could break through the murky depth of this time. Not that the sun existed. The sun, the sky, the stars, the planets, none of it existed. It all remained a myth to the oldest of the creatures within the other universes that surrounded this place. This solar system that didn’t exist yet, but that’s a bit confusing isn’t it?
Anyways in this world that didn’t exist yet, there would be a catalyst. Well of course there would be a catalyst. You’d have to have one to create the universe? But this particular catalyst couldn’t really be identified. Explorers from the resulting universe would eventually call it the “big bang” but there was nothing like a bang to the process of the universe being created. Twin suns, created by the expanding and shrinking of gasses, helped to form the stars in the skies, flicking their extra gasses off to the side, bringing forth brethren from the depths of cold and darkness.
And for a while, this small, not-quite universe remained that way, creating its stars, but the suns, as if they were alive, began to attract stray planets from other universes. Planets that had been on the outermost edges of their own systems, attracted by stronger pull of the twin suns. And slowly, this not-quite universe found itself growing into a living, breathing universe. That is of course, if universes could be alive and breathe. What this dear little universe didn’t realize though, was that many of its planets held the right conditions for harboring life when they arrived. Dormant land masses, frozen oceans and polar ice caps, even some with a bit a few primitive life forms already came swirling into this nice little quiet universe, but only two would eventually settle into the ideal setting for life; in the Goldilocks zone, where the planet is neither too hot nor too cold to allow life to blossom on the planet.
These two planets had had different names in their old galaxies, names that made no sense to them nor to the new suns that were beside themselves to each have a planet for their own. Therefore each sun decided they would each take one planet (despite the two planets following the suns in the same pattern if only in opposite directions) and name it themselves. The first sun, who believed itself to be a wise being and deserving of its self-given name Alvis, decided to name its planet Anahita, a name that meant immaculate and undefiled.
The second sun, who was humble enough to acknowledge that it was not all knowing and had fittingly named itself Nyarai, watched its planet for a long while before deciding that the dear little ball of dirt and water should be called Miko (meaning beautiful child). And so, for a while the universe seemed to be in harmony. The other planets, all of whom had been named but ignored due to their inability to harbor life watched as Miko and Anahita grew, their surfaces becoming rich in greenery that could be admired by their brothers and sisters, and water in their frozen oceans and lakes began to thaw, leaving significant patches of water behind. And Miko and Anahita were great sisters, never envious of each other even when the other grew different plants and slowly began to develop different types of fauna.
Now Anahita was covered in vast stretches of desert, the trees she developed were wiry and sparsely scattered upon her main body of land. Smaller islands offered both tropical paradises as well as climates of mountains and snow, where thick pines grew. In these deserts, beings that could withstand the heat that reigned over the land began to sprout up among the dunes as if they had been there all along. Creatures who would come to call themselves the Dwellers, carving their homes out of dunes, packing them together with mud-bricks made from the various lakes that dotted through the desert. Dwellers were not a race of tall people, many of them barely reached four-feet tall and dark skinned, though once they learned the mastery of sheering the long but thin hair of the creatures of the desert they had managed to domesticate, they covered any part of their body that might burn in the intense heat in the clothing produced. And they were happy, farming in the rare oasis, and developing crops that would thrive in the cooler underground nature of their cities.
Miko, unlike her sister was covered in mountains and valleys, some of the valleys being wide and lush, others being narrow and as hostile as the mountains that surrounded them. Unbroken chains of mountains covered large expanses of her surface, and among them grew people. Just as their planet was different from her sister Anahita, the children of Miko differed from their counterparts the Dwellers. Tall and graceful, the people came to be called by their planet the Zeru. Fashioning homes in the thick branches of the indigenous trees, the Zeru consisted of two groups of people living in harmony. The first were the farmers who called themselves the Kun. The Kun lived in the lower branches of the trees where they could easily reach the ground by means of small ladders made of vines.
The second group of people who made up the Zeru were the Kalani, men and women who by some genetic twist grew with a delicate set of wings on their backs. Excellent fighters though remaining like their brethren of the Kun, the Kalani found they were easily able to protect their ground-bound cousins whom in turn found that with this protection they could farm enough food to provide for both themselves and their protectors. So a deal was struck between the two races, the Kun would farm and provide food for all while the Kalani would patrol the skies, watching for dangers that threatened their partners.
And so for a while the galaxy was in peace, both planets growing and allowing their people to grow. The people, whom watched the skies to determine the seasons (for the winter in the desert were amazingly harsh with colder temperatures in the far north and south and erratic spots of heat in the middle near the equator) and the passing of time noticed that for a period near equal two months in the human mind they could see the outline of the planet in the sky as well as the second sun, causing days to be nearly non-ending and offered a long growing season on the surface dwelling Zeru. This period was known as the Naihmas, the harvest time.
Likewise, the planets found themselves embraced in winter’s chilly fingers when there was only one sun in the sky, and the planets grew dormant in their fields. This was known as Diahtris, the darkness. Days were short and food was scare. On Miko, the Zeru found themselves contained to their tree homes, hiding among the thick evergreen branches as heavy snowfalls kept even the most fierce of their animal foes away. Kalani and Kun would share homes and food in the centralized community houses built in the center of the ancient trees trunks. The Dwellers found it best to remain in their cities of earth, hidden from the sun and rain that replenished their water sources. Their crops continued to grow, mostly due to their breeding trait of growing underground, though they to were slowed by the lack of natural light from the glass windows built into the garden areas.
In time the societies began to search for ways to cross to that sister planet in the sky during Naihmas. Both Dwellers and Zeru alike began the process of trial and error, searching for the perfect answer of how to cross the gap between the planets. As the technology grew, the people of both planets began to forget the peace and harmony they had found on their planets, and the planets themselves, influenced by their people found themselves falling into disharmony.
The Dwellers found that they could find power sources in certain stones that would allow for them to move between their cities in just a few heartbeats, and immediately set to work on finding a solution to using them to transport them to the other planet that they had named Tasnim, which means paradise. In their pursuit of this, a portion of the population rose higher in their scientific ventures, and soon began to call themselves the Horai, keepers of the law. In this way, the Dwellers developed a social ladder of anyone whom was talented in science being one of the chosen to rule the people who dwelled under the ground.
The society on Miko found itself heading quickly for destruction as complex flying machines were created by discontent people in the Kun level of society. Long having envied the wings of the Kalani, members of the Kun threw off the old idea of merely being farmers and a good many became secret inventors at night. Several experimented with winged flying machines that would close the gap of the Kalani advantage over them. The long standing rule of Kalani being the only members of the race to fly and greet other clans within the people quickly grew a distant thing of the past when the flying machines were introduced, and the Kun, realizing that the Kalani were outnumbered by their greater number began to upset the delicate balance of life. Many Kalani found them being tortured and even found that their wings were not free of the hatred showed by the Kun. Any Kalani who had married a Kun harbored a fear of waking after a night of uneasy sleep to find their wings had been removed.
Seeing that they would not be able to restore their lofty, almost god-like positions above the Kun, the Kalani who managed to escape the fear and hatred of their lower brethren turned to living in communes themselves. This proved to bring about a greater issue, the Kalani, having long relied upon the Kun for food, found themselves ill prepared to far the land in a way that would provide food for themselves. In a desperate attempt to keep themselves alive, a small renegade band of Kalani kidnapped several Kun to teach them to farm. At the end of the first winter after the separation, this small band of Kalani and honorary Kalani (who had formerly been member of the Kuns) found that they were nearly the very last of their kind.
For a time, the Zeru forgot their pursuit of the brother planet, which they had named Rotem, the desert. Once the two races had separated themselves however, efforts renewed to reach this seldom seen planet. The Kalani were the first to find the answer in travelling between the two planets, though they barely realized what this would mean in the end. One small Kalani had been fleeing pursuit by a deviguar, a creature that resemble those jaguars of earth though they had two tails and six legs, stumbled upon a cave of rocks, similar to the ones that had been discovered by the Dwellers on Anahita. In her desperation to escape, the child managed to combine the rocks natural teleportation properties with her own magic. In a flash of blinding light accompanied by a sound that would resound in her head for days to come, the child found herself not in a cave full of brilliantly coloured stones, but in the middle of a standstorm. Terrified, the child for a heart-stopping moment believed herself to be dead, in her panic the stone recognized her desire to return home, and with another flash of light and thunderous sound, the child was deposited in the middle of her village. It would only take a few days for the word to spread throughout both the Kun and Kalani communities on the discovery. Only a few days more would prove that only the Kalani could utilize this unique property in the stones, their natural magic giving them the boost necessary to jump the distance when the planets were in close proximity.
Dwellers who witnessed the first Kalani visitors found that they too lacked the magic to jump the distance between worlds. In desperation, both Dwellers and Kun made a pact with the Kalani, not to injure or hunt them and in return, the Kalani would transport members of both races between the planets for the two months of the year that the other planet was visible within the sky. For this the Kalani came to be known as the Ferrymen. In time the old histories of the worlds were forgotten by most, leaving a select few of each culture to remember the strife that had been necessary to bring for the worlds and peace. Kalani fell into the position of servants for the twelve months of the year that fell away from the sister planet, spread among the population of both Kun and Dwellers. These two societies in turn would trade for the two months of the year they could, but for the rest of the time, they continued on improving their own societies never knowing that they were slowly eroding away the balance that kept their two planets within the goldilocks zone.
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As exercise to open my brain back up to writing ideas again, I closed my eyes one night and started typing. I really didn't expect anything to come from it, or anything that I'd be proud enough to write more on and share. However, the beginning of the story just stuck and felt so right and then much to my surprise, several little muses slid their fingers into the door into my brain and forced their way in. Thus this story was born. The name for the story eluded me for a while, and I debated about where I wanted to post it, but in the end I decided to share it with you lovely people of livejournal. I hope that I don't bore you with my brain child, and enjoy. :)