Creation mythos.
In the beginning, there were the gods, and there were the stars. The gods were many, living in families and living alone; some roaming, some tied to a single place. The stars were many as well, but they spun in singularity, lighting up the worlds and the blackness between them. The worlds were testament to what happened whenever stars joined; the stars ceased to exist and in the fury of their final moments, worlds were born.
Somewhere in the coils of time, there was a pair of stars who had drifted close to one another, close enough to take notice of each other. Though they did not speak, they spun and danced for one another, flashing, sparkling lights in the sprawling blackness of the universe. They knew what would happen if ever they came closer than stars should, and they each resolved to keep their distance.
The time came that their longing was too great. The stars gazed at each other across the blackness, billions upon billions of other stars all sparkling miles away from them. It was cold and it was lonely being a star--that was their fate as stars. They knew what would happen. But they unfolded their frozen glowing limbs and reached across the cold space to touch, to hold. As they touched, as they kissed, the stars burst into a flame too bright to behold, too hot and too powerful to contain. They burned, and they loved, and they died, happier than a thousand wedding days and a thousand flowers blooming in the sun.
The gods who came to the world sprinkled people over the face of it with a careless hand, as a farmer sprinkles seed in a sprawling feed of wheat. The peoples of the world were varied and many, except in the heavily-forested northern mountains that formed a barrier between the southern plains and forests and the icy northern sea--here, only the occasional vagabond tribe could be found. It was there that Taina the spring-goddess and Vindusik the winter-god made their home, along with their only daughter, Haina. That sparkling daughter of spring and winter loved more than anything to run with the elk and deer through the thick, bristling conifers that studded the rocky mountains like her father's frosted beard, and to ride one of her beloved north-bears, her little hands clutching their snowy fur.
The day came that Haina realized there were no people in the boreal forest she loved so dearly, as there were in the warmer places south of that place. She went to her mother and father and asked if she could have a playmate, someone to play with her in the snow that blanketed her craggy mountains. Taika and Vindusik could deny Haina nothing that her pure heart desired, so Vindusik went out into the sparkling winter dawn, scooped up a handful of snow and with an artist's precision, sculpted a girl-child out of snow, giving her exquisite beauty and a fine form. Taika cradled the snow-child close and with a kiss, breathed life and magic into the girl. Color flooded her icy skin and her hair curled rose-gold as the winter sunrise, her eyes the deep blue of the Magic sparkled off her skin like a fine crystalline dust, melting into the glittering snowy landscape around them.
This snow-girl had the love of the girl-goddess and her adoring parents from the moment she first inhaled that cold boreal air and exhaled a gust of magic. Haina called her Liuna, Taika and Vindusik called her Isalalinka or ice-daughter, and smiled to see their girls roaming wild and free with the elk and deer and beers. The giant eagles whose nests looked out over the northern sea jockeyed for the chance to take the girls aloft on their golden backs, swooping and diving as their wings flashed in the sun. The seasons passed, from winter into spring, summer into fall.
As time went on, things began to change. Being immortal, Haina could take on whatever form she wanted. But Liuna, for all the sparkling magic of both spring and winter that had been breathed into her by Taika and Vindusik, was not immortal. She grew with each passing season, and Haina kept pace with her, till the girl-goddess and her snowborn companion were young women. Then Divril, the north wind, came to their forested mountains, and soon he began to court Haina. Left alone, Liuna grew pale and listless in her loneliness, and the magic that spilled from her skin and eyes and breath was dull, like sand instead of a diamond.
Taika took pity upon her snow-daughter, and the goddess of spring went down into the southern plains and swept away a handsome poet-shepherd to bring the light and sparkle back into Liuna's eyes. Her plan worked; soon the flirtatious giggles of two young couples could be heard around the forest and around the hearth.
Then a day came that Liuna and Kai, her handsome poet-shepherd, were climbing in the northern reaches. Liuna was used to scrambling up the rock faces, and laughed as she urged Kai on. Kai's gentle plainsman hands were unaccustomed to the icy rock, and he pleaded for the snow maiden to slow down, to return to the safety of the forests. But Liuna was intent on showing him the nests of the great golden eagles, and she did not heed his pleas. Then his hands slipped--
Her name was the last thing gentle Kai ever said.
Liuna was desperate, wild with grief. Her shrieks could be heard throughout all the northern reaches, and Haina was desperate with grief as well--she could not bear to see her heart-sister so distraught. No amount of divine magic or mundane comfort could reach them. No one noticed that the magic that flowed from Liuna was taking on a much different form than it ever had before. It spilled like smoke, spiraling and coiling and slinking out the door.
Liuna, not having a human heart, was ill-equipped to handle her grief. The magic continued to spill off of her in dark anguished torrents, even as she grew round and full with the gentle shepherd's child. She barely spoke to Taika, Vindusik or even Haina. She ate and drank only when Haina begged her to eat for her unborn child. Instead she walked the cliffs where the eagles lived, returning home to her bed only once the moon was high in the sky. The first snow came and went; the days grew shorter and colder.
Soon the creatures of the forest began to tell frightening stories. Stories of icy, misshapen monstrosities, of living, seething ice and snow creatures that stalked through the winter night. Shredded, mangled animals were found; the centaur herd was said to be on the move, descending from the far northwestern meadows where they usually lived. Divril the northern wind went forth, riding his own icy breath over the boreal kingdom, to see what he could see. It was a frightened and shaken wind that came back. The ice monsters were worse even than the frightening stories they'd been told. They were born of the mingling of grief-magic and the very land around them.
Vindusik and Taika created an army of Isalalinki to combat these monsters. But the snow-warriors returned, having been unable to fight the seething, sickening monstrosities. They had no magic different from what the ice-monsters used--the ice-monsters merely used a perversion of the spring-winter snow magic. They were, after all, born from Liuna's great rage and grief at losing the love she could never fully understand.
The months passed, and winter ran bloody and bleak into spring, then into summer. With the bright half of the year upon them, the ice-monsters--called Isagroshin--were forced back past the northern shores and to the ice wastes on the far side of the northern sea. On the summer solstice, Liuna gave birth to her child--a boy, with all her radiant snowstruck beauty and passion and his father's tender heart. Her body, magical though it was, was weak from months of grief and madness, and she gave her life to give life to her son.
When the nights began to grow longer once more, the Isagroshin began to make their way south, and the horror resumed. The years cycled on as Liuna and Kai's son--named Kailian--grew tall and strong, and the Isalalinka fought the Isagroshin every winter.
Then the time came that Kailian was old enough to take up the sword alongside the Isalalinka. He was a strong young man, as ripe with magic, fearless and bold as his mother, with his father's tender heart and quiet strength. The battles raged fierce and bloody that winter, till a flaming arrow meant to act as a flare struck true in the heart of one of the Isagroshin. At last, a great weakness was found. The battle was won, and the Isalalinki returned victorious.
But the great tragedy of the snow-children was soon to be discovered. Their magic poured off of them, in their sweat, their tears, their blood, the very air they exhaled. When they grieved, when they raged, when they were envious--all the darker emotions formed the monstrosities they battled in the stillness of winter. Only with the birth of Kailian--whose heart was half-human--did the Isalalinki have a chance to defeat their darker halves.
The gods were horrified by what had become of their snow-daughter. They laid a sivriti, a promised fate, on their creation. Once ever so many generations, the king or queen--the descendants of the mad, beautiful Liuna--were to marry a human. With the thunderous, mighty decree of the god of winter, magic shot through the air like a bolt of lightning--this was a deep, old magic; the magic of destiny is one that comes from the moment when the two stars first fell in love. It would span worlds, time and space even--there was no turning back then.
The mingling of Liuna's line with humans would lend a humanity to the Isalalinki and would render them able to love. The north wind traveled the world till he found an oracle who could speak prophecies true and clear, and carried her to the north woods, so that the Isalalinki could ever find the one who was destined to deliver them to humanity once more. Then the gods retreated to the northern meadows where the centaurs lived, no longer willing to dabble in the affairs of the mortal.
The years spiraled on, and as was their destiny, the kings and queens of the Isalalinki, went to the oracle in the wood to find their chosen mates. More often than not, the quest they led to find their chosen mates upon receiving their prophecy led them to some far reach of their own world.
But sometimes it did not. Sometimes the king or queen was forced to go on a journey to another world entirely. It was said, in the stories told around the campfires of the vagabonds who sometimes passed through the north woods, and at the hearth-fires of the Isalalinki themselves, that the greatest loves sometimes came from the longest journeys...
Somewhere in the coils of time, there was a pair of stars who had drifted close to one another, close enough to take notice of each other. Though they did not speak, they spun and danced for one another, flashing, sparkling lights in the sprawling blackness of the universe. They knew what would happen if ever they came closer than stars should, and they each resolved to keep their distance.
The time came that their longing was too great. The stars gazed at each other across the blackness, billions upon billions of other stars all sparkling miles away from them. It was cold and it was lonely being a star--that was their fate as stars. They knew what would happen. But they unfolded their frozen glowing limbs and reached across the cold space to touch, to hold. As they touched, as they kissed, the stars burst into a flame too bright to behold, too hot and too powerful to contain. They burned, and they loved, and they died, happier than a thousand wedding days and a thousand flowers blooming in the sun.
The gods who came to the world sprinkled people over the face of it with a careless hand, as a farmer sprinkles seed in a sprawling feed of wheat. The peoples of the world were varied and many, except in the heavily-forested northern mountains that formed a barrier between the southern plains and forests and the icy northern sea--here, only the occasional vagabond tribe could be found. It was there that Taina the spring-goddess and Vindusik the winter-god made their home, along with their only daughter, Haina. That sparkling daughter of spring and winter loved more than anything to run with the elk and deer through the thick, bristling conifers that studded the rocky mountains like her father's frosted beard, and to ride one of her beloved north-bears, her little hands clutching their snowy fur.
The day came that Haina realized there were no people in the boreal forest she loved so dearly, as there were in the warmer places south of that place. She went to her mother and father and asked if she could have a playmate, someone to play with her in the snow that blanketed her craggy mountains. Taika and Vindusik could deny Haina nothing that her pure heart desired, so Vindusik went out into the sparkling winter dawn, scooped up a handful of snow and with an artist's precision, sculpted a girl-child out of snow, giving her exquisite beauty and a fine form. Taika cradled the snow-child close and with a kiss, breathed life and magic into the girl. Color flooded her icy skin and her hair curled rose-gold as the winter sunrise, her eyes the deep blue of the Magic sparkled off her skin like a fine crystalline dust, melting into the glittering snowy landscape around them.
This snow-girl had the love of the girl-goddess and her adoring parents from the moment she first inhaled that cold boreal air and exhaled a gust of magic. Haina called her Liuna, Taika and Vindusik called her Isalalinka or ice-daughter, and smiled to see their girls roaming wild and free with the elk and deer and beers. The giant eagles whose nests looked out over the northern sea jockeyed for the chance to take the girls aloft on their golden backs, swooping and diving as their wings flashed in the sun. The seasons passed, from winter into spring, summer into fall.
As time went on, things began to change. Being immortal, Haina could take on whatever form she wanted. But Liuna, for all the sparkling magic of both spring and winter that had been breathed into her by Taika and Vindusik, was not immortal. She grew with each passing season, and Haina kept pace with her, till the girl-goddess and her snowborn companion were young women. Then Divril, the north wind, came to their forested mountains, and soon he began to court Haina. Left alone, Liuna grew pale and listless in her loneliness, and the magic that spilled from her skin and eyes and breath was dull, like sand instead of a diamond.
Taika took pity upon her snow-daughter, and the goddess of spring went down into the southern plains and swept away a handsome poet-shepherd to bring the light and sparkle back into Liuna's eyes. Her plan worked; soon the flirtatious giggles of two young couples could be heard around the forest and around the hearth.
Then a day came that Liuna and Kai, her handsome poet-shepherd, were climbing in the northern reaches. Liuna was used to scrambling up the rock faces, and laughed as she urged Kai on. Kai's gentle plainsman hands were unaccustomed to the icy rock, and he pleaded for the snow maiden to slow down, to return to the safety of the forests. But Liuna was intent on showing him the nests of the great golden eagles, and she did not heed his pleas. Then his hands slipped--
Her name was the last thing gentle Kai ever said.
Liuna was desperate, wild with grief. Her shrieks could be heard throughout all the northern reaches, and Haina was desperate with grief as well--she could not bear to see her heart-sister so distraught. No amount of divine magic or mundane comfort could reach them. No one noticed that the magic that flowed from Liuna was taking on a much different form than it ever had before. It spilled like smoke, spiraling and coiling and slinking out the door.
Liuna, not having a human heart, was ill-equipped to handle her grief. The magic continued to spill off of her in dark anguished torrents, even as she grew round and full with the gentle shepherd's child. She barely spoke to Taika, Vindusik or even Haina. She ate and drank only when Haina begged her to eat for her unborn child. Instead she walked the cliffs where the eagles lived, returning home to her bed only once the moon was high in the sky. The first snow came and went; the days grew shorter and colder.
Soon the creatures of the forest began to tell frightening stories. Stories of icy, misshapen monstrosities, of living, seething ice and snow creatures that stalked through the winter night. Shredded, mangled animals were found; the centaur herd was said to be on the move, descending from the far northwestern meadows where they usually lived. Divril the northern wind went forth, riding his own icy breath over the boreal kingdom, to see what he could see. It was a frightened and shaken wind that came back. The ice monsters were worse even than the frightening stories they'd been told. They were born of the mingling of grief-magic and the very land around them.
Vindusik and Taika created an army of Isalalinki to combat these monsters. But the snow-warriors returned, having been unable to fight the seething, sickening monstrosities. They had no magic different from what the ice-monsters used--the ice-monsters merely used a perversion of the spring-winter snow magic. They were, after all, born from Liuna's great rage and grief at losing the love she could never fully understand.
The months passed, and winter ran bloody and bleak into spring, then into summer. With the bright half of the year upon them, the ice-monsters--called Isagroshin--were forced back past the northern shores and to the ice wastes on the far side of the northern sea. On the summer solstice, Liuna gave birth to her child--a boy, with all her radiant snowstruck beauty and passion and his father's tender heart. Her body, magical though it was, was weak from months of grief and madness, and she gave her life to give life to her son.
When the nights began to grow longer once more, the Isagroshin began to make their way south, and the horror resumed. The years cycled on as Liuna and Kai's son--named Kailian--grew tall and strong, and the Isalalinka fought the Isagroshin every winter.
Then the time came that Kailian was old enough to take up the sword alongside the Isalalinka. He was a strong young man, as ripe with magic, fearless and bold as his mother, with his father's tender heart and quiet strength. The battles raged fierce and bloody that winter, till a flaming arrow meant to act as a flare struck true in the heart of one of the Isagroshin. At last, a great weakness was found. The battle was won, and the Isalalinki returned victorious.
But the great tragedy of the snow-children was soon to be discovered. Their magic poured off of them, in their sweat, their tears, their blood, the very air they exhaled. When they grieved, when they raged, when they were envious--all the darker emotions formed the monstrosities they battled in the stillness of winter. Only with the birth of Kailian--whose heart was half-human--did the Isalalinki have a chance to defeat their darker halves.
The gods were horrified by what had become of their snow-daughter. They laid a sivriti, a promised fate, on their creation. Once ever so many generations, the king or queen--the descendants of the mad, beautiful Liuna--were to marry a human. With the thunderous, mighty decree of the god of winter, magic shot through the air like a bolt of lightning--this was a deep, old magic; the magic of destiny is one that comes from the moment when the two stars first fell in love. It would span worlds, time and space even--there was no turning back then.
The mingling of Liuna's line with humans would lend a humanity to the Isalalinki and would render them able to love. The north wind traveled the world till he found an oracle who could speak prophecies true and clear, and carried her to the north woods, so that the Isalalinki could ever find the one who was destined to deliver them to humanity once more. Then the gods retreated to the northern meadows where the centaurs lived, no longer willing to dabble in the affairs of the mortal.
The years spiraled on, and as was their destiny, the kings and queens of the Isalalinki, went to the oracle in the wood to find their chosen mates. More often than not, the quest they led to find their chosen mates upon receiving their prophecy led them to some far reach of their own world.
But sometimes it did not. Sometimes the king or queen was forced to go on a journey to another world entirely. It was said, in the stories told around the campfires of the vagabonds who sometimes passed through the north woods, and at the hearth-fires of the Isalalinki themselves, that the greatest loves sometimes came from the longest journeys...