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An origin myth. |
Carry the trees forth to the hollow, spoke the spirit, and the fish rose from the seas. Bestowed upon each was a seed to carry deep within itself as they set out upon their pilgrimage across the untamed primordial world, the cobalt kingdom of coelacanth. The first trees grew from deep within the fish, emerging from their soft flesh: smooth, leafless, scaled. Delivered to the original soil, which lay precisely at the point farthest from all things, they threw down their roots, burrowing into the river's muddy floor and pulling it upward. Before the totality of the earth was introduced to the air, it had never known anything but wet, and it gasped with ease of breath. Time eroded its path to eternity; the trees sloughed their scales, growing noble, cracked, and wise under the guidance of the sun, a newfound ally, to the great astonishment of the moon, who remained the mercurial sorcerer of the waters. Brandishing snow-gray leaves, they called forth from shrinking Panthalassa, the ancient gods, the gods who carved themselves from limestone, the gods who drowned the moonbeams out of compassion in the early mornings, when daybreak broke their backs. The gods cradled the adolescent forest with stony arms, and the trees spiraled ever skyward, drinking the sun's praise. |