Creation Myth

         In the beginning, there was not day nor night, as light must exist to counter darkness. There was merely an absence of anything”not a nothing, for nothing needs something to be”an absence that stretched as indefinitely as the widest sea, a world without horizon. And yet, as this nothingness grew to know itself as nothingness, it created the First.

         In that moment, Lyean, time itself was born. From her hands were born three. She took the bare fabric of the universe and folded it over and over until the emptiness became flesh, the eternal sky made whole. Although they were not siblings, they knew the same mother.
         The three went to Lyean and looked, and asked what they were to do.

         "Ask not your purpose, but your identity. What you do is who you are, as it shall become such.” Lyean told them. “Now, tell me of yourself.”

         The first of the three, the quick, playful Ralka, stepped forwards. Lyean, running a hand down her face in caress, felt her soft skin and smiled. In it she found great joy and great sadness, a passion that could move mountains and a force that could rip apart cities in its grief. She found warmth inside herself and her daughter that filled her with a feeling so fragile and precious she knew it to be of the same eternity of the universe.

         In that moment she knew love.

         ”I am Ralka,” the girl said, grinning. “I am to love.”

         ”And to be loved in return. Take heed of my words, my child. Love in moderation, for too much is just as dangerous as too little.” Lyean, her eyes ever seeing and her mind ever reaching, knew what love would bring her daughter. She knew of the destruction, the envy, the pain that was to come of her kingdom.

         With tears in her eyes, Lyean turned to the second of her children.

         He looked as if he were to be a part of the nothingness behind him, the dark of his skin slipping into the black. His hair hung long and unbound, as free as his spirit. When he spoke, he spoke with light.

         ”I am to illuminate,” the second said. “I am Imari, the light giver.” Imari, young and painfully beautiful, selfless and curious, stood proud before his mother. Lyean reached a gentle hand to touch him as she had Ralka, but felt the fire under his skin and flinched back as if burnt.
         He instead reached for her, and his hand was hot with life.

         Imari was untempered flame, his pride and ability lighting the darkness with blinding brilliance.

         ”For you, Imari, will be fire.” She said, taking his hand. Smoke rose between them. “There will be light and warmth and you shall bring hope to the darkest night. Yet your nature is to consume and burn. In Ralka there is life, but within you there is only death. There is a price for what you give, and that is the taking.”

         Imari nodded, his coal eyes darker than the deepest pools. His hands clasped each other as he turned away from his mother. Loneliness was to be his fate, Lyean saw, sacrifice his path.

         The tears in Lyean”s eyes slipped down her face as she faced her third child. Eari, strong and patient, stood awaiting his mother”s judgment without complaint.

         ”And who are you, Eari?” She asked, knowing with no certainty what answer would come of it.

         ”I am. That is my purpose, my being. To be.” This answer shocked Lyean. For all that she could see, the minds and thoughts of her children were beyond her grasp. Yet the answer fit with what she saw. Nodding, she stood to see her child in the light of Imari. She saw him and felt Ralka”s love swell through her. She saw her own timelessness and the certainty in his steel eyes.

         ”You are,” she agreed. “And you will be. You are to be balance. You are the dawn, the dusk, the pendulum of life. Night and day are not your realms, and yet you must hold them in equal regard. You will become both life giver and life taker, the savior of passion and the creed of destruction.”

         Eari heard this and did not smile, but nor did he cry. “I will persevere by my own right.” He said. “I must.”

         His voice was hard. His strength was that of stone: immoveable, eternal, cold.

         ”And so you will.” As she said this, Lyean placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. As she did so, he shrugged it off and turned away. To be strong, he stood alone. He stood between Ralka and Imari, neither here nor there.

         ”My children,” Lyean whispered. “What will become of you? I have not made children, but statues.” She looked to Ralka. “My tempest, my oncoming storm. She will know love, and by it know all the more loneliness.” Her head turned to Imari. “My martyr, the deprived. He shall crave making good for eternity, but he will never know the things he gives.” And finally, her eyes went to Eari. “My twilight child. You will never be unhappy, but will you ever know happiness?”

         Lyean saw this and suddenly knew the fate of her children, what gifts she had truly given them. It had given them everything, and taken it away by equal measures. The world these children had been born into was a lonely one.

         On her left stood Ralka, pure and lovely, her voice ringing with love and life. On her right stood the embittered Imari, his wholesome light fighting the darkness that fettered him. Between them was Eari, unrelenting in his guard. All stood apart, whether out of choice, fear, or force.
         Perhaps they would find one another one day, Lyean thought. She knew what was to be, but not of what was to become of her three children.

         The tears fell from her face and struck the heavens, shattering into stars. Ralka, seeing her mother”s distress, flung her arms around her and embraced her. The last of her tears fell into Ralka”s palm and she hid it in her pocket so that her mother would not be reminded of her sorrow.

         Imari could not hold his mother, but he could give her the only thing he had. So it was that he took his light, his fire, and gave it to her stars.

         ”I cannot give you my love, but I can give you beauty. Look how sorrow becomes joy, the purest light!” Lyean beheld the stars and shook her head. They burnt too fast, too bright. Soon they would be gone, and his testament would be smoke and ashes.

         Lyean could not watch this, and thus turned away. As she did so, Eari shook his head. He walked past his mother and past her stars. He walked all the way to the end of Now and back, searching for something to make his mother smile once more. Her sadness needed happiness, to balance the scales.

         He grew to know a great many things as these stars burned, dwindling like candle wicks lower and lower. It was only when they had been all but snuffed out that he returned to her side.

         ”I have found something that will make her smile once more,” he said. Salka and Imari looked to him in confusion.

         ”Is it soft-spun and golden, delicate and fair?” Ralka asked .

         ”Perhaps. It can be.”

         ”Is it bright and lively, with force and flair?” Imari asked.

         ”Perhaps. It can be,” Eari replied once more.

         ”It cannot be both,” they said. He silenced them with a wave of his hand, waiting for their faces to be raised in question. This said, he brought forth a handful of earth, brown and rich and fertile.

         ”It can.” He said. “This earth is all of those things, or it can be. It is potential.”

         Ralka, the first, gave her blessing to the earth. She gave her mother”s unfallen tears, a promise of life and love.

         Imari, the second, gave it his ability to grow and change, and gave it an end to match Ralka”s beginning.

         Eari, the third, gave it his endurance, his ability to carry on no matter how bleak the prospects.

         Thus was the world created and set below the dwindled stars”who had become so small they were mere pinpricks in the sky. Lyean looked upon It and her tears dried. Here was a world of balance, one that her children, in all their loneliness, had built together. Something good would come of it.