Come along, come along you'll see...

I really like using song lyrics as titles. It's just fun.

So as I have a bit of an writer's block going on, I thought I might just chatter a bit about one of my story worlds. One of my more persistent "bored and trying to amuse myself" stories I idly play out in my head involves a set of deities I created for my Critical Thinking class in my senior year of high school.

The class was more of a study in mythology and story telling than critical thinking. Luckily, we had a great group of students who got along well with Mrs. Edwards style of teaching. After a year of studying mythologies and pantheons, we were assigned our final projects. We had to create and flesh out our own pantheon of gods.

With mine, I started with the idea that the gods as we see them are more beings of great power who stopped on our plane. I also used certain themes, like sibling marriages, and deities with specialties, commonly seen in polytheistic religions. Some of the names I created from scratch, while others I went with simpler ideas. The first and foremost of the gods was Elder. He and his wife Cassisa had three children, two boys, one girl. Cassisa was pregant with the fourth child when the earth was created.

When Cassisa was heavy with child and close to birth, Elder reached out his hand and created the Earth. Elder could see that she was having a tough labor and created the land for her to rest.  He named this place Casis, after his beloved wife. On the newly formed land, Cassisa gave birth to her third child, Apolico. With the last breath in her body, Cassisa prophesied that this child would be the end of creation, as well as life.

Elder took his son and held him, as he gathered the tears of his daughter, Quista, to create the deep, flowing waters of the world. He gave dominion of these to Quista. To his son, Rhae, he gave power over the land and the soil. To his third, Umre, he gave the spirits and souls of the world, to lead them to reincarnation, or the realm of the dead. Apolico, filled with madness from the pain of his mother dying as she brought him into the world, was not given a realm or area of divinity as his siblings were but instead.

Elder then set out to create beings to live in this world. From the heat deep in the earth, he spun fire and sand into a molten haze, cooling and shaping it into Man and Woman. He went on to create every animal and plant, painting each with colors as vibrant as the sun. The other animals, Elder painted their eyes, so that they would not grow curious. But with Man, Elder left their eyes unpainted, as to see everything around them with the crystal clear glass.

Humans filled the earth with their offspring and grew strong. During this time, Apolico also grew. From birth, he was filled with madness, from the pain of his mother when she brought him into this world. He began to believe the only way to end his madness was to bring the planet to darkness and silence. While not given dominion or divinity over any aspect of humanity, Apolico was a master of whispering into the thoughts of humans, urging them to go to war with each other.

The war lasted for many of the human generations. Apolico continued to sew his seeds of madness among the humans, so much so that they became tainted by it. When all traces of sanity in humans disappeared, Rhae commanded his wife to flood the earth completely. Quista raised the levels of the oceans and rivers so that the waters mingled and drowned the earth. Apolico fled to the mountains to avoid the rising waters. He became stranded on the top of a mountain as the waters chased him higher and higher.

Umre threw a chain about Apolico's neck and dragged him to the center of the earth, winding the chains tight around him. He then cast a spell on the chains, that they should not be broken until the end of the earth is near. Umre took the number of days to the earth and cast them into the sky, where each day held a light of its own. So the stars were formed. When the last star was to fall, then Apolico would be unleashed to complete the work of destruction.

Quista commanded the waters to recede and separate. Rhae ran his hand over the land, feeling the earth healing and mending itself. Trees sprang up at his bidding, filling the lands with mighty forests and plains. Rhae took the seeds of a great tree, with sturdy limbs and bright leaves, and from them grew the new people of the earth. In the chest of each Man and Woman, Elder placed a single red flower. This flower would bloom and grow with every good deed that they did, and whither with every bad deed. To these flowers Umre affixed a soul and immortal spirit, so if the flesh should perish, the spirit might return to another life.

~~~~~

I think that's enough for tonight, honestly. I might use this as a place holder. I have a lot of stories about these characters, as well as a whole mess of others to pop in there. The first generation has nothing compared to the second generation's stories.

Well, lovelies, I'll be off to bed I think. Pop a comment in there, down in the little box, with the clicky clicky spot.

Or tweet at me! Please. @Alscye

Sleep well, and Sweet Dreams