Library:A Tale of Two Gꝏds
|
Note: In Pikolan, the term "Ǵębrāṡ" means both "[the] good(-ness)" and "[a] god". Thus, in the Anglish translation, first published in 1947, the word is written with a o-o ligature Ꝏ
It was a wurld ripe for the taking and only for gꝏds to ask for. In the beginning, there was only infertile soil from horizon to the sea. The sun and the stars, much younger than today's, shone brightly onto the rocks, gravel and salt plains of the virgin land, barren yet tranquile, graceful yet sterile.
Then, from the darkness from between the stars came the Creator, clad from head to toe in the light of thousands of novas. In solitude, they walked the plains, the dried up deltas, the canyons and the hilltops. In solitude, they endured the whipping of wind and irritating salt blown into their face. In solitude they dined, slept, woke and walked. A hermit life for a ephemeral hermit, never changing yet no day was like the last. Any being, any existence, any entity, be they perfect or distinctly flawed, need attention, needs a faithful bride, a trusted friend and a helping hand in their darkest hour. The Creator, singular and perfect, has had their heart filled with longing for company, for an equal to help them half their loneliness and unearth wonders for all deities.
And so they made the Companion. The Companion, an equal to the Creator, was a beautiful being, made as an equal counterpart to a omnipotent being. When the Creator was feeling low, the Companion sang the most beautiful of melodies, when the Creator was happy, they shared their joy and doubled it. And yet, the wurld felt empty. With a new life, as if a dam holding down a river tore, and the further they walked, the more they realized that they alone would never have anybody to share this Eurth with. No being to cherish and no equal to work with. Though solice was sated, the need for a community, a company for both, grew stronger.
And so the two seeded the Eurth. In schools the fishes were thrown into the water, both salt and fresh, in herds, parliaments, packs and flocks animals were brought to settle the land. Rock was broken and chiseled into fine dust which they called dirt, and plans and trees were brought to life to relish in sunshine - the same sunshine from which the Creator came.
Life was carefully crafted and meticulously linked as to be in the image of a gꝏd on its own, yet no single part was the gꝏd. Some species inherited the strenght or the indurance of gꝏds, others their will, their loyalty, their senses or their courage. Humans, the favorites of the Companion, were endowed with the intellect of gꝏds. The whole wurld was in harmony as every single self was imbued with omnibenevolence, understanding and both consciously and unconsciously maintaining the balance all across Eurth. And so the eons continued, the Creator and the Companion living side by side in a stale paradise.
And yet the wurld was too perfect. Over the eternities, a decay, once only a hypothetical, tore across the populations as stars went out one by one and their shards cut through the rives and lakes, disrupting ecosystems and driving whole species to total obliteration. The mechanism of harmony forbode any of the species to exploit any other, so when one was driven to extinction, there was no other to stand in its place. Whole food chains driven to total nil through just a single chain missing; whole forests and fields left sterile because of a fractional decrease in precipitation. Humans, complacent in their position of guardians, only continued to harvest the necessities, constructed the barriers to stop the flood or irrigate the land, yet they didn't reproduce enough. Once numerous populace, sufficient for the maintaining of the whole planet, proved insufficient in the face of new threats. Villages were abandoned as whole families starved to death, desolate wastes, dried deltas and deserts once again appearing in the wurld's topography.
And thus, the two gꝏds, coequal in all but names, sat on a one faithful morning in the shadow of a dying spruce, next to a small town, one of the few last settlements of the once mighty guardians, which now numbered only a few thousand at best. The Paradise was dying, and the two true rules of it were left to wonder how to avoid solitude once again - if for better or for worse, they could no longer walk empty hills with nothing but their own legs, knowing what once was and how it was lost. A perfect wurld left in peril, grasping what was left and trying to distribute a finite amount of scarce resources until the very end of days.
The Creator was adamant, that they intervene - they created this land and they should be responsible for maintaining. Let's run the errands, determine what is wrong, bring back broken species and protect them from harm. Stand as a guarding shield against all that is to come, and maintain harmony at all costs. The beings are omnibenevolent, just like us, and as such ought to maintain the perfect balance if they are numerous enough.
The Companion, for the first time in forever, objected. To them, the Eurth was desolate because of the flaws in their design. Once again repeating those flaws and not learning from them would be more foolish than the actions by which the humans and other beasts slowly, meticulously lead the Paradise into a decline. Give them a true free will they said, and let them decide for themselves what they should do. If the stronger get to fill in the ranks of the weaker, it creates a competition. A brutal competition for sure, filled with brutality and despair, but they would be returning to the glory of the sunshine and restore the Paradise in no time. Surely, it would not be the exact same paradise, the beings would no longer have to be perfectly benevolent, but they would be self sufficient. Let the creations decide for themselves, and they shall reward you with something you could never achieve.
To this the Creator was left speechless - how could free will fix anything? If they are granted free will, they will slaughter each other over scraps that are left and will only expediently lead the sinking ship to the seafloor. How could any rightful and omnibenevolent being suggest such a course of action? Were they incorrect when they at their weakest created this tempter? They are the only other omnipotent being in the existence, oh why have they endowed them with such powers that they can no longer take from them?
And thus, the first ever disagreement in existence broke out, with shouting not long behind. The two beings fought, saying things which could never be unsaid and wishing things that were better left unwished. As the sun started setting, the Creator grew tired. Realizing the unbridged differences, they proposed a wager - they would let the Companion keep nine tenths of the Eurth and let them run it until it dies, and they will create a sanctuary from the last tenth which could be used to reseed the wurld once the Companion comes to their senses. When they finished speaking, villagers turned on their lanterns and walked out from their huts and dens with farming equipment, all rushing towards the communal stockpile, all starving and desperate for the very little they had left. Even before the very first farmed could strike a woman which was reaching for a loaf bread over her head with a hoe, the Creator climbed up the spruce and jumped upwards. Moments later, Eurth shook and terrible earthquakes scarred the wurld as a tenth of it was violently ripped away to form its own new celestial body - the Moon.
At the start, it seemed, that the Creator was right. The Moon was blooming with lush green forests, with its population quickly growing and even surpassing the times of the Paradise, while the hands-off approach of the Companion down on Eurth has left the wurld stagnant. Yet, as the weak died out and were replaced by strong, every new generation, even though slightly less diverse, was more numerous and better adapted for the wurld which they were meant to fill. Most curiously, some beings adapted to live in the brutal environments of the decline. As the planet was slowly healing, with the lunar scar long forgotten, left under layers of sediments of the mass extinctions, its populace grew in numbers and expanded from pole to pole among every meridian, scatting far and wide, and bringing to life creations not just to maintain the harmony, but also to upset it, shift it, and most interestingly to the gꝏds, just to make their lives more convenient or just because they could.
Some flowers were crushed into fine paste because of their colorful fibres, designed to invite in bees and polinate further, and used as tinctures on dilacate paintings, calligraphies and shields. Bridges were built to help humans cross rives, later bays and finally even narrow straits. Swamps were dried and new communities domesticated wolves into dogs, wild felines into cats and various other animals, such as horses, to help them more effectively carry out their labors.
As the Companion watched with amusement in what came to be called art, the Creator continued in their effort to protect the lunar landscape, errecting new mountains to protect the rivers from being blown away by the strong winds and helping all animals adjust. Yet still, where one species was saved, two more simply vanished. For every salvaged valley, two vallies were covered in dust and debris. For every tree reinforced, two trees fell over, victims to erosion or excessive rains. And so, as the Eurth recovered from oblivion, Moon starved, and suffered and shivered in the coldness of inevitable push of entropy, agains which a single will, be it the strongest, has no power.
And one day, the scale broke. One too many fishes were thrown ashore, one to many lakes dried up, one too many humans starved to death after their harvest died out. The lunar climate collapsed. With no trees to help the others breathe, the air, once so fresh and lovely, became stale and the very last of the lunars suffocated. And Creator was there, helpless, not even trying to prevent the inevitable anymore. And thus, once again, they were walking across a barrent salt fields, with only skulls of long gone species, dead branches of a long vanquished evolutionary tree to keep them company. All that eons seemed lost, and all life was for naught. With the terrible mismanagement of Eurth by the Companion, life there would die out any moment now, and their joint efforts would be lost for good.
Yet when they looked up, they saw a lush green planet, with oceans as blue as they once were. And so they jumped down to Eurth, and wandered across the streets of villages, with humans, the once all mighty guardians, trading gold and copper sheets they called coins for items which didn't exist at the time Creator left. Animals, many of them distrinct and different, sat behind fences or followed their owners. A distinct smell of a stew was all present in the small bazaar, with no less than a dozen traders offering something to sate bypassers' hunger for a coin or two.
And there they met once again. Companion, dressed in an exotic green cloth, smiled with little regrets and handed them a chicken soup. They sat, discussed and shared their joys and worries. The wurld was not a Paradise anymore, but it was sufficient, and sustained. The humans, once only a cog in a monstrous, quickly outranked other cogs and conquered to whole wurld, and created such beautiful pieces of art, poetry and all other artisanships that the Creator's heart was filled with shame for not believing sooner.
As the evening came and the lights went out one by one, only a small group of children sat around a pyre and sang songs. It was eons since Creator heard singing, and it was for the very first time when they heard someone besides the Companion carry out such a beautiful and one of the most pure activities there was, is and is to be. Both gꝏds, once again rejoined in unison, sat and blessed the humans, for they proved to them that they ought to be equal, if given enough time. On the night sky, a barren circle of the moon shone as a reminder that everyone makes their own destiny, from today until the end of days.
It was a moon ripe for the taking and only for humans to ask for.