Once There Were Gods
Once upon a time, before the times of fertile lands, and long before your great grandparents were babies, the stars fell day and night without ceasing. As the stars fell, they shone brightly in the sky—red during harvest time, white when the snows fell, and green during the growing time, just like the star showers today. Most of those falling stars never struck the ground, leaving only emblazoned trails across the day or night sky. Sometimes, though, as the stars burned in the sky, they left behind their metallic hearts. And sometimes their metallic hearts set fire to the trees—the heart of a star is very hot.
Long before even that time there were gods upon these lands. Beings of unimaginable power, the gods could create, alter and destroy with a thought. Even their dreams held the power to transform the world. There were four gods, one the color of each of the three starshowers and the other was as colorless as an empty, starless sky. The estival starshower god provided life and growth upon the otherwise barren world. The autumnal starshower god provided the harvesting of that growth, and the hibernal starshower god offered both death and rebirth. Together, their alliance created the seasons and gave rise to the living cycles of all living beings.
These gods traveled here and there upon this world. They traveled farther west than the ocean, farther east than the starshower barrens, and knew the secret places to the north and south, beyond the endless fields and rivers. These gods could swim and fly to all places. They knew the powers of the clouds, of rain and storms, and understood the endless cycles of water in the world. The fourth god, the god of darkness and void, traveled beneath the soil, in the depths below ground where color and light fear to tread. While the other gods traveled here and there upon the world, this other being scouted the depths and recesses that the others knew little of.
Between that time and this the world changed many times. There was a time of dragons and dwarves, of elves and trolls. There was also a time when all those beings vanished. Some, we know, were destroyed by their own folly or by other beings. Some left without explanation. In the generations that have followed, the people of this world have retold their stories. Some of those people, the faithful and righteous, continue to pray and attend to the rituals. The stories tell of times when prayers healed miraculously and the interventions of the gods were readily observable. The faithful believe these times will return.
Dave Paul 