Chương 120: Heartsong

This world began in fire. Singing, crackling, rising from the abyss, falling from the void. The old World died in it, this world was born in it, built from the heaped ashes of Those who Lived Before. All save Tletimili, the World Pillar, the burning Pillar, and its long-distant kin. The Burning Pillar, who looked on the greed of those who were, who sought to drink the blood it once offered freely in trickles, in great rivers instead. Who alone of its kin, kindled its power to wrath.

Who burned the garden it had once loved and all within it. All save the Heartsong, whose grief cooled the Pillar's wrath, whose song carried over the flames, and reminded the Pillar of both mercy and duty in the burning time, and saved the seeds of life. Tletimili towered, its roots mountains, its canopy the sky. A wondrous sight, approached from land, sea, or sky. The World Pillar, the Seat of the Godsguild, the city of a hundred million songs.

Greatest capital of the greatest realm, proud Banabar, who stood astride the world. Far roots arched, hills and mountains in their own right, extending into the vast and verdant green of the land.

Along a trunk of ashen white, whole districts teemed atop the jutting spikes protruding from its bark, lights wound between, bright roads in countless number, winding winding above the clouds, above the air, to the realm within the spreading canopy, the labyrinthine webs half in the realm of the mind and half in the realm of men, the hunting grounds where even the most excellent hunters could yet find challenge to test their might, and bring bounty to all.

And when the Pillar lit alight, all its millions would teem to the bright streets, to dance in the conflagration and celebrate the bright flame of civilization. It was not at the highest point, nor among the airless branches that held the small worlds, the dreaming seeds of worlds that were not and perhaps never would be, where the great garden lay. It lay at the canopy's heart, where the topmost branches split away to form their vast domes of green stretching across the sky.

Like a gleaming amulet set atop the residences of the city, but beneath the high hunting halls of the gods. The Song of Flowers lay at the city's heart and not at its head. In a city of lights, a city of songs, hers are ever the most pleasing, the best and brightest flocking to add their voices to the chirping choir.

When the burning time came, when the old world was reduced to ash, when the Pillar burned all it had once loved, it was a small song, a bright song, a sad song, which preserved life amidst the falling sky, whose sweetness chilled the Pillar's rage. From the seeds clasped in small talons grew great Banabar. Our great Mother, our Heart, our Song, to her we raise our voices!

The great market that sprawled beneath the bright gardens thronged with bright wares and offerings, the craft of a thousand little gods' hands, passed through their households' craft; here one found the flowers that bloomed in the farthest reaches of the Hearthshatter, from the deepest elseworlds that fruited among Tletimili's branches. In arrangements mundane and alien, they grew and curled and sang their soft songs. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

And today was a joyous day, where the shades of the Goddess fluttered among her Garden, where the fruit of Banabar gathered, the bright youth who came before the Gods to receive the embers that they might one day kindle unto their own flame, that they might go out amidst the Hearthshatter to cultivate their own worlds, to hunt and plant and craft as our ancestors have for a thousand generations, and return with a full fruited world to hang back among the Great Pillar's branches.

The youth look up in bright fascination, to catch a glimpse to hear a strain of song! Here on their first day as gods to be, they clamor for her blessing! Behold her wings, their graceful span! Verdant green pinion, bright face of the dawn. Bright eyes see all, from curved beak pours aching beauty. She who brings the morning on her song! Where she passes in the thronging paths, in the streets packed, wilted flowers spring to life, and sour air turns sweet!

They reach out to her, praise her, sing their own songs, and on the rare lucky finger or scalp she alights, her bright chirp and cheerful bobbing dance whispering a secret that brings tears of joy and gratitude to lucky youth's eyes. And the eyes of elder gods consider those so blessed strongly indeed. Not all so marked may rise and not all who are not are doomed to obscurity, but there are no finer ways to begin one's journey.

Beyond the gardens where bright youth gather, the inner temple stands, solemn in its silence compared to the energy of the crowds. Bright and many-stepped, painted in the colors of the dawn, here the lushest flowers, the brightest vines grow over immaculate stone. The monuments to the dawning days; her children, the first cadre of the Gods stand at its cardinal points, eternal sentinels lit by a fragment of their flame long after they had gone to kindle their worlds in fullness.

At its peak, the halls open inward to the Goddess's demesne, the world of her soul. Here, the air flocks with her feathered kin, bright and flitting, those cast in her image, the lovebirds, filling the scattered trees of the inner world and presiding with natural authority over all other birds. Far from the lushness outside, the long high waves under the light of eternal dawn blazing gold where it catches the light, and the wide savannah plains stretch under an infinite blue sky.

Here, only her attendants come, cloaked in bright mantles of feathers that shimmer in every color, bearing decanters of the sweetest drink and urns of the most scrumptious seeds, to fill the many, and at its very center was Her perch. A great slab of stone cut from the ruins of the old gods, purified, wound through with creeper vines and blooming things, scored by the marks of sharpened beaks and claws. Her shadow casts wide over the polished stone, as deep as ink, belying her …

and yet the form that casts it is humble as only she may be, beautiful as she may be, dawn splashed face hidden 'neath the warmth of her wing, the Heartsong slumbers until the day when the world may be made new again from the seeds we have gathered for her, and for solemn Tletimili. Joy for the day when our Heartsong's true voice may ring again! Joy every day for the gift of life she has given us. Joy to Banabar, the cradle of worlds, the greatest of all realms.

Sail far, fly far, hunt well, children of the Heartsong, and return your flame here to forge a new world, a new jewel in the crown of Tletimili, and keep Banabar great for a thousand years more!