Dance of Earth and Moon

This is a story of a particular significance to the Teddybear Listeners tribe.

“In the beginning, a great dragon, Earth, came down from the heavens. Her scales were a deep reddish-chestnut, the colour of soil and blood. She moulded humans from clay, painstakingly engraving all the intricate details with her talons, before breathing fire and life into them.

She filled the skies with a thick cloud of words, and when a baby was born, the words would rain down from the sky and form themselves into that person’s Story, their destiny. The Children of Earth made their own stories, and the words from those went back to the sky, and floated in the clouds once more, ready for when they were needed again. There were plenty of words to go around.

The world continued in a relatively peaceful fashion, and many humans fulfilled their destinies, and even more made great stories, which would be told for years to come. But something was missing.

Moon came.

Bright milky-white, she shone like the stars. Small and nimble, She darted around Earth, cartwheeling through the sky. The two dragons, who had each believed themselves alone in the world, fell deeply in love.

Moon made the fay, from sea air and dewdrops, thread with starlight and the sound of tiny bells, she filled them full of magic. The Children of Moon had no stories of their own, but Moon and Earth told them they had were very important, their power was to aid the Children of Earth in fulfilling their own destinies.

The dragons themselves curled up to sleep, and dragons sleep for a very long time indeed.

Eons passed and the Children of Moon grew envious of the Stories of the Children of Earth, and coveted the words, wishing to steal them for themselves. In secret they plotted and at night they made a huge net, knitted from spiderwebs and envy, and used it to capture the words, stealing from the sky. Firstly they ate the words slowly and tentatively, delightfully savouring each morsel. Soon that was not enough and they grew gluttonous and greedy, gobbling up more and more Words, devouring them until they were bloated.

But the stories were not meant for the Children of Moon, and the more they ate, the more they grew fat with stolen words, the wickeder they became. They stopped helping the Children of Earth, and desired the world for themselves, to have dominion over human and beast alike. There were no longer enough words in the sky for the the stories of the Children of Earth.

A great war between the humans and fay began, and the screams of her children awoke Earth from her slumber. The Children of Moon were clever in their wickedness and knew that Earth would punish them for their sins. They gathered bloated with their stories and words and fell on Earth savagely before she saw what was happening. They rend and slashed viciously until Earth could not defend herself anymore and whispered a last breath towards her lover, Moon.

With a terrible premonition Moon rose from her long sleep and saw what her children had wroth. Flying into a terrible rage at the sight of poor Earth she turned to her children and they could finally see the depth of their error. In the face of Moon they could see no pride, no understanding or compassion, no mercy. In her wrath, Moon destroyed all the fay.

Then she gathered the humans and gathered those who did not have stories of their own. She fed them a broth from the bones of the dead fey, from blood and sinew of beasts, from rocks and soil and all those things that made Earth. She crafted words to make a story for them, the tale of their ancestors, the tale of Moon and their past shame, the tale of their future and their duty. That the humans have a destiny and only the storyless could pave the way.