‘Before we came along, She was there. Virile and fertile and All at once. She was present, for She was All. She created us, created our homes, our berths, carved our lands and carved us, for we are Her and She is us. Filled and overflowing with elements and stars and dust and everything that is, was, and will be – that is She. That is Her. That is the Mother.’
- Tale from the Augur
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In a time before Liquid Soft’s and their world spun within space, there was darkness.
Endless and cloying, it covered every inch of the universe and made it chilled and meek – nothing could survive here. It was a smog, thick velvety and ruinous, but it was silent too. Quaint even. An endless stifling of all things here nor there, of all things that wished to thrive but couldn’t yet, for there was nothing but this nothing. This Void.
That is what they called Her back then – when the world was new and the lands fresh, they called her Void at first.
From a slumber She awoke, her form stiff but her mass endless. She was quiet then, alone and cold, and no one knows from whence She started. Always there they believe, thinking Her eternal. But upon her awakening the darkness stretched outwards, blanketed her, called for her.
‘Welcome home,’ it told her. ‘We’ve waited so long.’
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Blinded She was – her soul searching through the nothing as She stretched her weary bones and made for what She sought. Her days were not days back then, her months not months and her eons not eons, but time passed still. It passed with no warning, sang no songs, bled no blood. There was truly nothing. No spark. No air. It was merely She and the endless.
But She was blinded. Her muscles weak and her form aged – she was not yet fully awoken. But time allows for all things to happen.
Time lets things become proper.
And soon enough those weary bones and quaking muscles strengthened, hardened, and the darkness cooed its appraisal. And She, for the first time in eons, opened her eyes. And with it She birthed tears of light and nebula and stars – an endless cascade of New and Young and Prime. And though a home had yet to be made and She wept still, there was an undeniable truth.
The Universe had finally been born.
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Light came first. Bright, burning, and oh so warm. It speckled throughout the Universe, seeking and searching and singing its songs as the Void took oh so long to quiet her tears and ease her gaze. To be in a new place, one where you once could not see and now must gaze upon colors and vibrancy is aching to the soul. But She loved so, and She loved Light just as much.
Light did not have a name then, nothing other than Brightness, Stars, Glimmer, Child. There was nothing to call such a new and strange thing. But Light was smart, and light was vast. Much like Void, Light sought to journey and stretch its body, to use those weary muscles and to put forth
its claim. Light wanted more. Light wanted to witness. To gaze upon.
And so, it turned to Void. It turned to She, and it beckoned forward more. Beckoned for solace, for time, for journey, for new.
And though not an experienced mother, the Void understood the yearning. But to create is a cost. To create when you are aching, even after eons, takes effort and energy and cost that would be irreversible. So centuries turned. Eons faded away like a candle burning down to nothing but ornate wax melt, and the Void? She steadied.
She readied her form, readied her plots, cultivated what it was she required to create and offer.
She skinned herself. Nose to tail – abandoned her form and split herself wide open.
And from Her came so many things. Fragmented pieces, horrific energies, bright burning light, thoughts not yet conceived and they spilled outwards like overflowing waterfalls. From Her came thought, birth, loss, carrion, creation, destruction, energy, everything and nothing and More. From Her came All. From Her came Now. Then. Soon.
A shell is what She left behind. A skeletal body to rot for She fled its confines, but not out of fear. Out of need. She split herself open, stripped herself bare, and when everything else left from inside her She left too. Spilled out and covered the edges once more, leaving behind rough and stiff and becoming liquid and soft.
A shell is what She left behind. A shell to rot and leak.
A shell to crystalize.
A shell to become.
And one day, when that shell had stiffened from odd energies into something whole, something curled and wicked and stable, the strangest thing happened.
All those leaked energies swarmed and searched, nosed their way deep into caverns where bones become hollow, curled in seas where blood once flowed – they lavished in the ichor and ambrosia and they sang new songs in name to Her. They thanked Her.
They created for Her.
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Earth had been made. Earth in the lands and Air in the skies. They circled this shell and cooed at it, cultivated it. But they were meek. They had no preparations – despite all their time deep with Her cavities, they’d not yet grasped more than the basics. And they were angry.
They were born, brought, and trusted with this achievement. They were told to cultivate it, they wanted to, but they’d no idea how. Earth and Air were not granted that knowledge despite their years, they were not granted that experience and encompassment and they were angry.
They’d no idea what to do, how to improve on what Void had given them. They’d no patience. No virtue – no calm. When their ideas fell short, they demanded answers, they demanded audience, they demanded explanations.
And it was attempted.
Light granted them a listening ear, for Light was everywhere. Light had been around forever, covering and coating and watching – for it came first. And Light tried, oh it tried, to be so kind.
Air was the one who struck first.
Air had carved and snarled at Light until they turned heated and overdone. Sparks of fragmentations dripped from their wounds, ethereal ichor bleeding onto the shell and coating it with something else. Their fight was cruel, needless, and Air was angry. They’d bled and gnashed their fangs and Light could do no more than withstand it.
Until they didn’t anymore.
Light grew heated, burning brighter than it ever had before then. Everything glowed with its presence, and Void tried desperately to calm them. She did not wish for fights amongst her children, but her new body – or lack thereof – was still healing. She was weak, her voice soft and her cries unheard.
At least, by them.
For the other energy heard Her instead.
They heard their cradle weep and sob to Her children, heard as she tried to cling but wasn’t stable enough yet, and through their own rage and will to help they created too.
Fire had been born. Caustic, ire filled, and vengeful beneath their endless patience. It burned hot, hotter than Light, and it ate away at Air’s ichor. Carved a name for itself in Air’s body and blood, swarmed the shell and coated it all.
‘If you cannot play nice, you cannot play at all.’
Fire was feared. For all it touched burned and scorched. It damned the place to the end and back, turned Earth to rot and threatened to slaughter. It ripped Air from the sky and bite into them like nothing, curdling the edges of that fragile and meek little thing and turning it to nothing more than embers and ash and smog. Fire had been born to solve and settle, but their patience was dying as fast as it’d been created.
They needed a salve.
They needed a cure.
Something gentle, sweeter, the fragile stability to the chaotic terror.
And thus, from another pool of spilled blood and Her tears and weeping begs, Water was born.
With Water came gentle, ease and kindness. It had yet to fully cultivate its shape – all soft and lithe bits with a core still trying
– but it was born as it was needed. A perfect salve to soothe –
it covered the space that Fire needless burnt and it brought back cool to the Earth that’d long since begun to scorch and flicker away. Water filled the caverns and crevices, turned those sickly veins of a dead shell into thrumming rivers and streams that granted coolness for all that’d been lost, and most importantly Water met Fire. What a frightened thing Fire had been. Shaking where it sat, cowering before Water, begging ‘please oh please, I just wanted to help!’
Water did not slaughter. It did not force ichor. It did not stifle and hide.
Instead, it encircled. Cradled. Nuzzled softly and steamed and bubbled at the edges.
‘I could never.’
Together they created springs of steam and warmth. They brought the calm to each other's oddity – for Fire kept Water from overflowing, and Water kept Fire from ruining. Together, they brought a balance. And Air and Earth adored them so, just as a healing Light and fragile Void did as well.
But the shell they loved and lived upon was rotting.
It had crystallized yes, it had become and it had endured, but deep within itself there was still rot. It was a skinned self, a remembrance. Where the bones and outer casings dried and calmed and hollowed, the Inner took time. Much of it has burned in the Great Scorching, much of it hardened and calcified as a result and still visible to this day. Entrails hardened into stifled ropes within deep caverns and old cradles, their shape barely recognizable now but once they thrummed with Her ichor, Her energy, Her song.
Yes, many of the inner pieces and fragments were fine. Long lost whispers of memory, their songs meek and forms rough now as She was once upon a time, eons and eons ago.
But deeper inside, things rotted.
The Great Scorching had not touched them, for Fire did not seek deeper than required. It did not sense the ichor they provided, did not scent it like it did everything else it ate through like a ravenous beast. So, they were allowed, with time, to rot. To curdle and coil and bleed and whimper.
Water had touched them. Filled up their space, but it was not Her. It was not energy any longer. It was suffocation.
Meek motes of song and fragments had made their home there. And they were fearful of the calm that Water had tried to make. For everyone else, Water was gentle and fragile and soft, but to them it was stifling. It was awful, uproarious – they saw the sides to Water that did not reach the surface flood. They saw the darkness, the blankets, the horrific velvety embrace that went in but never came out.
The creature it created, that sense of suffocation and clogging and awful, was a tired thing. Sluggish, sickly, but instinctual. One may call it predatory.
They merely called it Poison.
Poison was a concerning thing. Though sluggish, it was viscous. It coated the bounds it was created within, desecrating the bits of Water that filled the crevice, and turning it to oil and tar. Poison sank into Earth, ate it from the inside out as it desperately clawed its way to the surface. It had never seen Light before. Had never seen Fire since it’d settled, but all it knew was Water and Water’s horrid suffocating presence. Water scarred it. Water helped to birth it – a surrogate when the Void could not fully provide a womb. But Water had scarred, suffocated, ignored.
So, Poison set to suffocate Water in turn.
It was a violent art. The veins ran dark and iridescent, Earth rotting at the edges and corroding as they tried desperately to heal the horrific burns and holes and cracking seams. They were falling apart, old Earth, all over again. But Poison cared not – it sought and it cried and clawed and it consumed with all its sickly mass and gurgling screams. It choked on its own ichor, a constant dripping stream where it dragged its limp, broken, half developed mass and leaving behind corrosive streaks in the shell and Earth wherever it came to.
Water was turning dark. Air panicked; Fire ire filled. Earth was rotting at the seams, Light clawing desperately for something, anything-
They were terrified. They’d no idea what would happen if Poison came for them, if Poison consumed them wholly and true.
Poison was broken and battered, but they were strong still. Fire could not stop it, Air only spread it, Water was its target and Earth was its casualty. Void was weak. Light was still healing.
It was an agreed upon creation. A piece of them all put into one. A thing that came from all good and bad – the ire, the rough, the glimmering, the dark, the strange, the acidic, the corroded, the gentle, the sleeping and sleepless – it was all the things it needed to be.
It was a sprout.
A seed planted.
A seed that Poison could not touch.
And it grew. It cultivated within a womb – the final proper womb that She could provide outright. The final proper fragment to be reborn and recollected.
They called it Nature.
And Nature did not fear Poison when it was so young.
Poison had not cowered beneath Nature’s stare, but it had paused. For none of the others had stood before it until then – none had bothered to stop and meet its awful stare, for they knew what would come should they have.
The Consumption, they called it. That horrid things stare, its tirade, its existence. A clogging presence.
But Nature had not faltered. They stood tall and patient and proud before that dripping, choking, awful thing, and though they rotted at the edges they healed – wounds stitching together with something new of vine and sinew, leaving only soft marks and new sprouts in the wake up gaping corrosion. They did not falter, they did not break and bend as so many had already, but they thrived. They took in that acidic tar and twisted it into something new.
No one had seen a child born so soon after another. Even Earth and Air had required time to pass, so much time, before the other could form from a fragment.
But Nature, new and young, birthed another soul. Not God, not element, not of anything they’d seen yet.
They called it Life.
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The First Sprout is what it’d be called when Life and Nature came together. A strange song to be sung into the world as they worked and weaved before Poison’s choking gaze. A sprout was born beneath them, small but mighty, and Poison had reached for it.
A forest grew in its stead before that choking creature even got close.
Massive and mighty trees rocketed towards the sky, greenery flooding the grounds and wildflowers blossoming in chaotic patterns. Earth’s wounds were mended with Nature’s vine and sinew, Water’s clogging was mended with Nature, Earth, and Air’s purification, Fire’s scorch marks – though extensive and visible still – had been surrounded by flowers abound and fields of rebirth. It was Life’s work, Life and Nature in kind, working together to mighty forests and proper mountains and kind structures. They lived in twine, encapsulated that clogging creature in all that was good and gracious – forced Poison down into a cage of roots and rot and crystal – and together they created alongside it all.
Scars of Poison still exist, scars that ran too deep for them to heal with new sinew and kind breaths.
Earth still carries tar mats and aching muscle, scars and rot and scorch marks running so deep Nature’s kiss couldn’t heal them proper.
Water grows weary, paranoid, and even more fragile. Blooms of horrific toxicity, pressures high and extensive the closer you get to Poison’s birthing chamber, frightening waves and floods threatening to overtake with every tremble they feel.
Fire must look upon their old destruction from the days of before – must see as the world has to build around their chaos and ancient marks of soot and mess.
Air is meek and soft and quiet – a sad version of the fiery thing it’d been before. It looks upon the chaos it helped create, the wounds it aided in forming, all from its perch high above the world.
Poison must struggle and gurgle and choke on its own fluids whilst its broken and melting corpse of a body is suffocated once more, this time beneath a cage hand carved to keep it still.
Light must bear the scars and memories of all it has witnessed, all it tried to do.
And Nature must rest. Tired and aged, they sleep soundly as the blankets of moss and baby mountains and lush forests grow around them. It is a kind cage, in comparison, but it is one brought on by weariness. A resting place.
‘Awaken me should you need it,’ Nature had told Life, Light, and all, ‘and I shall return to heal you again. But I shall always be here, even in my slumber.’
Life could do nothing but kiss them goodnight, tears in their eyes, and gasps of new creation on their tongue.
Though created in such a similar time, Nature had aged whilst Life remained young. Nature grew old and ancient quickly, and continued to even within their sleep.
But Life did not falter, just as Nature hadn’t with Poison, and Life brought so many curious things to birth. They cultivated those which already had been born and loved, whispered kind songs and lullabies to those weary old things, and they sang and danced with the new loves they made. It was a time for joy then, a time for love and renewal and repair. Those old deities cooed and smiled down on Life, and Life in return sang to them tales of the world. Life was smart. Patient. Entrusted.
And Life created something strange.
From pieces of Void, pieces of themself, and pieces of the others, they created something new. A slighter version of what They were – a distorted mirrored image.
They were called Liquid-Softs.
Curious things they were. A mix of memories and forms – all functioned around the same cores, the same fragments, but they were so new and odd. They turned to Life and named them new, turned to the dark and called Her Mother, turned to the world and named it Home. They were strange. Curious. But they were born, and they were new, and they were exciting. A life form that’d not taken entirely from those strange elements, nor from Mother herself, but instead they were an echo. A creation so distant they were just that – a creation. They were not child, not after the first few generations, but they were created, and they were adored by all things. They used the world to better themselves, learned from Life and learned from the curiosities, and in turn those elements learned from them as well.
They were not Gods, they were not Spirits, they were simply there.
And that is all they needed to do.
Many things gazed upon them in curiosity. So many strange things, and in turn they stared back in a similar manner. With wide expressions and soft gestures, it was an endless cycle of journey and discovery and birth and curiosity. These ‘Softs’ had captured the attention and whimsical mind of everything that thrived around them. Even after a few more long years, thy were still so new. So strange even still.
It shouldn’t be surprising then, that when the first Soft dropped, everyone was curious. Sleep, they’d thought. Exhaustion.
But that Soft did not awaken at their beckoning.
That Soft had never woken again.
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It was a slow thing, the dying of the Softs. Because that’s what it had been – dying. Dead. Death. And that first Soft would always have been remembered as the first of many, the first of a plague – The First Death.
It’d taken a long time to find out who was responsible. There was no sign to a new version of them being born, and yet, a thing they had not created was running havoc. It’d been a scramble – creatures clawing for explanations and Who. Oh, they wanted to know who, they wanted so desperately to know who’d been born whilst they weren’t looking and who thought themselves powerful enough to shake the delicate thing they’d created so lovingly.
And they had discovered them whilst they stood over a shaking Soft.
Life had found them, them and their quiet form – aged and ancient in comparison to everyone they knew – and Life watched as they nosed to softly at the Soft laying before them. The Soft was aged, one of the original generations, and before Life they breathed their final breath, stiffened and finally,,, died.
They were gone.
At the hands of this strange, ancient, odd creature.
‘What are you,’ Life had snapped.
‘I am Death,’ they had hissed. ‘And I am what was here long before You.’
They were a piece of Mother at her core. A fragment of her that had broken off and stretched away when Light had yet to be born. A stretch of darkness and aching that had laid so quietly in wait whilst the world thrummed and thrived. They’d been curious – they just wanted to touch, to walk amongst, to live as they all seemed to be – but all they touched crumbled and rotted. It was unlike Poison – no there was no blind corrosion here. There was no rot that sank deep beneath, it was surface level. It was soft, almost kind, in the way things shriveled and withered and fell apart. Eventually things had regrown and rebirthed behind every step they took, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they had rotted once upon a time.
Death did not care for Life and those elements.
They did not care for Death.
There was no war. There was no outburst that ended in terror and fire and rot. They had talked, stood on their respective sides of the world, and they communicated. Death had already become rooted into the world – it was a thing they could not be rid of now even if they tried, but Death had assured they would not act needlessly. Things had a designated time lock. Some long, some quick. Life would continue.
Everything would continue. It just had an expiration date.
There was no war.
There was no ichor spilled.
There was no tirade.
There was only communication.
But the elements tried desperately to forget once Death had crawled to their corner of the land. They tried desperately to focus on renewal, on birth, on creation. They tried to forget all Death was and all Death made.
So Death made them remember.
Plague. Rot. Wither. Disease. Accidents. Stillbirths. Cannibalism. Violence. Bloodshed. Famine. Horror.
Every time they forgot, Death offered an unkind and unfortunate reminder.
There was no period without Death’s presence. And their permanent gifts to the world thrived long after they retreated back to their cavern in the dark.
There was nothing without Death peering in at every corner.
There was no longer Life without Death. No matter how desperately there tried to be.
But the world carried on still. It thrived, it overcame, and it went on for so, so long.
The elements melted into the lands, their forms hidden and cocooned in the depths of their respective homesteads. They still venture, but they slumber deep inside.
The Liquid-Softs grew their homes and grew their knowledge. And soon enough, those ancient elementals and biting wars were just that:
Ancient. History. Past. Before.
They tell their stories to babes at bedtime, to those who must learn when they act out. Threaten that ‘the Poison will get you’ should they continue their ways. They warn of Softs who hide in wait for a body to drop – of Softs who cause bodies to collapse and buckle under themselves. They warn of Fire and the Great Scorching. They warn of Water and the deep pressured depths. They warn of the natural cracks in Earth with which one may fall and never be seen again. They warn of Air and its tendency to flicker and shake. They warn of the mountain that Nature supposedly became.
They tell the stories. They sing the songs.
And amongst them those elementals wander. Hidden. Quiet. Ancient. Exhausted but going still, for they fear what may happen should they finally die themselves.
All things live.
All things die.
All things are born.
All things will rot.
That is Creation. That is End.
And that is Truth.
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‘Though we talk to Her not frequently, She is in everything we do still. She and her children and all They’ve created – we are Their creations and we are Their continuing. They are not without us, and we are not without Them. It is the simple way of living. It is the way we must teach, the way we must remember, and the way we must continue. I fear, one day, we may forget where we’ve come from. I fear we may forget all that
happened. The Great Scorching. The Consumption. The First Sprouts and the First Death. I fear we will forget these things. I fear we will forget Mother and all she’s done for us. For our own sake, I hope not. For we are Them, and They are us. Overflowing, overcoming, and overdoing. Do not forget where we’ve started. Do not forget where we will end. Do. Not. Forget.’
- Tale from the Augur