Origins - A Shapeshifter's Beginning.

[Dahling]

Have you ever wondered where we come from? How the world as you know it came to be? Come, sit, listen and I shall tell you the story.

In the beginning, when the Great Mother woke from her slumber she looked about her at all the blackness of the universe and realized that she was all alone. Alone and in the dark. So what is a creator to do? In a place where there was only darkness, emptiness and nothing she created a son. And oh what a son he was! He was bright, so very bright and clever with a heart whose warmth shown through to the very world around him. So joyful was he then, so playful, that there was nothing that he loved more than to dance around in the black folds of his mother's skirt.

And She who before had known nothing but the dark now knew light. Warmth. Heat. It was all of these that he shared with her and from it grew joy. Pride. In herself and in her son and in her delight she littered her hair with stars in his honor, though their light was but a dim reflection of his own. Still, heat will call to heat in time as her son continued to dance and circle about her skirts she realized that some of those stars had taken to drifting in his wake, following that heat. So drawn were they that largest had taken to following in a line.

But heat can burn, even as it draws and those nearest were burnt up in it, scorched beyond all understanding and yet, followed him still. Followed, but offered nothing but that blind obedience in turn. Obedience is not fulfilling.

“Mother,” the son spoke one day, “Why will you not give me a companion? That someone with whom I could confide and play?”

“Do I bore you, my son?” It was if the night drew a breath and that darkness, all of it seemed to focus on him.

“No Mother, no,” the son hastened to reassure her but the damage had already been done for she was a creature of power, great power, for she was the universe and all that infinite dark. A blackness that had known no heat, no light until she had birthed him. No warmth. Not all temper is born in heat, some...some is born in ice.

“Why do you not love me? Do I not give you enough? I have given you followers,” she gestured towards those planets who followed in his wake, drawn to his heat and the beauty of his face - those stars who had become so much more. “Did I not welcome you into my skirts? Am I not beautiful?” Temper had risen with each question, until it seemed that her fury was so great it seemed to shake the very stars themselves and some of them fell from the heavens, some of them crashed upon the earth and that they say is when the dinosaurs died out.

Nothing the son could say would calm his mother and he began to see dark blights sucking away the goodness in her, creating imperfections with hungry mouths that never seemed to close. Still, for all of her temper or perhaps because of it she gave him his wish. A companion. A sister.

Pale she was and beautiful, yet where he was warm and held such heat, she was cold. Cold and...distant. “Won’t you help me?”, that pale beauty implored slowly turning her face in his direction as she tried to reach out for him. Where his light hit, where that warmth reached her she seemed to glow, to shine brighter than all but the brightest of stars.

So the son had a companion, a sister, a lover and a friend and he was no longer alone there in the sweeping folds of his mother's skirt and yet it was a lover he could not touch, could not know for no matter how they tried they could not touch. He could not take her in his arms, he could do nothing but offer his promise, “Soon, m’love, soon.” It was a promise that he made over and over while they drifted in that eternal chase around his mother's skirts for she no longer welcomed him beneath them. “Soon, m’love, soon.” He spoke it so often, so endlessly that the words seemed a slurring litany and it was from there we took her name. Moon.

What would it be like if the darkness never slept, if there were never any light? The weight of the Great Mother’s attention is a mighty thing, too long in her focus and all is easily lost. The worlds could not survive it if she were ever wakeful. Perhaps that too is why she is forgetful. For forget she did, for a time and that slumber crept over her with her children no longer in her sight and she slept. Slept and let the weight of her attention, her will, relax.

And with her will relaxed, that force that kept her children so separated seemed to ease as well and without the weight of her attention they were left to their own devices. That, my dear children is where the trouble started.

 

[Dahling]

As the Great Mother slept, she dreamed and in the dreaming there was life manifest beneath the presence of her children. Lesser siblings to walk on the planets that drifted in the son’s wake. Born to that which the moon seemed most fond of. There was a peace to it, at first. A kind of pleasure shared between both son and moon at watching their lesser siblings grow. But as their attention lingered on them they began to notice a growing divide for some were drawn to his heat and his light and others, others were drawn to the cold and the dark that was hers and with that divide the two siblings began to be fretful for the damage that was done.

Those that were so drawn to his heat began to share of his temper, too. His passion. Those who followed her in darkness, like her learned to hide and embrace that coolness of her arms and that was only the beginning of what the siblings had accidently shared.

And yet, and yet…

They found a way to be together as lovers so often will, for they had found that when their mother slept most deeply that they could move close enough to touch. That is when the world goes dark, even in the bright of day, for such love is forbidden and to look upon it for too long is to lose one's sight completely. Their smiles when such a coupling occurs can be found everywhere in those first precious moments, dancing in the shadows that whisper across the ground before it all goes dark. For as you know, that is when the magic happens.

There is some disagreement to the tale at this point as to whether or not it was their love that changed those that they watched over or if it was simply the wrongness of their joining that cased it all to go awry, but awry it went. Something woke in world during that twilight where day and night merged into one. It was as if the very world held its breath and in that still moment when the sun and moon merged into one, when day turned into night and night into day well...the whole world woke up.

 

[Dahling]

Soul is a funny thing and truly who is to say from whence it came. I know that you’ll hear most say that it came from the creator and they aren’t wrong. Where they get it wrong is who that creator is. You see, it wasn’t the Great Mother who gave us Soul. Life, yes but not soul. That’s what came that first time, when the lovers found a way to touch. So great was their joy, their pleasure, their love. It was their greatest gift to us, all from that first touch.

That was powerful. That was a joining of things that were never meant to join and it was magic. From the smallest amount us to the largest, everyone, everything woke up. I don’t mean that they simply opened their eyes. I mean they woke. They became aware and in that moment they were free and their spirits soared. Can you imagine it? All those souls, all suddenly alive and aware and free of their skins with nothing left to hold them locked in place?

I suppose, in that moment where everything was suddenly more that it was easy to miss one more among them. One who had never before known a body or a shape or anything at all. One that was borne from that very moment when the two lovers were forced apart?

Now, depending on who you ask you may find some who will say it fled in anger laying waste to the spirits who crossed its path. Others will say that it moved among them demanding order from the chaos. Me? I think it felt like any child might when it finds itself new to the world and no mother or father to hold it close and care. Even a baby can destroy an awful lot of ants before it can walk whether it means to or not, if you know what I mean.

So some of those spirits were lost as the son and moon were forced apart and light slowly began to return to the land. Spirits scrambled in the wake of those golden beams and fled back into the safety of the bodies they had once known. Others fled in panic because the body from which they’d come had already been bathed in light and they were unable to return. Some of them stole new homes from whatever was closest, merging in ways they were never meant to merge.