Tales of Creation - Myth, Truth & Other
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The Grey Lady is a being we all meet in the end; we guess, wonder, and ponder aloud what will face us when our stories come to an end. But what is her story? This collection seems keen to give glimpses into one so infinite, yet… can one such as that truly be so akin to us?


The Beginning

First
They speak of Nothing
But that is a Lie

Instead, there was a Woman
Emerging with a Question
Why?

Others formed around Her
Seeking to Answer
Atop the High Peak
So, she bade them Speak.

Light in his Warmth
Offered her Companionship
Amongst the shifting hues.

Logic in her Purpose
Offered her Law
In a Command Harsh and True.

Peace in their Balance
Offered her Itself
Adrift the placid blues.

Emotion in her Chaos
Offered her Change
In a whisper soft and taboo.

And Darkness in his Fear
Offered her the End
Inside crafted clues.

She held them at bay
Taking in All they’d had to Say
Then she wandered on her Way
Yet only Darkness she left that Day.


Death's Bed Time


“Such a curious tale to wish to hear, my little whippoorwill. Are you sure?”

She reaches a hand out and strokes the misty grey of her child’s hair

“Yes, Mum.” she returns, looking up with her starry blue eyes.

“Very well….”

Before there was all that Is, there were Things.

Strange formless beings, fighting and swarming in the dark.

Until a lone wanderer appeared, and with her came something new.

She stood alone on an island of Materia, the first bit of Materia.

But the real draw was the Voice.

Her Voice, the First Voice, calling out into the Vast Nothing, echoing like a song.

The Things noticed this melody and began to dance about her like moths to a candle.

Yet they could never reach her.

Many turned away, losing interest, and returned to frolic and fighting in their comfortable nothing. But a handful remained.

And with her voice, they learned to use their own. Then came the questions.

How had she come to be?

Why was she so different?

And then the questions changed.

What do you need?

What can we give?

What can we be?

But one spoke a different question: Can we be rid of you?

She ignored this voice as it lurked behind the other Things, refusing to show its fathomless face, while the others appeared to her readily. And in this acknowledgment of identity, these Things became Beings.

Light, the first to shine, sent his fellows scattering as his skin became a shroud of comforting radiance. To guide your path, He offered.

And so She accepted.

Law and Chaos followed, their long combats having become bitter rivalry as their personalities grew. Stark Geometry and Flowing Color clashed again and again, yet they, too, offered her a boon.

A foundation on which to build. A dream to shape the narrative.

The last took more to her island than her, and as it became one with Materia. It offered her a simple thing: Peace, and so it became Balance.

The Other shrunk farther and farther away, cowed by the strength in its “siblings,” the unwanted change She had wrought on everything. He did not step forward, even as a pair chose to shift past him to study the Emergent Creation.

Nor did he flee like the numberless others. Instead, he watched. He changed.

Unbidden to hatred of everything she stood for and all she had helped the others to be. Yet… deep down, he wanted it.

A Hunger. The first.

When finally, the coward charged forward to confront her with his own gift. His response was simple: The End. To cease all she had set in motion and allow what she represented to halt. To peter out in infancy.

“And what, my darling, do you think she said?”

“No!” her whippoorwill cries.

“Very good.”

What is more, she turned away from him. Making him the first to be Ignored.

The affront hollowed him to his core and ingrained in him the need, the desire, the purpose of ending everything to spite this She-From-Beyond-Nothing.

He struck and was rebuffed by the Six that stood at her side. Her Island cracked, and her Sanctuary wobbled. Their fight would accomplish his one and only desire.

But it was not to be. For her voice had called them to her in the beginning, so her voice would call them again. A lullaby.

“The first!” her daughter squeaks, and she chuckles, hugging the little one closer to her.

“Yes.”

Those first beings would know sleep. Their vast forms falling into a slumber that they have yet to awaken from them.

Yet, their personas spread as they dream of Kindness and Chaos, Law and Hatred. The Younger shook off her call and went on to become her Partners in crafting all that Is.

And those that are known as Primordials became the foundations of the Outer Crux.

"The Coward still hungers, my dear, consuming all, and maybe another night I will speak of the Beings that grew from Him, and the Others, Personifications of the Primordials will that visit our abode even now."

“Aw, but-“

“No buts!” she states, kissing her child on the forehead and rising to carry her to bed, “If the Primordials can enjoy the blessing of Sleep, then so can you, my little bird.”

“Okay~.”

She lays her into bed and steps away, noticing her daughter turn and look out the Window

“Mum, he won’t wake up, will he? The Coward.”

“No, my dear.”

She steps to the window, her gray hands grasping the curtains, and looks out to where her Kingdom has reached the eternal cosmic seas within the Outer Crux.

“The Primordials, our adopted family, including your Wayward Uncle, will sleep as long as I am here.” The Lady of Graves states, turning back to her child, the gleaming lights in her eyes not a reflection of Materia, but vice-versa, a comforting smile on her gaunt lips.


Excerpt of Nero's Truths.


“So many… think the Beginning was a swift and sorted tale. They don’t know. How long all I had was darkness and a flickering guttering flame.

"A single perch of grass and dirt beneath my feet. A single candle, my only friend. And out beyond my little precipice lurked things.

"Formless, fighting, facetious things.

"They made no noise; they had no light, but their presence was eternal.

"I could not eat. Which was good, for upon nothing could I sup.

"I need not drink. A grace for it had yet to exist. I could not sleep. A blessing sure to spell my end.

"As it went on, I became sure that if I could not die, then I was to exist alone forever in that oppressive silence.

"That was an intolerable thought.

"So I cried out, seeking aid or harm, a beginning or an end, a wordless plea for meaning. And… everything changed.

"They heard me. For that was the first sound to ever be heard.

"They approached. And through me, they found purpose.

"Gained form, learned meaning. Became real.

"They thanked me. But they did not understand how much they all meant to me.

"Too young, too immense, too distant to understand what it meant to be alone.

"They saved me. Took away the pain.

"A grief that I was the last on the precipice of nothing. No meaning. No purpose. No future.

"They gave me Life. It only began after that.” - The Whispers of the Eldest Voice


A Mythic Student.

A Guiding Matriarch.

A Refugee of Nothing.

From which aspect do you draw meaning?

And what others may yet lie beyond us?

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