Tag: story

In the beginning…

In the beginning… (A Fantasy World Creation Concept)

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Image by Ajay kumar Singh from Pixabay

Back when time was new, titans ruled the cosmos.

Eventually, as always happens among those in power, they waged war against each other. The titans were of different elemental planes and when they battled, the elemental planes collided as well. This led to the cosmic explosion of lands: elements from each plane violently thrashed together, melding into various landforms and exploding out into the cosmos. The defeated titans exploded into millions of tiny crystal shards, each containing a tiny amount of the titan’s lifeforce. These crystals were expelled out into the cosmos, landing on the various landforms and creating simple life out of the elements.

Eventually, only one titan remained, claiming to be all-powerful in its victory. The triumph was short-lived, however, as the titan soon came to realize loneliness and despair. It missed the comradery of its siblings, even as it desired to be more powerful than all others.

This led to the Age of Dreaming: with no one left to fight, the titan slumbered for millennia and dreamt a million dreams, each of which were played out by the simple, ethereal lifeforms that had emerged on the landforms. Some dreams were idyllic, and some were nightmares, thus some lands were like heavens, and some were like hells. As the titan slept, its stone-like body began to erode into fine dust that settled around its form. When the last of the titan had turned to dust, the Age of Dreaming ended. The dust, still partially imbued with the titan’s will, scattered throughout the cosmos, exploding into a billion suns.

Each sun interacted with a landform, and where possible, brought about more advanced life. The first beings to emerge had the memories of the titans and some of their powers. Thus began the Age of Gods.

These gods ruled the lands for a time, but as often happens, they grew bored with each other. The strongest among them created the races of sentient beings: men, elves, dwarves, halflings, dragons, goblins, trolls, fairies, etc. Some of these gods ruled multiple lands and created the same races everywhere they went. Some filled a particular niche, preferring one or two. Some lived among the races. Some even mated with them.

 For a long time, these beings lived by the will of the gods and worshipped them. Until they no longer did. Wars were fought, won, and lost in the name of various gods. Some gods were forgotten. Some were destroyed. This ended the Age of Gods.

Now don’t get me wrong, the gods still exist…

-Written 2021 (revised 2022)

Jane’s Parents

Let me tell you a story about Jane.

One day Jane visited her parents to help out around the house. By the time she arrived, her parents were already worked up into their usual apathetically insane frenzy of miscommunication. Her mom had the whole day planned out – in her head, of course – without bothering to share this plan with anyone else. So by the time Jane figured out which direction the days events were headed, her mom was ready to sit down and take a break.

At that point, Jane’s dad was consulted on the matter of acquiring keys for the recreational vehicle. He reached into the basket where such items are kept and the whole thing overturned onto the floor. In a frenzy, he started flinging objects back into the basket and without missing a stride, flung a set of keys to Jane who was standing ten feet away. Jane caught them easily but as she turned to pass them on to her mother, she noticed a small knife on the key chain that could have caused her serious bodily harm if she had caught the key chain any another way. Slightly alarmed, she mentioned it to her mother who made an absentminded comment about how her husband is an asshole and then turned and headed out the door to use the keys.

Jane was stunned by the lack of concern and walked back to tell her dad, “You know, you just threw a knife at me. There was a knife on that key chain”. To which he responded, “there’s no knife on that key chain. (pause) Then, those weren’t the right keys”. Jane was so dumbfounded by the lack of concern that she didn’t know what to do. Her parent didn’t think it was a big deal, so maybe it wasn’t. She really couldn’t think straight about it.

A few hours lately, Jane’s dad was fixing the electronic garage door while she was carrying things in and out of the house into the garage. On one of her trips, she stopped to move a bucket near the doorway and her dad said to her, “watch out for the door”. She immediately jumped back and watched the door slide down in front of her face. To clarify: her dad’s warning sounded more like “you might want to move your car sometime today”, than “move your head right now!” as it should have.

Again, Jane was mystified by this lack of concern for her physical well-being. And even as she continued to remark on how he had tried to kill her twice in one day, got little response from either of her parents.

It wasn’t until later, when she recalled the incidents to others that the seriousness of the situation became a reality.

Now Jane wonders if her parents are criminally insane or perhaps replacements from a botched alien abduction? Will we ever know for sure?

(This was originally published 12/02/07 on http://annie1kenobe.blogspot.com/)