"We bow to You, Deymater, Great Mother of the earth and us all. We offer you our souls, our life, our substance, which You have fashioned from your ground." Queen Aida spoke first alone. Then the others of The Circle joined in and they spoke the invocation together.
"We bow to You, Earth Mother. Teach us as we carry out Your will. Teach us to be the guardian of Your creation,” said Jorildyn, a tall, thin male elf old enough to have gray hair, matching his gray eyes.
The members of The Circle, clad in their basic brown robes, had gathered in their most sacred spot: a clearing in the woods, a mile from the castle and the town. It was where a great battle had been fought twenty-three years before. In the battle, The Circle had first joined the free orc army to defeat the wizard Lothar, who had enslaved almost all of the region. Almost.
"We raise our eyes to You, Deymater. Give us the sight to understand the majesty of the forests. Lead us along the wise streams, free from enemies and away from the blades that cut flesh and trees," said a red-headed female elf, Emmyth2, who really meant it.
The exhortations to the Great Mother went on for a while. There was a lot to cover. Thrur and Berian, an orc and a human, were beginning to look impatient. All the elves though were having a great time and were planning on being there all day. Elves had very long lives, so needed to come up with things to do. The troll member of the circle, Elly, often tried to mediate between the various groups on scheduling issues.
After they’d put enough work into it to show they really cared, the Great Mother granted a vision to the circle. This had been happening often recently, giving rise to a lot of theories among the participants as to why, accompanied by a certain amount of smugness.
The visions of the Great Mother generally showed one of Her aspects. Sometimes multiple aspects, if the Mother were feeling particularly chatty. Few mortals could, of course, hope to see and comprehend the Great Mother in Her entirety without going mad, so the visions were limited to small glimpses of Her Majesty.
This morning the vision that appeared was that of the Mother Who was immensely proud of how brave and strong the members of The Circle had turned out to be. The Great Mother took them in Her arms with approval, and The Circle understood they were good looking and dressed smartly and had turned out alright.
The vision continued and they saw Her in all Her glory reminding them that they had promised to clean their room and do the dishes and take care of the earth, but instead here they were hanging out with their friends listening to music and they really needed to get their errands done. The officiants felt chastened and silently made a vow to do the dishes more punctually.
That aspect of the Great Mother transformed to the related and almost-the-same aspect of the Mother Who Took Care of You and Changed Your Diaper and You Really Should Keep That In Mind. The Circle felt the great love of their Mother and vowed anew to repay Her care and that they really would get the dishes done immediately after the meals.
The vision continued as the Sky Father, Teyspater, appeared. This didn’t happen very often, despite The Circle's channel being to both members of The Old Couple. For reasons The Circle constantly debated, the Sky Father let Deymater do most of the talking to the mortals.
Their theory was that Teyspater was an enigmatic god, concerned with the running of the heavens and knowable only through the flash of lightning and the thunder of the storm. Teyspater was happy with that theory, and allowed The Circle to teach it, even if it wasn't the full truth. He could actually be quite chatty with mortals that were doing things that interested Him, it was just that He found most of the worshippers of the Circle to be a bit preachy, overly earnest, or just boring. While the Great Mother was happy to be nurturing and had the patience to care for the trees as they grew, the Sky Father was much more a god that helps those who help themselves sort of a god.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
And today He was in a hurry and wanted the channel closed.
So, with motivations unknown to those gathered, and on which they would speculate for the next month, the Sky Father also appeared.
He appeared in an aspect that Queen Aida had not seen before, and that the scholars of the circle would record in haste immediately after the ceremony. They saw Him, looking somewhat surprised as He came into view, and He cared for them and He sang them a lullaby but He really wished they would go to sleep already so that he could go out with his buddies. There was a big game on, and he needed to head out soon. They saw the Great Mother reminding the Sky Father that it was still just morning for the mortals. He changed tack and instead commanded the mortals to go forth and have a great celebratory feast, and get on with it immediately, and let’s end the whole ceremony now.
At least two 30-page treatises would be produced in the next week on the visions that The Circle had just had. One of these is now considered canon and known as The Third Treatise of Elder Baakon of the North. It discusses the power of the joint vision of The Old Couple, and laid the theological basis of the “Feast of The Big Game'' that is still celebrated prior to the Equinox in the northern lands with great hunts and a country-wide patriotic barbeque and worship ceremony. Sadly, though, this was the last of Elder Baakon’s writings, as he died in a freak walking accident a year later.
The other treatise suggested that the visions showed the gods were more like mortals that had previously been supposed, with their own concerns and schedule, and that maybe we shouldn’t bother them so much. Perhaps instead we should listen quietly for those times when they wanted to chat with us.
But that wasn’t a popular idea with her ceremony-happy companions. The writer, a young elf named Dyra, thus found that she was getting on people’s nerves in The Circle and she eventually left to found a shipping company. The shipping company was blessed with uncanny good luck, never had a wreck, and grew to be quite a powerhouse in the region.
The ceremony ended quickly and excitedly after the pronouncement of the Sky Father. The officiants hurried off to prepare a feast, as their god had commanded. They forgot about doing the dishes.
As the members of The Circle left the clearing, Queen Aida remained. She sat quietly in meditation, focusing the residual power left from the channel to the gods.
After a few minutes of meditation, she had focused enough power to allow her vision to leave her body and travel across her young nation.
Her vision was drawn first to her daughters as they talked with the trees. One of the saplings sensed Aida watching, and wandered over to Myla to grab her leg to alert her.
She shifted quickly away, focusing on their growing town. It was a beautiful day, and Lagar’s Haven was busy, the ships were loading, every table at The Inappropriate Unicorn was full and its patrons were hungry.
Her sight flew along the river and up the mountains to her brother-in-law Duke Juhka in his Bronze Citadel. He and Duchess Leyad were preparing for the trip to the capital. The Citadel’s volcanic springs were filled with happy bathers, even a few human sightseers.
She felt there was still a great well of power left from the channel, so the queen made use of it and stretched her vision still farther, to the warmer lands.
Her perception entered Vathary, just to the south of her kingdom. She could sense the fair city of Keley, their gateway to what trade Lagar’s Haven had with the humans. The city was bustling and its merchants were happy. Peace in the North brought prosperity to both lands. They could grow rich and old together. Her sight traveled further on, along the long roads of Vathary. She reached its capital, Carstones.
Her mood turned dark. There was a great evil in the capital. A corruption she had not sensed in decades. The vision ceased, as if something had noticed her and put up a wall to stop her view.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
2Translator’s Note: I spoke with Emmyth during my visit. She revealed that the northern badlands now known as Pelsa had not been their first choice of where to settle. They’d been exiled from an elven kingdom for heresy, and later chased from a human confederacy for both heresy and being generally annoying, Emmyth had almost been beheaded in the capital’s main square. They claim it wasn’t their fault. Then they’d landed in Pelsa when their escape ship floundered. They told me it was all the Great Mother guiding them to their destiny.