This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright © 2008 Nathan Foster, some rights reserved.
Here is what we would call a "fairytale" which originated with the Fairies of Nillord Valley. (These are not the same as the Whitewings, who are travellers, or the other group who live with Men.)
Back in the dawn of time, there was only heaven and the Jyuuni Whitewings. The Jyuuni Whitewings sat still as stone during the day and danced with gaity during the night. They had no knowlege of space or time. They had no knowledge of the extent of land. The split world of two vertical hemispheres extending deep into consciousness was all that they knew.
In this land there was a female named Kally, who ached with desire all day and all night. She went to the teachers of the land to understand the problems she experienced. They gave her words. They gave her verbs and syllables. But nothing seemed either to envelope nor quench her desire. She had no words, no syllables, no caravans of thoughts to reprieve herself, for every caravan of thoughts bled unfailingly into a black void.
During one fine night of hidden stars, down came a Aelon from heaven, startling and scattering the Whitewings into the wilderness. The Aelon made a shrill and mighty whine of steadyness in tone and pitch, then left, leaving beautiful mirror.
Kally was the first to approach the mirror, regarding it deeply and thoroughly. It was as though she were in an dream, dreaming of dreaming another dream. Now the mirror came to Ael, she thought, and was given by an Aelon, so it must have some use.
The other Whitewings, seeing her so boldly approach the strange item, gathered around and also looked into it. Seeing strange forms within it, some among them postulated that the mirror spoke to them. A few of those who thought so also obeyed it. The mirror would tell them, "go bring me some flowers." Or, "go bring me some magic stones." Or, "go bring me the best of this year's harvest." Each time they brought the flowers, or the stones, or the harvest, the mirror would speak louder and louder, and more fairies would oblige, until the gifts became a dance of fairies: scattering and convening, away and back again, to and from the mirror. Sometimes there would be only a few fairies, sometimes the space around the mirror choked with fairies and life was trampled from the ground there.
Kally, crying because of the evil that she thought she had wrought, approached the mirror in the night, and lay next to it. She fell asleep in sorrow, dreaming only of the mirror. Determined in the dream to root out the cause of the evil that attached itself to the Whitewings, and although she was afraid of what she would find, she looked again deeply into the mirror. Now, she saw only herself, and the mirror dissolved.
Kally awoke the next day, next to the mirror, surrounded by fairies. Another fairy among them, named Reelis, spoke up:
"Why have you not given anything to the mirror? Have you no thought of the danger imposed upon us through your doing such?"
"No, I understand what it is though," Kally said.
"Please then, tell us, for we are starving in want of food, languid in want of magic, and crying in want of flowers. No more of these trifling things should be given, I think, because it will only ask for more. Kally, please tell us, what in the name of the Ael, what ONE THING, does the damnable mirror want?"
Kally replied, "Knowledge."
At that moment, Kally held the whole Ael in her hand. She split the night and sky and made the world round, for she knew more than any fairy before her had known. The mirror shattered into pieces so small no one could see them. But all felt them, and knew that they were there, knowing no place in the world was separate from this one act of Kally and her ingenuity.
But then all the mirror pieces had suddenly disappeared, and all was frightfully scary!!!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright © 2008 Nathan Foster, some rights reserved.