| OOC: A storyteller speaks, near the heart of things |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|07:05 pm] |
This is the closest thing to a true story about Raven that anyone knows.
Some who don’t know better say that, when the universe was born, Raven was there waiting. This ain’t particularly true. He came after, but not very long. And he didn’t have a body, at first. None of the early ones did. And he was lonesome, because the in-between is a big place, if not the biggest.
And some time, when everything was still cooling down from the light and heat of creation, Raven stumbled on a new thing. It was a big ball of water, floating there in front of him. And Raven said, “Well, now,” and he went to investigate. Now on this ball of water there was a place, big as two villages put together, and maybe a little more, that didn’t have water covering it. And in this place there lived some people. We call them his First People now, and they’re lucky, because he loved them well. He loves us, too, but it isn’t the same.
Anyway, there were people here, and Raven watched ‘em, because he’d never seen their like, before. He found them very silly. They didn’t have enough space to spread out, and they kept fighting each other. Them that fought didn’t stay around, and sometimes they got put in the ground, in boxes. In those days, Raven didn’t know what death was, you understand. He still doesn’t get it, not like we do.
It was dark, there, and bare—just the sky, and the ocean, and some fish. No plants, ‘cause there weren’t any sun, yet, nor a moon, either. Raven’d have plenty to do, to keep himself busy, in that place. ‘Cept he wasn’t thinking like that, yet. Didn’t care enough, I suppose.
So he’s watching these people, and they’re killing each other all over the place, only most aren’t killing family, see? There’s some stuff they won’t do. This one man, though—he hoards everything he can get his hands on, including his wife. She’s a real pretty lady, and he’s jealous of any man who might see her. He’s got a lot of blood on his hands, he does. Some of it’s his sister’s kids. His sister’s a pretty lady, too, though she don’t have a husband. And the man’s wife’s got a wanderin’ eye.
One day, the sister’s walkin’ by the river, and she stops under a tree and just starts crying. Now Raven, he’s there, too, watching the water move. And he doesn’t understand people, yet, so he says (in her head, like) “What are you doing?” This lady’s not real experienced with creatures like Raven, so she gets real scared. But she’s stopped crying—you’ve gotta remember that Raven always helps, even when you think he’s not.
She tells Raven her story, ‘bout how her brother’s always killing her children. And Raven’s not best pleased with this, ‘cause he thinks kin is sacred. So he has the woman heat a stone in the fire, and swallow it—and when she does, he jumps himself into the stone, and builds a body out of it. Nine or so months later, she pops out a bitty Raven, and pretends he died in childbirth. She goes off to the forest, grievin’, though secretly she’s takin’ care of the baby.
At any rate, a bunch of years goes by (people lived longer in those days), and Raven find himself all grown up. The uncle has found Raven, too, or heard of him, and he goes lookin’ for the boy. Now, even young, Raven was pretty canny, and practical, too. He knew his Uncle was lookin’ for him, so he snuck out lookin’ for his uncle. And as he was no blood kin of the man’s, Raven killed him quick as can be, with his knife. Like I said, he didn’t understand the ways of people, then.
Raven goes back home and tells what passes for his mother what he’s done. She looks happy and horrified, at the same time. You should remember that’s how things often go, with Raven. And she tells him that all his uncle’s stuff is his. Now Raven isn’t much taken by physical things—at least not the big ones that we’re so fond of. He takes gewgaws, like—bits of string, and twigs, and all manner of small, shiny things. So he wasn’t sure he wanted his uncle’s things, but he went, anyway.
His Uncle’s wife was pleased as punch, because her husband had been old, and here was a young pretty thing just waiting to take her up, or so she was thinking. Because Raven, with his stone body, and his strange brain, weren’t having with all this instinctive stuff that we’re programmed with. So he just stared at her, and blinked his pretty eyes, and foisted her off with some story. She found a village boy, later, and stayed with him for a while, until she died.
Anyway, so Raven’s going through his Uncle’s stuff, in the dark, when he finds a box, all decorated and pretty, but kept shut with heavy chains. So Raven finds the key, and he opens that box. What’s inside fair blinds him. There’s a shiny glowing yellow sphere, and a pale radiatin’ white sphere, and a bunch of sparkly little points. And Raven thinks, “Now, wouldn’t these be handy?” and he takes ‘em with him. The rest of the house he leaves with his mother.
Raven wanders the strip of land for a while, but he gets bored pretty fast. And he has a body, now, so he can’t go flittin’ off into the ether as well as he used to. There’s nowhere for him to walk, at any rate. So he’s thinkin’ and thinkin’, because this planet is boring, and the people are still killing each other for no reason. Raven understands death, now, but not people yet. He’s got more to learn.
So he sees this creature, one day, hopping and skipping on the ground. And when Raven goes to look at it, it jumps into the sky and speeds away. Now Raven, he’s fascinated. This thing moves almost like he used to, before he got tangled up in this world’s troubles. So he studies this thing, and he learns how to take its shape. And with a shape comes some measure of instincts, as you know, so Raven and these creatures—birds they were called—started to act alike. The question of whether we called ‘em ravens before we met Raven is something no one knows. And it don’t matter, much, either.
Raven’s got himself a body, now, that can travel, and change shapes. He’s tired of this place, so he kisses his mama goodbye, takes a handful of the beach with him, as he goes, and he jumps into the sky. Now wouldn’t you know he’d forgotten that raven-bodies don’t have pockets? So there he is, dropping sand behind him as he flies, and the stars and the moon and the sun are falling, too. He sees ‘em floating, and catches as many as he can, tossing ‘em up and away from land, because he doesn’t really want these people to die. They’re as close to kin as he’s come in a long time of wandering. And wouldn’t you know that the sand, when it hits the ocean, forms more land—and the sun is up in the air, shinin’ its light on that planet, and the moon at night, with the stars tellin’ their stories. And it’s real pretty, so Raven decides to stay. And the people there love him, even though his help was an accident, and they’d bring him their troubles. And Raven forgot how to be lonely.
But worlds grow up, and that’s what this one did. And one day, they forgot Raven. They didn’t believe his stories, and they didn’t ask him for help, and they laughed at his magics and his miracles. But he loved ‘em, anyway, so he helped where he could. And they kept getting’ farther and farther away from what they had been, and they had a harder and harder time seein’ Raven. But he loved ‘em, so he forgave. And their weapons got nastier, and their hearts got colder, and they forgot to look up, and they forgot to look down, and they forgot to look around, and they forgot to look inside, until it was like they were blind. And they couldn’t see anyone but what they thought was themselves. And then they died, and only Raven was left. And he was powerful sad. But he remembered what he had done to make this world, so he took a handful of sand with him, and made another, someplace else. He thought this one would be better. Which tells you something of how poorly he understood the nature of people, doesn’t it?
This world followed the same pattern as the last, only here Raven tried to stop the end, and he lost his body, and he went a little mad. He traveled through space, making worlds as he went—and when they reached the point in their growing that had killed the other two worlds, he razed them with fire and flood and power, because he was tired of watching them destroy themselves. And he spent some time, too, making their choices for ‘em—the ones he thought were right. But in those places, there was nobody to talk to, because he had to hold both sides of the conversation.
It took a long time for Raven to grow up, but he did, eventually. And he bound himself with rules, and he got himself a body, and he’s wandering the universe, still, helping out where he can. We look for him, every year, and have since your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s grandfather’s time. And sometimes, he comes. It’d be good for you children if he came here this year.
And that’s all I’ve got to say. |
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