Fairytale Sunday, 08/09/2024
Stories My Mother Taught Me
Welcome to another edition of Fairytale Sunday! For the previous edition, which is about the Judgement of Paris, click there.
This one is very different. As you will see. I hope you like it.
When people think about Atlantis, or remember, it seems to me they only remember the later years.
They only think about the utopia, the beautiful civilisation we became after thousands of orbits. Our Golden Age of Virgo. I can understand that, for sure. When we delighted in all the new technologies and had Visitors to welcome from many other worlds. Perhaps because it was the very last time in this world in which everyone was safe, and the forces of evil were kept ostracised and well at bay.
The rest of the world may have seemed primitive, but they weren’t, not really. They were simply natural, organic, happy. Like we were, once upon a time so very long before. They are no different to us, really, apart perhaps from our own curiosities. For as long as there have been humans there have been those who have been curious, who gaze up at the constellations and think there must be something out there, there must be more to the world than this. And so their curiosity drives them to explore, and they are the ones who lead us into civilisation. Others, no, they are only ever contented. So of course there is no need for us to bother them, and no concern for them to even be aware of us, on our safe islands out here beyond the visible horizons. For them, it is only a vast expanse of water, and nothing more than that.
And the northern hemisphere may well have been largely covered in ice and snow and mountainous, fearsome glaciers, their colossal tongues slicing down through the geology. But that was far away from us. For us, the climate was kind. Did we become lazy, do you think? No, not really. No more than any of those simpler tribes were lazy in their own idyllic and happy ways.
And yes, we had become aware that the days were coming when all that ice would melt away, and all those glaciers would shrink back into their polar lairs. But in our Golden Age, that was still a long time coming. But still, the priesthood decided, because they knew, that plans for the evacuation and the resettlement of our sixty millions should be drawn up. No, they never kept that a secret from us. We never had leaders who kept secrets from the people. Such corruption simply wouldn’t make sense to us. No, the plans and the predictions were freely available for anyone to see. At least if you went to the Capital and visited the Great Archive there.
But most of us didn’t worry ourselves about such matters. Although we heard all the gossip and the stories from the Capital from travellers it was all a few thousand years into the future, after all, so why should we worry? Besides, the Great Warming would be slow, wouldn’t it? We could be lazy about it. Take our time. Enjoy our lives. Grow our souls.
Out here in the provinces, we didn’t notice when the Visitors stopped coming. They did it slowly at first, over so many generations that by the time they weren’t there anymore nobody out here seemed to know. They would’ve known in the Capital, though. Most Visitors, after all, only ever went there. And I am thinking now of a time at least a thousand years, before that final Age of Leo, before our astronomers saw and tracked the object from the asteroid field. They marked and refined their calculations and stored them safely in the Library in the Capital. They knew when it would come, but not where.
Not exactly where.
But as I say, out here in the provinces, it doesn’t matter. The evacuations will still proceed as planned and all in good time. And as for me, I shall be an even older soul by then. Sometimes in my dreaming I think of myself as a leader of one of our colonising expeditions. I’ve seen the maps, and I think I would like to go north-east. There will be a great island there when the waters rise. One hundred and thirty metres higher, they say. A little colder than what we’re used to here, but it will be beautiful. And because we are an island, we will be safe, for even more thousands of years.
Will there be people already there when we arrive? I don’t know. Depends how long it’s been since the long slow flood. But I will smile regardless when we finally make landfall and make a new life for ourselves. And if there are people there already, then we shall teach them everything we know.
And I will pass on to them all of those stories my mother taught me.
When I think back now, I have come to understand that this was the very last life when everything was easy, and simple, and I never had to concern myself with painful revelations and dark responsibilities. It was the final idyll. That beautiful calm, before the storms came.
Perhaps it was a gift from the Goddess, or her spirits. I would like to think so.
And so I smiled all the time when I was a child, out here in the provinces, in our beautiful green valley with that slow and lazily winding river running gently around our village, and I used to love watching my mother’s big eyes as I listened hypnotically to all the stories she taught me. Stories of our people from long ago. Passed down through every generation and never lost so that our true identities and true culture would be never lost. That we would remember who we were, and what we did, and what we became, and to know that all of this mattered. That we mattered.
For it would all come to an end one day. We knew that. All of us knew that.
And so when I grew older and became a mother myself I would tell the same stories to my own children in turn, and in turn so would they to theirs, when the time came.
Most people, at least all the ones I know, when they think about Atlantis they only remember the Golden Age, of Virgo, thousands of years into the future. The beautiful utopia we made for ourselves.
And so it is down to us to remember. We older souls who know our stories. Who know our true past.
For when we first made landfall, we thought we were alone on this new great island.
But we were wrong. We were not alone.
Most of us remained and rested on that promontory, in view of the sea, whilst a scouting party of men were sent inland to find out everything we needed to know. And so they left us and they walked deep into that forest, and they never came home.
We waited for them. Our children and their mothers would stand at the edge of the trees and watch and hope expectantly. But they did not return. On the third day we started to hear those cries during the night. Those alien shrieks and howls from creatures we never knew existed before. And yes, of course we were afraid. Of course we were. Our children did not smile as children should. No, nor women neither.
Our elders told us to set up our defences and to keep the home fires burning all throughout the dark time. And for our young men to keep watch each night. Keep watch with burning torches and little pots of tar ready at any time for the flaming arrow tips and the letting loose to fly.
For we all knew then that there must always be watchers. There must always be watchers, because something must be out there. Out there, in the dark in the forest.
The next day the elders shall call a gathering and they will decide for a new hunting party. We have many young men who will risk it. But they will do so together. As a cadre of comrades. They will take torches and the flammable tar and more than enough arrows. And they will come back.
Of course they will come back to us.
And while they were gone, my mother taught me stories. She told me about the oldest ever story, and helped me to remember, just as she would do so many thousands of years later when every child would be helped to remember. And it’s always about a forest. And how there are monsters in there, and how you must never go alone. You must never stray from the path.
To survive, we must love each other. We have our young men to protect us, we have fire. You remember the story I taught you about the coming of fire? Of course you do. Of how before that time, we lived our days and nights in fear. For we knew we weren’t safe. But after fire, that fear disappeared. And nature became our friend. For it was her, after all, Danuih, the Goddess of this world, who gave us fire. It was the love of Helio, God of the sun, whose passion for her ignited fires in Danuih, and she passed it on to us. For fire is the most magical gift in the universe. A mark of her love for us, her children. And in return, we must love her back. We must look after her wherever we go, and whatever we do.
And remember this also – if she didn’t want us to kill all those monsters, she would not have granted us that gift. And so you must never think it wrong to use that fire. Never think it wrong. To think such thoughts would be an insult for that gift.
We understand that, of course we do. Our young men do not hesitate to venture forth into that dark forest. Nor to look after each other and to look after us and to come back to us.
And yes, of course when they return they will be smiling. They will be laughing and they will be carrying carcasses of fresh meat and later, when night has fallen and the skies are so full of stars again, and our stomachs are happy, and we gather in our circle by the warmth of the fire, they will take turns to tell us their own stories of the adventures and perils they endured to capture those feasts for us. They will tell of how they saw the largest beast you could ever imagine, and of how the youngest and, perhaps, the most foolish of them, in a silly desire to impress the sweet and loving heart he left behind in the camp, decided we would have to go and capture that monster. They would tell us how the others told him no, but he went anyway. They would perhaps think him dead to them and never coming back, another casualty of youthful folly, but he would come back. And when he returned he would tell of all those adventures and perils he endured in the pursuit of the one that got away.
Of course no one’s even seen that monster. It’s bigger and nastier than anything in your imagination.
But we know it does exist. We’ve heard it, after all. We can hear it now, out there in the dark forest. We know it’s there.
But we are safe here. We have fire. And we have each other.
And we will survive here. We know we will. We will conquer that forest and on the other side we shall find a beautiful lush valley with fresh streams and leaping fish and Oryx in the fields and we shall tame them and root out all the weeds from around those fruit trees and make orchards for ourselves. Our young men will take their bows and their arrows and canter up to that copse of trees over there on that hill and shoot down some of the colourful game birds we see roosting there.
We shall make a village for ourselves. And that village will grow. And in time there will be other villages, so many more over the centuries until the whole of this perfect island becomes our home and then we will make for ourselves a civilisation. Just like our so very distant ancestors did, a hundred thousand orbits back, when the last Great Warming came. Because the Great Warming always comes. Since the dawning of the age of humans. Again, and again. And once we have our beautiful world, the Visitors will come back too. And all those stars will be ours. They will not seem so distant and twinkling as they do now, so out of reach. They will be our friends.
And so long as we remember, we will know what to do. And we shall survive.
But even with all that fire, we know there are still monsters there, when night comes, in those dark forests.
And so we will watch. For there must always be someone watching. Because there is something out there.
We are not alone. None of us ever are alone.
I will always watch and listen with my bright eyes when my mother smiles down upon me.
And of course I shall remember. Of course I shall pass it all on.
I shall always remember the stories my mother taught me. I promised, after all. I made her a promise, just as she did, all those years ago, before you were born, to her mother before you.
Of course we remember.
How could we ever not…
This is quite beautiful, Evelyn! Bittersweet and dreamy and evocative.