Tales of the Great Conglomeration

One: The War of Invisible Years



There is a period in the history of the Great Conglomeration that has been almost entirely obliterated from legend. It has certainly never appeared in any academic book published by the corporations of the Conglomeration, and if any naive kitten had ever asked about the peculiar twenty-year gap in the official records, he or she would have been hurriedly punished by hairball.

When the twenty Invisible Years first began, it had been almost twenty million sun-turns since the birds had last built their nests in the Valley of the Trees. You see, the coming of the Great Conglomeration of Cats had, quite decisively, driven them out, and those rare few who stayed in the Valley soon fell prey to the elaborate feasts of the more aristocratic cats. It did not take long after that for the sky to become empty and for the clouds to feel lonely.



Feeble-feather-beak had never meant to start the War of Invisible Years. In fact, it is an odd feat of history that he even survived to do so at all. You see, Feeble-feather-beak, already the weakest of his tribe, had fallen from the nest less than four days after hatching, and been abandoned to the whim of nature. By the normal rights of nature it is fair to say that he should not have been around at all.

Upon inadvertently escaping the confines of the nest, Feeble-feather-beak found himself woefully unable to fly. Instead, he tripped and flittered across the forest floor, until he came upon Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth, who invited him in for a slice of the best quality cheese.

Though hungry, Feeble-feather-beak was not at all impressed by the cheese. When he requested fresh worm instead, Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth made a sarcastic vomiting noise and then laughed. Feeble-feather-beak nibbled away the rest of his fancy foreign cheese in struggling silence. After a few moments, Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth asked Feeble-feather-beak why he couldn’t fly.

The young bird confessed he did not know.

Another long moment passed, and then Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth offered to teach him how.
Feeble-feather-beak laughed so sharply that he sprayed cheese across the floor. “You,” he said, “are a mouse.”

Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth stared at Feeble-feather-beak. “So?”

“What would a mouse know of bird-flight?” Feeble-feather-beak asked.

Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth did not look up this time. Instead, he picked at a piece of cheese and muttered, “I’ve been learning.” He gestured at a tangle of sticks and fabric, which almost resembled a wing.

Feeble-feather-beak was both amused and perplexed by this. He asked why a mouse would ever need to fly.

There was a silence, again. It was a longer silence, this time, and no one was eating the cheese anymore. Then Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth pulled out a scroll from a pile in the corner. He unrolled it. “This,” he explained, “is the plan of the mice.” It was possibly the most elaborate thing that Feeble-feather-beak had ever seen – he read it twice through.
“You see,” said Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth, “if we can enter the Conglomeration from above, we can take it over from inside...”

Again Feeble-feather-beak asked why.

“They took our land,” Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth explained. “They laid claim over your land, too, but if you fly, you can help us take it back.”

“Will I get a fresh worm instead of cheese if I do?” Feeble-feather-beak asked.

Tail-and-fur-and-little-teeth, being a mouse, was technically unable to shrug, but this is, in effect, what he did. “If can you fly,” he said, “you can catch your own worm.”




Thus it was that the mice taught Feeble-feather-beak how to fly, and on the eve of midsummer-day the following year, he flew thirteen rodents into the Conglomeration of the Cats. Five of the mice were on cheese-hurling duty. The others were nibblers, making use of the cheese-hurling distraction to nibble their way through the city of cats. It was on this day – the day that Feeble-feather-beak first flew above the city - that the war began.

If you are curious (for, as I have said, the history books are hopeless on this matter), the War of Invisible Years was hard fought across the Valley. Violent cheese was exchanged with explosive hairballs, and the claws of cats were taken hostage by the mice. The war came, however, to a remarkably sudden end on an otherwise nondescript Tuesday afternoon - almost twenty years to the day after Feeble-feather-beak had dropped a mouse into the Conglomeration. An unnamed travelling-cat made a discovery, a thousand miles from home: a young man in the human kingdom had invented rat poison. The travelling-cat sold his tail in exchange for victory, and the mice fought no more.

It has been suggested in more recent years that the absence of this war in the official tales of the Great Conglomeration was the direct result of an edict, passed in haste by the young feline president at the moment of victory. It is said (in whispers), that the cats were so embarrassed by the whole mouse debacle that they chose instead to deny it had ever happened at all.




Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

Tales from the Twin Glass Cities:
On the Bridge, by Beldar | The Straw that Stirs the Drink

Tales from the Storybooks:
Not a needle but a drink by Frecklestars | The Bridge of Lost Stories

Tales from the Great Conglomeration:
One

The Bridge of Lost Stories


You, dear reader, from the world of free stories, may find it almost impossible to imagine the life of Amelia Gardenwood - the only daughter of the chief bridge-builder in the New Londonian Republic, where stories were forbidden. You see, until the day the Gypsies came, young Amelia had never even seen a picture of a book.

The Gypsies first arrived at the gates of the citadel on an otherwise innocuous Sunday afternoon, three weeks after Amelia’s twelfth birthday – not, of course, that Amelia had been permitted to celebrate such an occasion. The arrival of the caravans to the plains outside the city walls gave rise to a peculiarly understated disquiet – the Gypsies were the most feared of all peoples, for it was through them that the books had survived, and books were the source of all heinous things. Whispers soon crept along the cracks in the streets of the New Londonian Republic: keep your children inside, the murmuring said - beware, for the monsters have arrived.

Amelia had never been one for staying inside. The moment her father left for work (he had recently been commissioned to build a new Bridge of Sighs), Amelia began to scheme. She knew that if she clambered down the apple tree outside her father’s window, she could scuttle down the back-streets all the way to the great wall. She surmised that she was unlikely to be seen by any human eyes, but, nonetheless, she armed herself with a slingshot and a pocket of rocks - just in case. (You may or may not care to know that half-way between the window and the wall, Amelia mistook a cat for a spying boy, and shot it in the face with a pebble.)



For the first time in her life, Jay had been forbidden from entering a city. They were not intending to remain here long, her mother had said, for the people of the Republic were the most dangerous of all. Jay and her brothers were, therefore, under strict instruction to remain within the confines of the camp. This was not an edict that Jay felt particularly inclined to obey, and within hours of arriving at the forbidden city, she was creeping through the grass with an apple in one pocket and a book in the other.

Jay found the culvert by accident. Tiptoeing along the edge of the wall on a quest for the perfect reading spot, she tripped on a deceptively large tussock and landed upside-down in the well-concealed ditch. There was a moment of silence and then...

“Who are you?”

Jay swore, and then blushed. She sat up and stared through the grate. A strange face peered back at her. “Are you a savage?” Jay asked.

“No!” The face on the other side of the wall leaned back for a moment. Then it said, “I’m Amelia.”

Jay continued to stare - she had never seen such a fiercely ginger tangle of hair before now.

“Don’t you have a name?” The Amelia-face asked. Then, since Jay remained silent, she said, “Are you a Gypsy-monster?”

Jay shrugged. “I’m Jay,” she said. “And I’m not a monster if you’re not a savage.”

“What you doing here?”

“Reading.” Jay held up the book.

The Amelia-face frowned, and wrinkled her nose. “What’s that for?”

“It’s for keeping stories,” replied Jay.

Amelia leaned right up to the grate. “You can’t have stories,” she whispered. “They’ll hang you alive if you say a story here.”

Jay told Amelia not to be so utterly silly – then, after a momentary consideration, she asked whether Amelia would like to hear a tale.

Amelia shrugged, and then acquiesced.

Thus it was that Jay began to read in the city where stories were lost. She told of princesses and frogs, and of battles and love. She told a story of stray children, of gingerbread kingdoms and poisoned drinks. In a single page, she swept from the gardens of a great glass palace to the coffin of a lonely witch. When darkness fell, and Jay could no longer see the words, Amelia begged her not to stop.

“I must,” answered Jay, “but here-” She passed the book through the bars of the little drain. “Keep it.”

Amelia protested this, for the keeping of books was a hangable offence. In any case, as she told Jay, she couldn’t read.

“So learn,” Jay whispered through the culvert, “And hide it well.”



Amelia knew something about her father’s bridges – a fact that set them apart from all others. What she knew was that they were always hollow, and if you removed the correct brick, you could slip inside. She had asked her father about this once, and he had given her a complex and uninteresting explanation that related to the quality of sound when hoofbeats crossed the bridge at dawn. Amelia much preferred to think of such hollowness as a hiding-hole. It was here that Amelia hid the first book. The following morning, the gypsies had moved on. The snide street whispers turned to expressions of relief. Amelia remained silent on the matter.

It was almost exactly a year before the gypsies returned to the Republic, and when they did, Amelia crept down to the culvert with her slingshot and pebbles.

She hid the second book beside the first.



The New Bridge of Sighs stood for sixty-seven years and forty-two days before it collapsed. At the moment of the fall, an old woman had been standing beside a precariously placed brick, a book concealed in her pocket, beside a slingshot and a handful of stones. It was to be, if you are interested, the four thousandth book concealed in the bridge. The actual moment of the bridge’s death was swift and underwhelming – a fleeting rush of dust and air, and the benign rustle of a million scattered words.

The rest of the city simply walked on by.





This week's entry was written as an intersection with the wonderful and talented frecklestars.
Her piece, may be found here, and you should absolutely go and give it a read.
<3


Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

Tales from the Twin Glass Cities:
On the Bridge, by Beldar | The Straw that Stirs the Drink

Tales from the Storybooks:
Not a needle but a drink by Frecklestars | The Bridge of Lost Stories

Tales from the Twin Glass Cities

The Straw that Stirs the Drink.


They came to the Stone City in the spring, during those interceding days before the creeping heat of summer had claimed victory over the lingering snow. They were known to the citizens of the Stone City only as The Newcomers: the girl with the fire-hair and the boy who walked in her shadow. Although the People of the Stone were thoroughly oblivious to the following fact, it happened that the arrival of The Newcomers marked the beginning of the Age of Glass Cities (to the significant dismay of the Stone Masons).

The girl with the fire-hair had a name, if you care to ask for it – she had been known among her own people as Princess Eleanor Del-Amrath, heiress to the throne of the recently-defunct Eastern Forest Realm. It is also important that you are aware of the following fact: she had never tasted lemonade. To the people of the Stone City, this absence of lemonade was quite unfathomable – they were, it is fair to say, lemonade connoisseurs. The perfect lemonade, they believed, was blended from the juice of twelve lemons, six heaped teaspoons of sugar, and seven well-proportioned ice cubes.

To the bewilderment of the People of the Stone, Eleanor Del-Amrath had never even seen an ice-cube.



The boy from the shadows was far coyer about both his name and his lemonade-drinking-habits (although he too had never seen such a thing). Casual observers presumed, incorrectly, that he was a servant of the young newcomer. In fact, the boy was her brother – Prince Marco Del-Amrath, once an officer in the legendary (but now defeated) Eastern Forest Cavalry.

He would never have admitted it in public, but Marco remained thoroughly unimpressed by the ice cubes, for they disagreed spectacularly with his teeth.



Unbeknownst to these two Newcomers, the Royal House of the Stone City had a very particular custom – that is (as a result of some ancient, now-forgotten transgression), the heir to the Marble Throne was duty-bound to spend a year serving lemonade in the main square. It happened, then, that the first time Eleanor and Marco tasted lemonade, they were served by Prince Joseph Polo the Third.

Joseph had never before seen a girl with fire-hair. Whilst Eleanor was exalting the great beauty of the ice-cube, Joseph was so distracted by falling in love with her that he miscounted the sugar in the next four batches of lemonade.

That very evening, Joseph followed Eleanor to an inn and asked her to dance. She refused, deeming herself too proud to dance with an ordinary man. It would be a fair observation to point out that most men would, at this point, have conceded the chase – especially since Joseph had been faced with the adamantine stare of Marco. Joseph, however, did not renounce the challenge.

The following day, Joseph requested an audience with a young woman from the Guild of Glassblowers. He told her, in quite some detail, of the young Newcomer who adored the cubes of ice. He asked the glassblower whether she might build a city from glass, which resembled the perfect ice cube.

The glassblower, enticed by the rich commission, agreed to try.




The building of the first glass city took almost forty years, but Joseph Polo the Third never lived to see its completion. Some two years after he first served the lemonade to the fire-haired girl, Joseph came to a rather messy end amidst a bloodthirsty bar brawl. Interestingly, his death occurred in the same inn where, two years previously, he had asked the Newcomer to dance.

In the hours before his death, it is said that Joseph Polo the Third took a young woman out of the city, to see the foundations of the first glass palace. No one can be certain, but rumour tells of an almost-secret kiss - shared between the crown prince and the fire-haired girl, on the plains outside the Stone City. Amongst the whispers of such idle tattle, a unanimous tale emerged – the image of a young man, who watched the kiss with fury from the shadows of the city wall. What is also clear from the books of history, however, is the strange and overpowering fact that Marco Del-Amrath was never even asked to provide an alibi for that night.




This was an intersection, written in collaboration with the brilliant beldarzfixon.
His tale, 'On The Bridge', may be found here, and I absolutely recommend that you give it a read.
<3



Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

Tales from the Twin Glass Cities:
On the Bridge, by Beldar | The Straw that Stirs the Drink

The Fifth Myth of the Creation



It started as a game among the cats. In the era before the Great Conglomeration, when felines ruled the never-ending-dark, a moment of mischief occurred inside the cracks between the various Realms of Real Places. This fleeting incident of rascality, deemed insignificant by the perpetrators, is what brought about the fifth creation of the world.

The chief instigator of the mischief was a cat who went by the nominal description of ‘fat-face-long-claws’. He had been, by all accounts, thoroughly bored - which, it should be noted, is deeply unhealthy for any feline species. (As an aside to this story, we would recommend that you keep a particularly close eye on your pets from now on.) As a result of this aforementioned ennui, fat-face-long-claws dared black-feet-sharp-teeth to hide short-tail’s beloved collection of porcelain mice. Black-feet-sharp-teeth, being in possession of the proper quantity of feline pride, was quite unable to decline the challenge, and less than two minutes later the newly-appropriated porcelain mice were being employed as chess pieces. This is generally the moment that the infamous Dare Game of the Cats is said to have begun.

To say that short-tail was unimpressed would not cover the extent to which his fury spiralled across the never-ending-dark – in fact, the ferocity of short-tail was later described by eyewitnesses as the embodiment of a nuclear-powered fur ball. In spite of this legendary ire, short-tail was a notorious coward. A previous incident with a dog and a lawnmower had not only left him the unfortunate designation of ‘short-tail’, but also a terrible fear of both confrontation and lawnmowers. Interestingly, the history books suggest that the dog was forgiven.

Being such a coward, short-tail didn’t seek his own retaliation. Instead, he dared tortoise-face-little-claws to eat the offending chess board – a challenge that delighted tortoise-face-little-claws, who was perpetually seeking out new types of food.

Fat-face-long-claws, who had been on the verge of winning his third successive game, was thoroughly affronted by this turn of events. With barely a hesitation, he dared tortoise-face-little-claws to swallow the porcelain mice.

Not long after this had occurred, short-tail took a pair of nail clippers to fat-face-long-claw’s right paw. Short-tail painted the clippings black and hung them from a string around his neck.

It was then that fat-face-long-claws stole a lawnmower from the nearest Realm of Real Things and chased short-tail to the very edge of the never-ending-dark. Short-tail may or may not have deserved this, but either way, it didn’t take him long to come up with an appropriate act of revenge - he dared tortoise-face-little-claws to eat the offending lawnmower. Tortoise-face-little-claws was only too delighted to oblige.



You may or may not be aware of this, but it is a well-documented fact that cats have an exceedingly short attention span. Following the unfortunate demise of the lawnmower, both fat-face-long-claws and short-tail were content to shake tails and proceed with their regular schedule of sofa-time and sleep. Nothing more was said between either of them with regard to the Dare Game.

Tortoise-face-little-claws, however, was not so fortunate – and it is to him that the cause of the Fifth Creation is attributed. It has been reported that lawnmowers are not designed for general feline consumption – although tortoise-face-little-claws had displayed a remarkable level of cluelessness in this respect. Some twenty-two minutes after the end of the Dare Game, he began to feel remarkably questionable. Another ten minutes passed, and tortoise-face-little-claws began to expand entirely uncontrollably. His mewling protests were both futile and increasingly difficult to understand.



The fifth time the world began, it was born amidst the explosion of an over-full cat. The two-legs who came later would refer to this moment as the Big Bang. Tortoise-face-little-claws, however, would not refer to it as anything at all, and seconds before his demise, he had the terrible thought that the lawnmower hadn’t even tasted particularly good.






Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

et tu, Brute?


The Fourth Myth of the Creation


The war between the Amarillians and the Polarites had been going on for one hundred and forty two galactic years before the Fourth Creation occurred. If you’re curious – and I have no doubt that you are, for curiosity is the bane of all creatures - the feud began as a direct result of some questionably traded hops. It has been maintained by the Amarillians that a young brewer purchased the offending shipment from a travelling Polarite after a few too many drinks at an intergalactic tavern. The young Amarillian made use of these nefariously acquired hops to brew several kegs worth of beer for his sister’s wedding to a prince of the Royal House. The Polarite beer was praised by all who tasted it, for it had a truly remarkable flavour. The following morning, however, all but two of the wedding guests were found dead in their opulent hotel bathrooms. The two survivors happened to have been the only sober guests, and so the culprit was, naturally, deemed to be the hops.

The Polarites have always refused to take responsibility for the incident, in spite of repeated Amarillian demands. Their government has continued to state that the hop supply was entirely above board, and they surmise that the poisoning must have occurred sometime during the brewing process.

Thus it was - a war began.




Exactly one hundred and forty two years after the incident with the hops, a Polarite soldier on leave met a girl in the Io Moon Bar. This is exactly as mundane as it sounds: they stumbled back to her room in the small hours of the morning, locked the door, and failed to properly undress.

The next morning the soldier confessed to his mates that he hadn’t known her name.

They praised him for this.

He didn’t confess that it had been his very first time.



That night, the soldier returned to the bar – he ordered her a white nebula.

His friends teased him for this, and, in any case, she wasn’t there.

He drank the white nebula alone. When this was not enough to blind his sorrow, he drank twelve more.



The following dawn, his friends clamoured at the door. They had heard a rumour – an Amarillian princess was taking her summer holiday on the moon of Io.

“Let’s get her!” They declared, but the soldier was too busy laying the remains of thirteen white nebulas at the altar of the porcelain gods to join them on their quest.



Some hours later, when the gods had been assuaged, the soldier activated the holoscreen from the comfort of his bed. He would not, under normal circumstances, watch the news (nothing but war and murders, he said) – it was mere happenstance that brought him nose-to-nose with the face of the girl from the bar.

Arrests had been made, the holoscreen told him, and he knew those faces, too.



The problem with thirteen white nebulas is that they rather cloud the brain.

It took the soldier a full minute to make the connection.




The fourth time the world began, it existed already - a silent sphere, too close to the sun - uninhabited until shortly after an Amarillian princess was murdered by five young Polarites on the streets of Io, whilst enjoying her summer holiday. The guilty young men, whilst denied a fair trial, were protected from execution by the Intergalactic Peace Council. They were sentenced instead to banishment – to die of their own volition on an unexplored rock.

On the day of The Exile, almost seven million people bundled into the streets of Io to watch the spectacle first hand, and the holoscreen network crashed seventeen times in the space of an hour. In spite of both the Amarillians and Polarites being banned from the event, several suspicious scuffles broke out in bars around the moon. The Exile itself was something of a disappointment – the banished five were thoroughly demure as they walked out of the prison. They took their places in the waiting spaceship (which stalled twice before take-off) and ignored the hollers of the spectators. The crowd, however, were here for the party, and they savoured every mediocre moment with hilarity.

Somewhere in the baying throng, a lone Polarite soldier took a sip of his beer and watched in silence as the spaceship vanished among the stars.




Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth

I have been very remiss in my lists of late, but here is one!

These aren't the only entries for which I voted, but they are the entries that struck me the most and lingered in my mind.

alycewilson's Entry
beldarzfixon's Entry
everywordiwrite's Entry
frecklestars's Entry
lrig_rorrim's Entry
malruniel11's Entry
n3m3sis42's Entry
lilycobalt's Entry
nyxocity's Entry
rumplebuttkins's Entry
whipchick's Entry
whirlgig's Entry
yachiru's Entry


Cemetaria

The Lament of Lost Voices

The Third Myth of the Creation



We are nothing.
We are no one.
We are not alive.

There is a common misconception throughout the universe, which states that the Void is a place of silence. It is a belief that creeps across cultures and tangles itself into the collective imagination of the innocent. You, too, have been touched by this thought at one time or another - it has tiptoed down your synapses and whispered its lies into your bones.

The space between the stars is the refuge of nothing, which harbours only an absence of noise.

The nothingness is empty, and it must, therefore, be silent.

This universal knot of fallacy occurs because no one is quite ready to admit that nothingness is, in itself, something. Neither is anyone ready to concede that the nothingness can shout. The darkness, however, is the loudest place you could ever imagine. It is the place where the Scorpion of nothing chases the Orion of everything across the amphitheatre of eternity. It is the battleground of Gods and the breeding ground of Monsters. Most importantly, however, the darkness of the Void is the place where all abandoned voices go to hide.

We are nothing.
We are no one.
We are not alive.

The third time the world began it was built by the Lost Voices, in their quest to feel alive. Pieced together in secret - stone by stone and sea by sea – the world was bound by the echo of a legend. It was constructed from the mystery of the Void, and upon completion, held captive by the peculiar confines of the dark.

There are many reasons why a voice may be relinquished to the Void. Sometimes it is severed by the suddenness of death. At other times it is left to rot in loneliness and disrepair. It has even been known for a voice to be rejected - purged in favour of a newer, more fashionable, model.

Once in the Void, the single lost voice becomes part of the amassment, clamouring through the dark as might a swarm in the open air. These are the Lost Voices of the Void: nothing, no one, not alive.


Unlike the majority of creation myths, there was no particular moment that marked the act of birth. The world was an idea without a source - a bittersweet declaration that scuttled without heed across the lament of Lost Voices.

We are nothing.
We are no one.
We are not alive.

We are nothing.
We are no one.

We bring life.

They sang the cacti into the sand, and fused with music the tumbling thunder of the waterfall. They gave legends to their human hosts, and buried skeletons of dragons beneath the mountains and the fields. The song tied the ivy to the trees and the lobsters to the sea. In the moment of creation, underneath an unknown rock, a newly-tuned cockroach nibbled at a flea.


The world was born in the noise and the ruckus and the nothing of the Void, and now, every time a human speaks, the Lost Voices raise their words in magnificent song:

We are alive.





This entry is inspired by the wonderful lilycobalt's Three Little Words entry.
I'd like to thank her for letting me build sandcastles in her sandbox.
<3




Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth

Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight


The Second Myth of the Creation



The second time the world began it was the unexpected side-effect of a rather flawed scientific endeavour. To be specific, the world was created during the final week of the summer, with the aid of a toy chemistry set. The particular honour of World Creator is ascribed by historians to a disinterested six-year-old girl - The Right Honourable Lady Viola Belphoebe Harlington-Haye.

Viola Belphoebe, child genius and creator of worlds, also happened to be the quintessential brat. She was the proud owner of six ladies-maids – one for every birthday she had celebrated – although you ought to be aware that only one of these maids had earned permission to speak in the presence of her ladyship. In addition, a total of three-hundred-and-four different tutors had attempted to educate the young aristocrat. Every single one of them had abandoned the post after less than a day, many suffering from the after-effects of a cruel but amusing prank. On one particularly notable occasion, Viola had hidden her cousin’s python in the tutor’s briefcase. The particular details of this story are somewhat distasteful, but suffice to say, the tutor was consigned to singing a little higher for the rest of his days.

The toy chemistry set that created the world had been bequeathed to Viola on her sixth birthday by an unknown uncle. He had heard that the young lady had a penchant for mixing mischief and surmised that this would be the perfect gift for such a child. In hindsight, the unknown uncle acknowledged that this may have been an error of judgement. In any case, the chemistry set had remained untouched on a shelf for almost six months before that Tuesday afternoon in early September, when the world was born. Viola, tired of her books and her porcelain dolls, demanded that the Speaking Maid bring out the chemistry set - Viola, you understand, had never known the name of the Speaking Maid, for she had never thought to ask.

Upon being presented with the requisite toy, Viola proceeded to toss every pre-provided chemical at the plastic beaker and then made a thoroughly heroic attempt to blow it up. The resulting explosion was little more than a disappointing fizzle, and the Speaking Maid took several paces backwards out of fear that Viola would subject the chemistry set to one of her infamous tantrums. After a moment of silence and terror, however, Viola Belphoebe ordered the Speaking Maid to creep out to the garage and pilfer as large a can of fission-acid as she could carry. Viola, meanwhile, pinched a bottle of fancy shampoo from her mother’s ensuite bathroom.

Some seven minutes after the first anticlimactic explosion, Viola had filled the plastic beaker with fission-acid and was holding an open bottle of shampoo above her head.

“Should you be doing that?” The Speaking Maid asked of Viola.

Viola told the maid, in a thoroughly unladylike fashion, to stop talking. Then, with a giggle, she emptied the entire bottle of shampoo into the beaker of fission-acid.

This time, the blast was delightfully enormous.



Subsequent investigations have confirmed two very important facts concerning the Second Creation of The World. The first is that the world was created specifically as a by-product of an adverse reaction that occurred between a plastic chemistry set, fission-acid and some overpriced anti-dandruff shampoo. The second is that, if the equipment had been of the proper academic standard, then the explosion would never have occurred.





Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth

Reinventing the Wheel


The First Myth of the Creation




The first time the world began, the Gods were at the fairground. The world began, in fact, because the Gods were there, and it is worth observing that if they had chosen to spend their day elsewhere then the shape of the earth might have been entirely different. Having said this, however, it is still quite a wonder that the world didn’t emerge, fully-formed, in the image of a carousel horse.

By early afternoon on the day of the first creation, the Goddess of Travel Sickness had managed to successfully afflict twelve of her companions - to the vehement ire of both Cleanliness and Mops. The young God of Phobias had, meanwhile, developed quite an aversion toward both fairgrounds and vomit. By the time Travel Sickness had taken her twelfth victim, Phobias was quailing in a Japanese rock garden, some twenty yards from the candy-floss stall.

The problem, however, with taking refuge in a rockery, is that it is rather difficult to conceal oneself behind a pebble. Phobias had been tucked away in the rockery for only a short time when the God of Peer Pressure decided that he wanted some candy floss. As Peer Pressure approached, the God of Phobias lay, silent and small amidst the rock and the moss – eyes scrunched shut, praying.

Interestingly, no academic has ever managed to write an acceptable thesis regarding the prayers of the Gods, but it is a commonly held belief within the universities that when Gods pray, they pray to mankind.

Peer Pressure, as it happened, sauntered right past the God of Phobias, who gave a little prayer of thanks. Unfortunately for Phobias however, the God of Peer Pressure decided, upon purchase of his candy-floss, that the Japanese rock garden would be the perfect location for a quiet five minutes of contemplation. Unable to see around his enormous stick of spun sugar, Peer Pressure trod, quite firmly, on Phobias’ left hand. Phobias, unsurprisingly, emitted a sharp squeak and, upon regaining the freedom of his fingers, skittered backwards into a bonsai tree.

“Sorry,” said Peer Pressure, through a mouthful of candy-floss. “Y’alright?”

The God of Phobias quivered in silence.

“You coming on the carousel?” Peer Pressure asked. Then, after a moment, he added a snidely malicious, “scaredy-cat.”

Phobias let loose another high-pitched squeal, for you see, dear reader, the problem was actually rather simple. In addition to a wicked fear of fairground rides, the young God of Phobias was utterly terrified of the word “no”. As a result, he had no choice but to accompany the God of Peer Pressure onto that great wheel of spinning lights and fear - the carousel.



The carousel in question, whilst credited in the history books as having played an active role in the first creation, was actually an innocent bystander in the matter. The world was, as it happened, created as a result of some rather ordinary rascality, and the carousel was neither here nor there. You see, whilst Peer Pressure and Phobias had been conversing in the rockery, the God of Mischief was at the Pick 'n' Mix stand, stuffing his pockets with illicit gobstoppers.

It was just bad luck for Phobias that, as he passed the carousel, Mischief decided to throw a gobstopper at him. Phobias’ subsequent yelp was so satisfying to Mischief that he threw another. After a moment or two – and an indulgent giggle at his own tomfoolery - he threw a handful. Pummelled by sweets and caught in a tangle of his own terror, the God of Phobias spewed forth a great wave of uncontrolled magic, which exploded into an abandoned gobstopper.



The first time the world began, it was born of a magically enlarged sweet. The ruins of the fairground were never discovered.






Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three

The Second Library of Myths: The First Myth

The Traveller’s Tales


Three




I weren’t intending to tell a soul 'bout what happened on the moor, but it ain’t half tough to keep a secret when it gnarls you all up on the inside. Truth is, I was mostly scared they’d think me all mad and shut me away. I ain’t never going in a lock-up again, whatever people think.

See, people think all kinds of things ‘bout me. They reckon I’m a junkie or a drunk, and I’ve seen the women hold their bags a little tighter when I’m near. I ain’t no thief, but they don’t reckon that’s the case.

Bollocks to them.

I hope they get robbed by middle-class men in suits.



Like I was saying, I weren’t intending to tell a soul, but as it happens, I did.

It ain’t half tough to keep a thing to yourself sometimes.



I found him, down an alley, all stinking of vomit and piss. Asked him his name, but he weren’t in a good enough state to know, so I asked him where his mates were at, instead.

Glasgow, he said.

Well, that weren’t too helpful at all. I asked him where in Glasgow, but if I’m honest, he weren’t really sober enough for my askings.

He asked me where my mates were.

I told him, I hadn't been home in a while and that I was kind of stuck on the road, like.

He weren’t really with it enough to care. I lent him my coat for a while: ain’t never seen a guy so cold. He tried to call up his mates, but they weren’t answering. I ain’t going to repeat the language he used at the telephone – you can figure it weren’t too well mannered.



After a while had passed, he told me, in so many words, that he felt kind of like a putrefied turd.

I said I reckoned he’d feel better if I babbled him a story – take his mind off the turd-feeling.

So, just like that, I told him.

I began my telling with the day when I were yomping down in Yorkshire - yomping just ‘cause I were bored, and I like to yomp. What happened next, I told him, was dead strange - I swear to all the alley cats of England, a house started talking to me.

The Alleyway Man said he reckoned I must’ve been high. I said I weren’t and told him to stuff it.

I told him what the house told me – that when a person gets real sad or messed up, their voice gets all separated from their body. It’s like if you die of a broken heart, I reckon, only your heart gets left behind ‘cause it don’t want to go.

The house I met, when it was a man, fell in love with its cousin - but she died, all sudden, like, and he got left behind to yell at the plant-life and the ruins and the mud.

I said I reckon that’d be a shit way to spend the afterlife.

The Alleyway Man looked at me, kind of confused, like he didn’t know whether I was taking the piss. Then he threw up (no warning or nothing), and properly ruined my coat with the remains of his red wine supper.



I weren’t intending to tell a soul, I swear, but it don’t matter - he ain’t likely to remember what I said.

I nicked myself a new coat from a charity shop the next morning.

Life, as they say, yomps on.





Read the rest of Cemetaria:

The Graveyard: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Library of Myths: The First Myth | The Second Myth | The Third Myth | The Fourth Myth | The Fifth Myth

* * * *

The Traveller's Tales: One | Two | Three