World-Eating 101

"Creation myth? Hoo boy. First off, that whole phrase smacks of Monkey Talk-- and we thank Talos to this day for their turn at Glenumbria-- or the Wheel-Eyed Wonderment of the east devils-- who at least have the wheel part right, but that's so obvious as to offend your own navel, which is to say, wasting the time of even wasting time-- but I guess that's what you want to hear about, really: time. Our place in it now, our place in it then. Well, you've earned the truth of it then: you've taken your first tusk and been kissed by a Kyne Wife, so fine. "The Nords you know are the Nords that were, and any formalization beyond that is southern comfort. We came from Skyrim since the end of the beginning of the last end... and so on as sung by the ysgrimskalds of the world. What's that now? We're descended from the gods? So that must mean, what, they went away at some point and then we started? Sure, that's all true, and, yes, there was a war with the gods of Old Mary where Shor died, and, yes, Old Mary's own stories of "how everything started" are just as true as ours. The untangling of it all, though, is where examining the tree nets you nothing for the basket because the fruit is all dead by the time you've reached any sensible conclusion. Which is to say, there is no conclusion, my lad, there is only the telling, and only time will tell the dead, for only by the dead can we tell the time, and so of course it all must fit together, all versions of every last telling, whereso or whensoever it comes from. Yes? Elsewise we'd never have time to tell it again. "See now why asking the Nords for their creation myth is as unbearable to hear for them as it is for you to hear their never-really-an-answer? We'll never think that way, at least not long enough for what some would consider the "proper" amount of time-- it's just not how our brainpans were built. As a rule, we change our minds a lot, and properly so, which drives the other take on properlarity crazy. It's intrinsic to our nature; to live in the North is to live with a mind that dances near the hearth lest it slow like old Herkel's lot. (That's what happened to the Dwarves, by the way: their minds froze to death by thinking one thing over and over until poof, gone in a belch of a mountain.) "But I can see by the droop of your shoulders that none of this has met to your satisfaction. Let me show you then, the proper way to ask the Nords their proper place in history: ask them to tell you the oldest story they know that's also the best. That will get you as close to a creation myth as anything else, even if the next telling changes it a bit, but that's beside the point of being the point. "Just because we hate to waste time in Skyrim, we have lots of it to use with nothing else to do, and there's no better way to use up time without wasting it than by telling a good story. And the best of the oldest stories we still know is [untranslatable], which I guess you'll probably want to hear after you get me another round." *** Another story for another time, maybe. Cyrus got tired of listening to the old man go on and on and on. Merry X-Mas, everyone, the snows a'comin', MK

Compare with the final version, published later and available here.

This is a forum fragment, to be taken in the same vein as the posts on the long-ago WWPD? thread. Meaning this is not necessarily true...but if it were, what does it mean?

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"And the awful fighting ended again.

"Kyne's shout brought our tribe back to the mountaintop of Hrothgar, and even our recent dead rode in on the wind of her breathing, for there had been no time to fashion a proper retreat. Their corpses fell among us as we landed and we looked on them in confusion, shaken as we were by this latest battle in the [untranslateable]. The chieftains of the other tribes still held their grudge against our own, Shor son of Shor; more, they had united finally to destroy us and used skin-magic to trick us into disarray.

"Shor was disgusted with the defeat, and disgusted more when reminded by Jhunal that our withdrawal had been wise, for we were outnumbered eight to one. Shor took on the form of the [untranslateable] then, which he used to better shape his displeasure, rather than to shout it aloud and risk more storm-death. His shield thanes, the brothers Stuhn and Tsun, bowed their heads, collecting the spears and swords and wine-knives Shor threw about the broken pillars of the easternmost sky-temple. The rest of us looked away and to our own, not even to acknowledge the thunderclap that signaled our Queen's arrival, who stepped in from the tunnel of her own breath last.

"Kyne had taken the head of Magnar, the jarl that betrayed the weakness of our spear-lines and fled the field. Shor shook his scaled mane. "That isn't Magnar," he said, "Magnar, I fear, fell at sunrise and became replaced by mirrors. The other chieftains are using our forms to lead us astray."

"And then Shor walked away from his War-Wife to enter the cave that led to the [untranslateable]. He needed to take counsel with his father yet again. "Our chieftain loses heart," Dibella said, Bed-Wife of Shor, hefting another body onto the corpse pile some of us were making, "And so goes to the speak to one that has none anymore. Mirrors, indeed, and in that I see no logic."

"Tsun took her by the hair, for he was angered by her words and heavy with lust. He was a berserker despite his high station, and beauty followed battle to his kind. "You weren't made for that kind of thinking," Stuhn said, dragging Dibella towards a whaleskin tent, "Jhunal was. And no one should be speaking to him now." Tsun eyed the Clever Man who had heard him. "Logic is dangerous in these days, in this place. To live in Skyrim is to change your mind ten times a day lest it freeze to death. And we can have none of that now."

"Kyne could have stopped all of this but did nothing but stare at the crowd of Nords around her. Stuhn and Tsun were shifting and it was still uncouth to prevent this kind of neighboring. She looked on Jhunal and did not know if he should be spoken to or not. Rules were changing. Even her handmaiden was gone, and that lack of attendance was a transgression, but Kyne knew Mara was no doubt making treaties with one of the other chieftains, and the Pact still allowed for Tear-Wives to do that. After her husband Shor had forgotten to kiss her, a tradition among the War-Married when they returned from the field together, Kyne kept her storms to herself and knew there was no true understanding until the [untranslateable] was lifted."

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