Seidonese Tale

How the Seidonese Came to Be

This is the story the Seidonese tell one another, the one I now tell to you.

Before the start of time was Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.

Januar-Allbeing made the far-flung, widening reaches of worlds. Amidst surrounding starry cold, Se made our world. ´Era we call her, that is, “the Lady,” a great ship voyaging through dark emptiness. And, as on other worlds, Se made everything on ´Era that we are and see and find.

Januar-Allbeing made the right ways that steer the whole of all. Se made the unstoppable ways that steer ´Era from within unfolding nature. And Se made the choice ways so that people may learn and follow them. We Seidonese know that together we cohabit aged, shaky, drifting ´Era best by sharing what we learn and know.

Januar-Allbeing, wondrous high lord of all circling worlds, for five thousand month cycles shepherded everything Se made. Then Ses sustaining overheadship passed through the co-division. So, after Ses dismemberment, each of the co-deities, risen from the parted, divine being, held sway for 360-month cycles. Mighty Marts, risen from the parental trunk of Januar-Allbeing, followed first, then beauteous Afril, risen from the parted genitals and sea foam, then generous Mai, risen from the embracing heart of January-Allbeing. Then followed bountiful Jun and industrious Juli, twins of the union of Marts and Mai, 360 month cycles each. Then came the age of Ost.

This age, my Seidonese sibs, is the age of Ost Contemplator, risen from the majestic head of Januar-Allbeing.

We remember Ost Contemplator as the maker of the Seidonese. How he became guardian and speaker to the Seidonese people happened in this way.

You know well the pain and separation swollen between the co-deities. Recall how Afril, against all right ways, seduced Marts, wedpartner of Mai. War boiled on ´Era between Ser peoples – the Allahni of Afril, the Romart of Marts, the Mayan of Mai.

This mad rift of war, as hurtful as it has been to the passage of starship ´Era, also shadowed the wrecked family of deities meant to live outside time and grief.

Marts and Mai’s long, fortunate union ended. Marts pursued Afril in unsatisfied lust from age to age. Dais, unwanted child of Marts and Afril, Se abandoned to continuous night. Ost, intended for wedpartnership with Afril, fell into ages-long unrest and deepening sadness. Se wandered throughout ´Era; some say Se wandered throughout all worlds, a dark cloaked stranger wherever Se went. And at the time of this story, Ost hovered over our common sea that we Seidonese now encircle.

Why did ´Era break from its stablished pattern? Some see this savage rip in nature’s well-woven cloth as the threat of future breaks in the first order ways, founded and meant by Januar-Allbeing to sustain all worlds. Certainly, nothing can be so destructive as a tear through the enduring; yet, break it did, thanks to the wrath brewing among the co-deities.

Others see ´Era attacked by its warring peoples with so much molten anger and fiery force that furious armies hurled our captive and wounded world from its usual course. No matter. We Seidonese know that such accounts as these two are both the same.

Who can doubt that the whole circle of worlds lies in peril? Who can doubt that ´Era, so wide and yet so small, might turn dry and lifeless? Can you not see ´Era burned to a crumbling cinder or fired to a hard calcareous stone; or, can you not see ´Era a cold, cold ball, shivering as white as the capped peaks of the far Pamirs, and the far, far ranges beyond?

Seidor comes into this story long after the great slip. Then cold hard seas had drowned every seacoast and great cracks had cut through the bedrock foundation of old ´Era. Sea bottoms heaved themselves into uplands and high, high hills thundered apart and sunk. Settlement-fed fire and air-raged storm ringed our broken world. Smoke and dust shrouded our world.

So great was the destruction, so impossibly unnumbered the mangled dead that what the far parents had built, their afterchildren lost. So barren were those times, the times of Ran the Rescuer (whom I will tell you of another day), that we see them as dark. Those days are almost without story; worse, the people all but lost any language to tell their stories. In such sunless times, people must at last find a way to rebuild. Yet, so vast was the ruin that the rebuilding could not come for 800-month cycles, until, at last, the time of this, our story.

Seidor, the old taletellers liked to say, was the fairest and wisest, the ninth of the twelve children of Gremor and Adlan. Seidor came to these lands in far, far old times. She and her people came from lands beyond the blue-green Caspe Sea. Seidor, a widow, had little but her wisdom and her family of five wedded children and all their households. Perhaps 250 families, hardly a thousand people, account for the Company of Seidor. Their prosperity lay in a few sacks of seeds, hand tools, what else they could carry, and the goats they drove before them.

The wise Seidor led them day by day to a destination they could make their own. They passed through occupied lands, places where they were not welcome, and through barren unredeemable lands. They came at last to these rubble-strewn uplands and high-eroded hills between the outward sea, the Caspe, and the inward sea. They followed the shoreline round, crossing small streams until they reached the tree-lined banks of the quick flowing Hydor. There they settled.

‘First, we will make new soil,’ Seidor said. They emptied upon the black sands two casks of loam, farbrought from the old homelands. And to this plot, they added each day the natural wastes from their fields, kitchen, settlement and animals. Was not Seidor wise to bring the casks of soil, kept alive on their long trek? Was she not wise to grow the old soil into new?

At the wise Seidor’s direction, the settlers turned and spread decaying wastes in with the far homebrought mix. The worms, beetles and other soil-dwellers hungrily turned rotting piles of debris into new soil. Day followed day and cycle followed cycle and generation followed generation. Seidor and her people made new soil, new land where there had been little more than bare sand and weathered stone. Soil-making plots followed the afterchildren of Seidor and their households as they grew and multiplied and moved between the seas.

Seidor at her death, the champion of 100 rotations around Old Sol, looked out over many generations and countless people. We called our land Seidor and named ourselves the Seidonese in praise and memory. And the inland sea, we called the Seidon Sea.

The children of Seidor spread over the land, moved and spread again. Here lived Allonor, the oldest, and there Aral, and Tyror, Garn, Armor, the youngest. Each was a chief or magistrate over many steder and numerous folk. They made the desert bloom. They raised heavy harvests and tended great herds of cattle. Thanks to Seidor’s wisdom and direction, they prospered.

The neighboring peoples saw their fruitful fields and bursting storage ricks. The Allahni wanted what they had and the Arthani wished to take it from them. Therefore, the Seidonese cried among themselves to be united and strong. And the children of Seidor, living distant from one another, longed to have her among them again that she might lead and judge among them. Therefore, they met and called upon the co-divided members of Januar-Allbeing to strengthen and protect them from disunion and the fear of enemies.

And over the misty Seidon Sea dwelt the ancient one. Se was the moody wanderer, Ost Contemplator, long separated from the consort of deity. Ost saw the new comers and came into their midst, a slouched hat half hiding is face.

‘I know you,’ Ost declared. ‘I have seen your people and your beginnings.’ Ost came among them and announced that the wedpartners, Cyor, child of Chief Garn, and Vendar, child of Chief Tyror, become High Chiefs (the Hochrodi) of the Seidonese. And Ost fashioned two circlets of lustrous metal and set them with precious stones to mark their Rodihood. These are become the crowns of the Hochrodi.

‘Remember the many wise words of Seidor,’ Ost advised. ‘And remember first that she always said, “Prepare and pursue.”’ Ost called the first taletellers, the vener of all the steder in Seidonland, and taught them all rightways. And the vener told one another all the tales and all the wise words they knew of Seidor. And so her sayings and the telling of tales continue to this day.

Ost chose the Seidonese as Ses people and initiated with them the age of Ost. The Seidonese grew prosperous and secure in their power as they continued their expansion around the Seidon Sea. Wherever they went, steder and the produce of steder followed. As the Seidonese say, the Allbeing made ´Era, but we made it a garden.

Hochrodi followed Hochrodi throughout this age until suddenly the crowns were lost and the visible High Chiefs gone. But the age of Ost is not complete, and Ost, who still reigns, will not abandon Ses people. The Hochrodi only sleeps or is in hiding until it is time again to rise, to claim and wear the crowns and to restore the age of Ost among all the people and lead the Seidonfolk to their glorious future.

Ost quickened Ses spirit to see the rightways restored in the strong and prosperous Seidonese people. Se left these shores straightaway to rejoin the co-deities and to stand by Juli. Thus, Juli and Ost joined, making one more reunion toward the deityhead. In time, Juli and Ost gave rise to the twins, Seber and Osober; Seber joined with Jun, another reunion. From this secondary reunion comes Venner the Provident, who wins back from the darkness the abandoned and estranged Dais. And they join, making the tertiary and final complete reunion.

And from Dais and Venner shall rise a new beginning, Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.
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© 2009 by Roger Sween.

This story is written as though told to an audience, possibly by Olf (2924-3010?) the last of the Taletellers of the chiefdom of Osor before its destruction by the Gremani Oberlehnsherr Earchsohn in 3002.