When the land was newborn and the gods were still young, monsters lived in the world. Before life and light, there was only the ocean, and those creatures of the ocean which came before light and life: made of the dark, these things had no life in them. When the ocean made land, the dark things came up from the ocean to claim the land. And when the gods made light, the dark things despised it, and made to undo the light. And so when the gods and the ocean made life, this was the enemy of the dark things. Thus the dark things sought to undo and corrupt all the gods and the ocean brought forth.

This was before the great furnace was set in the sky to drive away the dark things, so that it was only gods and life’s light which stood against them. In these days of long ago there was no sky. Around the land was the ocean, as well as above. The dark things were numerous and powerful, and they killed many gods, and corrupted all they touched.

The gods knew their numbers would dwindle and vanish if the dark things had their way, and they knew they must stop the spread of the dark things terrible corruption before still more of the gods fell. Thus when any god fell to the dark things, the other gods would strike its head from its body, and in this way no god would be corrupted. And for every dark thing they felled, they would strike off its head as well.

Some gods were immortal, and these gods would be born anew from their own heads. As for those gods who were not immortal, the other gods would bury their heads in the land. In each skull of the gods, they would plant a seed. The skulls of the dark things, too, were treated in this manner, buried with a seed. Great trees grew from the heads of the gods, and they bore the fruits of knowledge and creation. Those seeds planted in the skulls of the dark things grew more slowly, for the trees there did not draw life from the dark things (as they did from the gods), but fed life into the corruption where once was the dark thing’s absence of life.

Those trees grown from the skulls of gods towered so high that they reached deep into the ocean above the land, and the light of knowledge in them drove the dark things away. Those trees grown from the skulls of the dark things did not tower so high, but they could not be cut down, or killed, and to touch them meant death for all any dark thing. As the trees of the gods bore the fruit of knowledge, so the trees of the dark things bore the fruit of life. The first of these fruits of life was a woman and, like the trees from which she was born, she could not be corrupted by the dark things, or killed, though her touch was not death. Still, they feared her, and she stood between them and the gods. In this way the gods lived in the shade of her tree.

Yet she was not happy. She looked to the ocean and wondered why it must stand on all sides of the land, and above it. She took the fruits of knowledge and creation from the trees of the gods, and she took the fruits of life from the trees of the dark things. First she planted the seeds of life, eating all the fruit, and from these seeds she grew all manner of birds. She ate the fruits of knowledge, and in this way she learned to speak with the birds of the seeds of life.

“Take these seeds of knowledge,” she said to the birds, “and these seeds of life, and plant them all amongst the trees of the gods and the dark things.” The birds carried off the seeds of life and knowledge and planted them all throughout the trees of the gods and dark things. When the seeds were planted, the woman poured the water of life over each one, and a tree immediately began to grow.

Each tree which grew up in the great forest was made of knowledge and life, and the leaves of the trees filled up the ocean above the land. “Because you helped plant my forest,” the woman said to the birds, “it shall be your dwelling place, and you shall be able to fly to the highest leaves where no other living creature may reach.”

The birds from the seeds of life flew about the highest reaches of the trees, and therein built their nests of light and life and knowledge. So high and thick were the nests and branches that the ocean above the land was entirely obscured. “Here,” said the woman to the gods. “No dark things will come from the ocean above the land to trouble you.”

The tops of the trees were called the sky, and the forest where the gods dwelt was called the world. In time there would be more life, and more light, and more land, but above the sky is still the great ocean which has always existed, and the dark things dwell there to this day.