The Sun.

In the past, our ancestors worshiped the earth as the Divine Mother, as the Bringer of Life, the Fountain of Vitality, and a thousand other divinities. But the belief that she was the Mother of all was flawed. They, in their backwardness, saw earth as the center of the universe, the only such place that knew existence. But we know this for the fallacy it is. Though there is no center to this great and changing expanse of space, the closest we may come in our own part of the whole is The Glowing Mother, The Sun.

She saw birth from the turbulent chaos of creation, finding siblings in the far off pinpricks of light, and a lover in the deep cold depths of space. Her flames ignited with loving passion, and to Her bosom She drew stone and gas, setting chaos to order within Her pull. These teeming orbs were Her children, Her spawn, and She loved them dearly. They were nine in total, though they varied from one extreme to the next. Some were bleak and desolate, possessing no spark of joy within them. Others were gigantic and jubilant, swirling with ever-shifting colors. Some pulled hundreds of their own offspring to them, others had fewer, others still had none. But of all her children, the Glowing Mother found a favorite in her most unique offspring, the Third, the most beautiful of her scions.

Upon the Third she lavished her kindest touch, not the cold hand she gave her farthest children, nor the heated clutch she held upon the closest. Receiving these attentions, the Third flourished and gathered waters to itself. The seas came in and out upon the still cooling landscape, and the Glowing Mother was pleased with what the Third had wrought.

An eternity passed.

Things began to change upon the Third. Children of a different sort saw their birth, first living solely in the turbulent seas but soon extending their reach to the lands. The Glowing Mother was contented with the works of her favored child. A menagerie of children lived and died on the Third, existing blissfully upon her fertile lands. As great snows came and went, a new Child crept forth from the Third’s womb. It possessed a curiosity and intelligence that was heretofore unknown. This, in the ever approaching future, would prove a creature of matricide. Happily unaware of the Children’s dark intentions, the Glowing Mother again bestowed Her praises on the Third.

As time went on, however, the new Children proved their malevolence. Their lives lengthened, their culture deepened, and their reach stretched. And as they accomplished all this, their concern for the Third lessened, until it was nearly nonexistent. Where once they were peaceable and gentle, they now learned the art of war and set against eachother. Brother against brother, father against son. And though they killed and killed, their numbers reached astonishing hights, more than the Third could hope to bare.

The Glowing Mother watched with growing horror as the pestilence of Children overran their mother, cutting her, draining her, choking her, until the Third was a shell of her former beauty. Slowly her skys clouded and her seas brimmed with pollutants. The Glowing Mother stood mute witness as the Children launched themselves from the Third and visited their other sibling, the moon. Even as new wonders were achieved, the Third sustained wounds escalating in severity. Every day, the Glowing Mother watched her favored child died a little more.

A millenium passed.

With every revolution, the Third crept closer to an early, vile death. Her children trampled her, caused wounds that had no hope of healing. They obliterated nearly all other race of young from their mother’s body. They built craft and set farther and farther into space. They built homes in the steady orbit of their mother, and many left the Third’s soils for good. Everywhere, the Children’s hostilities heightened, and war was no longer fought with relative humanity. In the past, they had used weapons of great power upon eachother, sterilizing hundreds of miles of the Third’s once fertile soil with each deployment. But past experiences were flimsy harbingers of the destruction to come.

The Glowing Mother watched with useless rage as, in one turn of the Third’s globe, the Children completed the lingering death they had started with their very birth. The first explosion, strong and vile, erupted in the northern hemisphere. It was larger and more powerful than any of its predecessors. Not long after, a similar reaction took place on the Third’s other side. Retaliation. Another explosion followed, and another, and another, until the whole globe shook with destruction and death. By the revolution’s end, any of the Third’s lingering life was extinguished beneath billowing, mushroom-shaped clouds.

The Children were decimated, barley a tenth of their numbers remained. Of them, the lucky took to space, to the orbiting colonies. The unlucky remained upon their mother’s corpse, scratching out a life beneath her decaying flesh.

The Glowing Mother could do naught but watch. Watch as centuries ticked by. Watch as her favored’s corpse drifted in a listless orbit. Watch as the space bound Children became ordered and unified. Watch as the Third’s scavengers banded together in willful tribes. Watch as hate took seed and flourished between the two factions. Watch as war began anew.

~ A excerpt from the Book of the Hermit Prophet Extalient III, circa 3098

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What do you think? This is slightly, well, completely different from my other writings, and I see it as a challenge. The story starts in the next chapter (this is the only chap that’ll be written like this), and will eventually explain anything that was vague here. I’m probably not gonna bother with it if one reviews, so if ya like, please leave me a note. Thanks!

//Shades\\