Of the First Light

Erde pondered a great while upon the form the light should take and he wondered at the subtle beauty of the distant lights in the heavens, the embers of his first creation. And at last he pulled from his chest a rib and remade it. He tore it into countless thin threads and with the strands he wove a great curtain of shimmering, silver and this he unfolded throughout the heavens so that it hung as a great curtain, the light of which spilled across the land.

But to his amazement the curtain lived, for in his rush to create the light he tore out a portion of his heart, bound to the rib he tore from his chest. It came loose and he wove it into the splinters of the curtain; it was that part of him that knew love and other similar passions. And so he made life as he had in the Void of old. This creation he named the Maiden Ea-Raena, that is the “beauty of youth” in the Vulgate, who the dwarves called Dunareu, though in after days she was called Mailahm, the Maiden of Night. And she wandered the heavens for many years. She was one of the few gods he named, though not the last, but ever his favorite.

Erde marveled in the light of her but after the Arc of Time played out some measure of itself he thought the light too soft and the world’s darker places still remained in shadow. He called to Ea-Raena and asked her to brighten the heavens, so she gathered many of her strands together and wove them into one form and she hung there in the heavens as a ball of silvery light. Though in truth she did not gather all the curtain, for at times, the long curtain would come into view in the far north or the deep south. But even this did not assuage Erde's lust.

~The Codex of Aihrde