» Tue May 08, 2012 5:34 am as told by the hag sisters of Cut-Vein Creek to Quisutdeus Ioriuus (author of such beloved works as “Anywhere But Elsweyr” and “The Gospel of Dibella: lovin’ on the run”)
“ Come, sit with us by the fire Southron., good, now have a drink of this. It’ll help your ears hear the witch-words of our people, breathed from one Gut-reader to another since before your folk learned how to live without the weight of an Elven yoke…
Old long since, before the Nordmen learned their sheep-buggery, before the river-snake learned his venom, the rock his hardness, and before the seasons knew to work in shifts, the rivers to go down from the mountains, or the hare to let the fox chase him – There the naught by a great bedless, bankless, river, unending, unmade, colored with every possibility in spring or fall-tide. Its name was Sìddh, and home only to the great horn’d trout, Aórbhas.
The Aórbhas swam the Sìddh in contentment for a time unknowable, until one moment a new notion came into its trouty heart and it settled in a bend of the river where the current is not to-strong and laid a great chalcum egg. It tended to it for another time unknowable until at last it hatched and gave forth almost-twin babes.
The first babe was hale and pink and did not cry but laughed. Aórbhas named him as Pyddyman, meaning “What do I care?” The second was thin, hunch-backed and sallow and it cried terribly. Aórbhas named him énnuch, meaning “But why me?”
The new babes roared into life with great hunger, but had no food but their own egg-mother the Aórbhas. So they ate her raw down to her horns and needle-bones and were then as men, Pyddyman with comely beard and sinewy limbs, énnuch scaly and gnarled.
Satisfied but sad for the loss, they swam the Sìddh in search of a new mother, weak énnuch riding on his brother’s back. But after lapping its course, which is endless, the pair found themselves back at the water nest, torpid and longing for the teat.
So they took the horns and needle-bones of their mother, and the chalcum shell pieces and fashioned a vessel which they called Aeird, which in their twin-tongue meant all at once “Womb-Long-Boat-to-Keep-Us-Warm”. It was to be their new egg-home to replace to the old, and they climbed aboard and fell to unthinking-slumber, intent never to wake again.
But as they slept, the rocking of the vessel on the Sìddh stimulated Pyddyman’s empty heart with burning pictures that made his fruit-branch extend and bleed sap into Aeird's bone-timers, which dripped down deep into the marrow.”
“Don’t give us that look, Southron, it is the heart of the briast that holds the soul, not the walnut-heart of the head. Don’t be foolish!”
“ Anyway, where was I? …Ah, so Aeird became a hot hearth of new-life with the joyous seed. The bone-hull swelled tumescent and the long-boat became long-house, so massive and yet buoyant that it could remain moored in one place and not swept away or even made to rock on the Sìddh’s mighty current. The name expanded too, becoming Aeirdallach, which meant "Totem-Lodge-For-All-Souls".
Then after some forevers had passed and Pyddyman’s beard reached to his chest, the floor-boards erupted between their sleeping spots and out sprang a chalcum cauldron, from whence issued a fully grown maid, lovely and plump. Her name was Nyrnaiohn and she looked down at her sire with great affection, her uncle with polite compassion.
She wanted very much to wake them, but looking around her mother’s bloated body-hall she saw it was a barren cavern made of old fish bones and chalcum. “This will not do” she said.
So Nyrnaiohn gave her honeyed vowel-face to the fruit-branch of her sleeping father and collected the sap that ran out.
She took the good seed and spread it over her the soles of her pale lilly-hooves and trod all over the dry face of mother Aeirdallach, the floor, the walls, the ceiling - and wheresoever her seeded feet fell there sprang up within the bone-walls fat lands offering all delights."
"This took some considerable forevers, you understand Southron, for this was the era before eras, time before time, and the halls of Aeirdallach were as the Siddh: endless in all directions."
"Then after some more forevers had passed and Pyddyman’s beard dressed his belly, Aeirdallach was a teeming garden worthy of its sire at least, so Nyrnaiohn said “The time to rouse our father and uncle has come.”
So again she made her honeyed vowel-face, but rather than taking loveliness in, this time it issued loveliness forth in finest melody and pitch and the hearts of Pyddyman and énnuch burned with pictures so hot that their eyes could not help but spring open to vent the passion-smoke. Nyrnaiohn embraced Pyddyman with many honey kisses, with a brief handclasping of the claw of énnuch.
“Oh my father and his brother, at last you may know me. I am Nyrnaiohn and for you I have made this garden. You may know it as the bone-womb of my mother.”
Pyddyman and énnuch agreed that this was good, Nyrnaiohn was good, and the fat realm of Aeirdallach was good. So for a time their deathless-lives in the garden hall of Aeirdallach were unstained idyll for a time – together they eat its fruits and drank its sweet waters.
That was until some forevers more and Pyddyman’s beard reached far past his toes and had to be wrapped many times around his waist to stop him tripping. Father and Daughter often shared each other in a manner quite completely that their Brother-Uncle could not partake, for his foulness, his coarseness, and his barren branch.
This filled the wanting soul of énnuch with the great envy of all runts. Every elopement stung his small heart like the losing snout-bite in the heath-wars of the wolves.
This thing festering in his soul he called énnuchdflwch, after himself, and drew it from his navel. Tempered so in his loathing, it became as a five-tusk’d spear with a haft eight leagues long that squirmed for the skewering of brother-flesh.
And so with terrible énnuchdflwch in hand, énnuch tracked the lovers, his quarry, o’er hill and dale to a shady glade of fine viand-trees and accosted them while they were still intertwined in vowel-faced embrace.
“Depart or make room,” hissed énnuch ‘neath his snaggleteeth “by the right of this gig, called énnuchdflwch, I declare that either a half or a whole of her is mine, your choice.”
Then as he grasped it, ready, in his fish’men stance the baleful lance canted aloud “Hate and Hell and Harrow Bring! Make room! Make way! Terrible, Swift énnuchdflwch Sings!
But Pyddyman would not quit her, daughter-lover, so the spear jumped from énnuch’s hand and ran through his neck, bright badger nails to a coney-warren. He fell dead in the glade bleeding curses and gales of ichor.
And énnuch in victory, arrested quickly Nyrnaiohn by her pinions, even suffering the heavy kicks of her lilly-hooves to try for victory twice by rude entry of her partition.
But halfway in he felt a [censored] and thus quit the skin-barque, to find his fruiting branch pierced with a briar that had his dead brother’s face, and larked aloud with his voice “I am Sìddhgwyd, seed of the river, soul of your brother, payment-in-kind!”
Heart burning with panic, énnuch unthinkingly tore out Sìddhgwyd, who took his un-fecund flesh as prize and laid him down to lose his ichor slow and low as he moaned his nebbish knell.”
“Then Nyrnaiohn, after surveying the carnal kin-strife, in anguish sang “Oh, my father, oh my uncle! I would have gladly shared the soft sod with both had it meant peace! But now you are dead, this hall, my mother, is naught but cruel land and taboo. Thus I seek ddi-rym, good oblivion in Grandsire River!”
But first, she would don her pale habit and let her grief stream down. She made the crow custom on the flesh and ichor of her sire and uncle, for she loved them both, in different fashions.
Then she ate down burning énnuchdflwch and subtle Sìddhgwyd.
Then finally Nyrnaiohn ate the front portal of fat Aeirdallach, barring all-comers, then leapt into the deep of the Sìddh.
And as the drink filled her lungs and her heart cooled, she let open her partition, which whence issued Creation, vast and queer.”
“Now what is the lesson here, Southron? Bath your babes in uisce, not water, to succor the wheat-strong and drown the chaff-runts.”
