Fiction #2: Dis(Order)

{In this piece, I attempted to write a creation myth for a civilization with an undisclosed name and setting.  I was inspired by the stories we have been reading in my Greek Mythology class, but realized how difficult the task would be as soon as I began.}

We were a people founded on the ideal that one’s worth is determined by his capacity to create.  Before the land came to be inhabited by flora and fauna, the earth was a tumultuous mass of raw material—a disorderly amalgamation of the elements floating through a void without direction.  Observing this disarray were spirits intent on giving it form.  The first artisans, their medium was chaos, their product the functioning world we inhabit.   

The artisans’ work was purely kinetic and ever changing.  Once they linked the elements into a solid mass, they sculpted its surface to display a multitude of landscapes and painted them with the purest of colors.  But once it was shaped, they did not leave the world to sit motionless in space.  The earth would be as futile stagnant as it was when drifting through nothingness in fragments.  The artisans infused the world with a life force, a spirit.  It breathed and changed face with the seasons, which the artisans created to institute change periodically.  Then the artisans released rain, wind, and fire into the world to further enforce that cycle.

Satisfied with their work, they wished to share it.  The artisans crafted the animals and lowered them to the earth in the palms of their hands.  Beasts and all things that crawled, slithered, or flew inhabited the environment that was most suitable for their nature.  While such creatures were beautiful, their mental capacity was limited and they were oblivious to how they emerged on the earth and who placed them there.  The artisans were egotistical and wanted recognition from cognizant beings other than themselves.    

Humans descended to the earth in the manner of the animals, but we were imbued with the same ability to reason and to create possessed by the artisans.  Our potential was limited compared to the artisans, however, because our creators had considered the risks of making people as powerful as themselves.  Such action could threaten their proficiency in regulating the cosmos and cause the world to return to its previous state of unrestrained chaos.  For the moment there was balance.

When we were first lowered into the atmosphere, we did not forget to look up to where we came from and smile with appreciation.  We were grateful.  As a sign of our gratitude, we resolved to emulate those that gave us life.  Around us was a seemingly infinite supply of resources with which to create, but we used only enough materials to hone our skills and please our inventive predecessors.  Naturally humans were an omnivorous species that needed to ingest considerable amounts of meat and plant matter to survive, but what we consumed we tried to match with what we produced.  All for the sake of balance.  In the beginning, this ideal was at the forefront of our minds.  All for the sake of balance.

As our civilization became more structured we appointed leaders—the older, more wise among us—to overlook daily proceedings.  They in turn assigned roles to each member of society based on the skills they exhibited.  While the refinement of our society required the performance of particular tasks to ensure stability, each citizen was expected to devote a sufficient sum of their time to producing art.  

Some collected the ashes from our fires, mixed them with water, and smeared the solution on the walls of our caves, depicting our origin and the events of everyday life.  Similar themes were painted on the interior and exterior of shelters as our laborers experimented with building materials.  Some fashioned string from animal hair and reeds and affixed the bones of their prey into organic jewelry.  Some molded mud into storage vessels and struck rock with denser stones to carve sculptures from the surfaces.  Some were more inclined to craft stories with their voice, weaving tales of how the world came to be and how we spawned from the artisans. These were ways in which we explored our identity, and they were ideal forms of expression when the whole of our people lived in close quarters.

Eventually people began to measure their work against others, and competition arose to decide which form of art was more practical, more in tune with who we were.  We placed more emphasis on outshining our peers than pleasing the artisans, and lost sight of our origin.  Disagreement became so severe that our people split into factions and established new governing bodies within each.  The elders’ influence deteriorated until several of these groups split from the community entirely, venturing off into distant lands to find new homesteads and begin anew.  Who is to say when the artisans will intercede to unite our people as they did the physical world?