Progeniture, Ch. 1

From dappled shadows below the forest’s edge, an ancient woman gazes out across the glowing meadow. She'd spent the whole morning standing motionless as a stump, leaning heavily on her staff, and now it feels as if roots have sprung from the soles of her feet, questing down into the earth to anchor her to that spot. She rocks side-to-side slightly, lifting each foot just enough to confirm that they remain separate from the ground.

After seven centuries of wandering, of remembering the strange myths, little ticks like this had developed, mostly unconscious. Possibly because all else is so still, however, she catches the subtle movement this time. It sends her memory plummeting back into the foggy mists, to the myths that inspired a fear of growing roots and branches. She can still hear Elder Beech's dry, creaking voice as he recited the tale...

***

*Before the five Eon Summers, and the four Eon Winters, the Ancestors tightened their grip on the world, and tried to rule absolutely over all things, even life and death.

Their reign lasted a mere twelve millennia, but within this short span, they tore apart the whole world and thoroughly, painstakingly remade it.

Their re-wrought landscape was one of definition, order, structure. They surrounded themselves with massive palaces and temples that rose so high they scraped the sky's underbelly. It was the Ancestors' fortress in the stream of time, built in an effort to control the future.

And it was hardly suprising that they sought control--the Ancestors rarely survived their first century. Their brief lives left them with no time to prepare for their release, and so they struggled to ignore, deny, and delay the Great Embrace any way they could. They made great strides, extended their spans of life to be three, five, ten times their normal length.
Death has always been an unchangeable law, though, and yet the Ancestors had thought themselves above it. They believed themselves to be new gods, exempt from the old god's laws. They sought ways to overcome such limitations, and through countless hopeless generations they searched for a path around mortality.

***

The old woman had believed this part with little trouble, because it seemed to explain many of the oddities in the world. The next part, though, she had laughed at openly, much to the Elder's irritation.

***

*The Ancestor's learning had grown so immense toward the end of their reign, that they gained mastery over the Life Scroll-- the sacred text that permeates the body of all life. The Scroll blesses all creatures with form and function, and upon it the history of all life's forms are transcribed.

It was through their manipulations of the Scroll that some, our tribe's ancestors, eventually found a path that began to approach immortality.

They read paragraphs from the Scrolls of the Bristecone, Cypress and Yew, copied them, and found places for them in their own Scrolls. It was the First Mating, and it gave their offspring the ageless vitality of the Father trees.

Of course that was just before the first Eon Winter, which lasted fifteen millenia. It crushed the Ancestor's world of order beneath miles of ice, and forced different kinds of men into becoming different species of men.

***

A soft breeze rustles the canopy leaves and flashes of sunlight dance in the old woman's eyes, bringing her back to the present. She's been letting her mind wander off quite abysmally, lately. She wonders if its finally nearing time for Release. She remembered her mother becoming that way as her own time came-- more absent-minded, more frequently lost in the cavern of memories that stretched back into eternity...
What truths had lived in those bottomless wells? Some of her tribe's ancients had survived to see nearly five hundred centuries. How much truth was lost in the massacre, all those centuries ago?

...Ah, but there it goes again, she thinks. Her mind, slipping down the little side-paths that always lure her away. She digs her fingernails into her palm to refocus on the present.