---

My mother next knew that this world of flourishing life would need more than just life in order to keep stability. It needed fire, heat, memory and passion, and with that, my brother Xereus was born. Xereus, the light of my mother’s eye. Where Oihane was her wrath and her love, and Lysera was her nurturing and gracious nature, Xereus was her feelings, her emotions and her memories.

Xereus was the creator of innovation and made beautiful explosions of genius. He was forward-thinking, constantly looking to the future of my mother’s little world and finding ways to make it more beautiful. The beating heart, the chirp of insects, the sweltering, overbearing feeling of the heat. The relief of cool, glistening ocean water over inflamed skin. Fields of green turning slowly to brown as the earth became parched and cracked, taking the mud and slowly turning it back to sand. The haze of his creations growing warmer and warmer, as he created things like ‘tarmac’, ‘concrete’, ‘buildings’.

Evenings filled with ‘neon’ lights, red hues and everlasting sunlight. Creations called ‘fireworks’ filling the skies and illuminating the stars. Flushing, sweating skin caused by the warmth or by the embers of passionate new love, one could only wildly guess. My brother made romance with each stroke of inspiration, created a painter’s canvas of wonder and enjoyment.

I do not know fully why or how my brother and my mother started to foster discord and dissonance. I am told that for all of his beautiful genius, he was also a mad genius. Wild, and forever free, like the gales of tornadoes that rip across the plains. All I know was that he had a falling out with my mother and my siblings, in which he plunged the brilliant, beautiful world he had created into the abyss and shattered the world that he and his siblings had worked so hard to create. Destructive, terrible, much like the beautiful explosions he had created in the night sky. A brilliant light, cast down in a single night.

After that day, I know that I came into existence. I was meant to be his replacement; a calmer, less brilliant soul. I, Dounia, the keeper of knowledge and the ‘good child’, as it were. Adventure, discovery, the youthful soul of children playing games outside during the break from the monotony. I was also a different flavour of heat from my brother, I was made to realize. Very rarely would my sister’s rains grace my lands, making the dust kick up and the sun even more rough and coarse upon the skin. The rare oasis speckling the landscape provide a blissful relief, the cool shade of caves, the delicious juices of cacti and the soothing caress of aloe. My existence, the historian that keeps the records, and kept as a reminder that too much of a good thing can drive a man mad.

written by sifr ★ 2022

---

Regrettably, my knowledge of the beginnings are not as clear as I would like. I am the youngest of my siblings, and the five who came before me are remarkably vague when it comes to gaining the details of the world’s beginnings. My mother is not as forthcoming as I would like either; it has been many a century since she has even spoken with us, let alone imparted me the answers that I seek of the beginnings.

To think, that one would create a child with their thirst for the truth, and yet would impart to them that it was their task in this world to seek the truth with their own mind. What a wholly rude thing to do, but I relish the challenge all the same. Perhaps she knew that I would, but it does mean that my thirst can not be quenched; not by the swiftest brook, nor by nectar of sweetest flower as life blooms back into the universe after the deathly annual chill.

It was said that Mother created Oihane and Lysera first; the favourites of her children, by far. With these two she imparted all of her strength of life; Oihane with the love to create the first leaves, the first trees, the first blades of grass, and Lysera with the serenity and harmonious being to flourish that peace and that newly found life.

When one beholds Oihane, one sees the vivid colours. One inhales pollen and is either ravaged by its overwhelming odour or finds vitality breathed into their very being. One hears the sounds of whistling wind, feels the sunlight start to warm their chilled bones. One feels the rain pouring down upon their skin, bringing nourishment back to the earth. But Oihane is also a wrathful Creator; she can also bring the biting, piercing sleet as well as any one of us, no matter how much of herself she may pour into her efforts.

Lysera, however, is calmer than Oihane. She takes Oihane’s gifts and creates nourishment, safety and sensibility; where Oihane sometimes is taken by her passions and creates the unsettling wrath that life can bring, Lysera is eternally calm. She is the one who creates the calm beauties of the world; the rolling fields underneath the gentle sunlight, the melting snow that turns to slush and mud. She keeps safe the flowers as they start to take root and poke up from the crystals on the ground. She creates simple, small things that keep those safe around her.

One, a tempest that has a firm and guiding hand, and a vengeful wrath. The other, a soft and sweet seed, making sure that others bloom and providing them safe harbour.

My mother did well to make these two the first.

written by sifr ★ 2022