Creation Myth of the Gaetani
In the beginning, there was the Sea and the Sun, the Earth and the Sky. The Sun lived in a house in the Sky, and and the Sea lived below upon the Earth. Looking down from the Sky, the Sun become enamored of the Sea, and went down to her. Half his time he spend down upon the Earth with her, and half his time was spent up in the Sky. From the many nights he spent with the Sea, the Sea gave birth to four children, who went to live with the Sun in the Sky. These children are the three moons, and the polestar.
Within the Earth, there lived another being, the Great Dragon, and the Great Dragon became jealous of the Sea and the Sun, and of their children, so she decided that the Sun would have to pass through her home to reach the Sea. The Great Dragon threw up vast mountains along the Western edge of the world, blocking his path each evening. But, though the Great Dragon could force the Sun to enter her domain each evening, she could not get him to impregnate her (for it was the Sun and the Sea’s children, above all else, of which the Dragon was jealous). Finally, frustrated beyond measure with the Sun’s refusal, the Great Dragon made herself pregnant by her own strange magic, and gave birth to two hideous children of her own. These are the Monkey and the Wolf, and they inherited their mother’s obsession with and hatred for the Sun and his children. The Great Dragon has born many other children over the years, a few before the Monkey and the Wolf, and many more after, but these children are merely powerful and terrifying monsters, and not Gods like the Wolf and the Monkey.
After a time, the White Moon and the Green Moon, brother and sister, grew up and began to desire each other. From their union were produced many children, lesser beings who could not live in the house in the Sky, and who went to live upon the Earth. These children were the Village Gods, the King, the Miller, the Lover, the Corn Maiden, the Fisher, the Brewer, the Pickler, the Weaver, the Pilot, and the Musician, although they had not taken those names yet. In all, there were 30 children of the White Moon and the Green Moon.
The Red Moon, younger brother to the White Moon and the Green Moon, was jealous of his older siblings, and he too desired his sister, the Green Moon. But she rejected his advances, and so he burned with frustrated desire.
The Monkey and the Wolf, like their mother before them, were jealous of the fecundity of the Moons, and desired to make their own children. Though they copulated frewuently, the only children the Monkey ever bore were horrible things, weeping masses of fur and claws, whispering, slithering shadows and similar monsters. They were not little Gods like the children of the Moons, and so the Monkey grew disinterested in the Wolf and abandoned her horrible children.
One day, the Monkey encountered the Red Moon basking in his own reflection, and fascinated by him, listened as he bemoaned his sister’s disinterest. Now, the Monkey had developed a knack for trickery of all sorts, and so she offered the Red Moon a deal. If he would sleep with her, and give her children, then she would make the Green Moon love him as though he were the White Moon. He agreed to this arrangement, and the Monkey disguised him as the White Moon. He returned to the house in the sky, and had sex with the Green Moon. From their union was born a strange and bitter child, who lived poorly with the other Earth Bound gods, remaining isolated and ever watchful of his half-siblings. He became the Judge, perpetual watcher over his half-siblings and their followers.
The Red Moon fulfilled his promise to the Monkey, and she bore two children by him, the Crow and the Cow.
When the Red Moon lay with the Green Moon, they were seen by the White Moon, and he, distrubed and confused by what he had seen, sought comfort from his other sister, the ever-calm and distantly radiant polestar. Some time after, she also bore a child, and her child was Death. Although Death was born not long after the Thirty Children of the Green Moon, it lived for a long time with its Mother in the Sky.
The Thirty Children, led by the King, were the first people on the Earth. Full of the power of the Gods, they built for themselves a vast pleasure palace in the land between the Western Mountains and the Sea. Out of respect for their Grandmother, the Sea, they did not build upon her wild edge, where she beat against the Great Dragon’s shores, but instead built the Great Passage, where she could rest peacefully within their Palace. The Sea fashioned wonderful fish that lept from the water into their frying pans. The Green Moon planted rich groves of berries and fruit that bore a fresh, perfect crop each morning. The Red Moon spread out sheets of brilliant glass of fantastic colors for them to admire. The White Moon gave them vast bridges and fast and sleak boats so that they could travel all about their land within a single afternoon.
The ever jealous Great Dragon and her innumerable spawn watched the pleasure of the Thirty Children with loathing, until finally they could stand it no longer and set upon them with such a ferocious attack that the Thirty Children were taken unaware, and all of the Children except for the King were slaughtered and torn to bits. The King, who had been communing with their father Sun from the top of the Capitol Mountain, saw the slaughter of his brothers and sisters and had time to fashion a vast spear from the Red Moon’s glass sheets before the Dragon fell upon him. The King and the Dragon fought a horrible and endless battle upon the capitol mount, until finally the King drove his spear through the Great Dragon’s heart and cast her down into the chasms their battle had torn in the side of the mountain. Although she was far too powerful to be slain, the blow the King had given her was terrible, and her power drained out into the Earth. Never again would the Great Dragon walk upon the surface of the world, but the horrible fires of her blood sometimes rise up from the Mountains of the West, and smolder in the heart of the Capitol Mountain.
With the defeat of the Great Dragon, the monsters and the evil gods fled back into the wilds, leaving behind the remains of the God Children. The King went down into the ruins of the Palace, and gathered up the remains of his fallen siblings. Searching everywhere, he found many of his siblings, but some were lost.
Several had been torn to pieces and thrown into the waves along the wild coast. These pieces washed North along the coast into unknown lands, where they became the gods of the unimportnat people, such as the Chalicydiceans, Ventreans, Tyrians, Chaeronians, Quintillicans, the sad descendants of the broken bits of Gods.
Several had been carried off by the evil gods, and these the Monkey and the Wolf stitched back together to fashion into new Gods. The Monkey was handier, and her creations looked almost human, although they were no longer Gods. Still, Monkey was lazy and easily distracted, and forgot to finish her creations, leaving them incapable of ever nursing children, and their descendents are thus forever marked by the stench of sour Cow’s milk, which they are forced to drink as babies. From these horrible chilrden, the Voscii are descended.
