Please dont post yet, this is a compilation of stories I'm writing,
so I'd like to be able to have many posts available.
Please feel free to PM comments, if you'd like.
Writings of the Corvidatorium
Welcome, friends, to the Corvidatorium - a home for, as one might assume, ravens and other corvids. Here, you will find casual drabbles concerning my Keep, my Lineages, and other Magistream-related tales. I hope they'll be of some interest to you. I'm not the most confident of writers, but I shall do my best to entertain you.
Table of Contents:
Intro Post
The Moonseer
The Moonseeker
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(no images used here are my own, all were found on free-use clipart sites.)
This is the first of at least two short drabbles centered around my raven lineages. Some ravens maintain a semi-religious belief in a "first raven," a godlike (or demigod-like) character spoken of in myths and legends. While many believe these tales to be bogus, others take them seriously. This is the Yatagarasu version of the story of the Moonseer.
Beginnings. There were many beginnings, perhaps more than there were stories, but she was confident that each story had a beginning. This particular story had at least two such starting points, and from the sounds of it, she had chosen the wrong one.
"Start at the start," her singular, eternally inattentive audience member squawked, his gleaming, minuscule eyes suddenly trained on her looming form. "Start at the beginning!"
"Hmm," she replied, head tilting to the left just a little beyond what should be comfortable. She should've been focused on the one before her, for a storyteller's main concern should most always be their audience, but in this moment, she was not. Her eyes betrayed her, or they would have should anyone have been so discerning, as their own faint illumination in the darkening forest was momentarily masked by their target. "I doubt there is time," she began, the moon's silvery reflection still haunting her eyes, "if I begin at the very start."
She wondered, momentarily, if there would ever be time to finish any story if one were to begin at their common point of inception. Such would be a complicated web of a tale, woven from that time when time was unknown through to the exact chain of events that comprised the particular story arc that a teller so wished to focus their attention upon. Oh, she knew too well that she would not have nearly the ability to take on such a task.
"Then tell the story of the start!" The harsh voice brought her back to reality. "The story of the start," he repeated, mouth hanging open as if to follow this new demand with more words that refused to come out of his small frame.
"The story of the start?" She asked, query met with a slightly bobbing head. "I suppose I could do that." Her eyes glanced up once more, the pale moon again dancing in their reflection. The Beginning, that is to say, the start of the story of the start of all things, was in itself rather complicated and dense, a beginning so riddled with seemingly unbelievable occurrences that even one so young as her sole audience member may not be willing to accept it as facts. This story, perhaps more so than any story, must be told right. This was the story of the birth of her kind, and of his.
"The moon, can you see it?" She asked, accompanying her words with a click of her beak. "Through the trees there, yes." She waited until the young bird's eyes were as dominated by shards of moonlight as hers had been only moments ago. "It is older than you or I or even this forest. Some say it is older than time itself. It was there in the Beginning, the real beginning, as was the place we live. But of course, neither looked the same as they do now."
"What did they look like?" asked the storyteller's son, who had yet to be bestowed a name.
"I won't be able to tell this story if you keep interrupting, my child," the grown raven chided, her slightly blue-tinted feathers rustling in annoyance. He lowered his small head, a silent invitation for her to continue. "The world was all awash with water, even the places where there are forests and mountains today, and the moon had no blemishes, it was just a great, glowing orb. It was never a mere sliver as it is sometimes, it was always as full as we see it tonight. Ah, yes, and there was only one tree, and it stood above all the water."
The hatchling Yatagarasu Raven had to clamp his beak shut to stem the rising flow of questions just begging to be asked, and he fidgeted slightly in his carefully prepared nest. His mother couldn't resist a small cackle at this, for his growing curiosity pleased her greatly. She hoped, silently, that he might continue to demand answers to the things told to him in stories, for a vigilant, curious child would make for an invaluable future leader.
"Now," she continued, not acknowledging her small pause, "this was the world of the first raven. She was born of the world itself, and she lived in a great nest on that one great tree. She was bigger than all the ravens of this forest combined, and the tree was taller than all the trees you see around us." At this point, the storytelling mother had to stop. The rest of this tale would take some calculated simplification, for there was much that could not be explained easily.
As she knew it, the tale was thus: The first raven, an enormous purple and blue beast, would fly the circumference of the world each day, her wingspan large enough to stretch from the unexplored north to the southernmost waters. It took her the length of each day to glide the entire rotation, her stunning purple eyes seeking disturbances in the waves. Though nothing existed there but her, she would patrol unceasingly until dusk, when she would arrive once more in her grand tree. As a world guardian, she had no need for sleep, and would instead spend the darkest hours gazing at the great, silvery moon. It is said that within this orb, if she gazed, unblinking, for just long enough, she would see scenes from an untold land, where mountains would stretch across the earth, where trees rose in ominous abundance, where grasslands would dance in the wind and many exotic creatures would live in a strained and tenuous harmony.
"Soon, the first raven began to long for that world," the mother said with a nod to the moon, "she began to want very badly to live there herself."
"She was lonely?" the hatchling asked, eyes now firmly affixed on the storyteller's form.
"Maybe so!" she said. In reality, though, she knew it was more than loneliness. The great raven had grown tired of ceaseless watching with little to watch for. She had grown weary of centuries of peace and wished, perhaps cruelly, for the strife of the lands she observed in the moonlight. Perhaps, though, the young raven was right. Perhaps there was a twinge of loneliness within her as well. "In any case, one day she failed to circle the earth. Instead, she picked a spot on her route and dug her talons deep beneath the waves, almost drowning herself, and with all her strength, pulled up the ground below. She pulled and pulled," the mother said, now waving her wings and gripping the branch with her own talons so as to demonstrate the scene, "until the rocks below emerged above the water."
"Wow," the hatchling gasped, beak hanging open once more.
"And that is how the land we live on came to be. But the great Moonseer failed to watch over the earth that day, and so the earth itself took revenge upon her. She was cursed to watch the earth forever from the moon she had once spent her every night staring into. The dark spots you see in it today are said to be the marks her talons have made in its surface, and on nights like tonight, if you stare just as she once did, some say you can see her." The mother nodded in conclusion, watching as her tired young hatchling tried, with what little energy he had left, to hold a staring contest with the moon.
Last edited by Corvus on July 31st, 2016, 11:42:40 pm, edited 3 times in total.
This is the second of at least two short drabbles centered around my raven lineages. Some ravens maintain a semi-religious belief in a "first raven," a godlike (or demigod-like) character spoken of in myths and legends. While many believe these tales to be bogus, others take them seriously. This is the Corax version of the story of the Moonseeker.
Story on hold until my Coraxes breed and solidify the lineage name (as the story does mention the actual lineage), so as not to lose claim to it.
Last edited by Corvus on July 31st, 2016, 11:42:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
