We set the fires as the sun goes down, one here, at the twilight’s edge, the cast back the darkness. When it is high enough, when the earth has turned enough, at the next ridge, they let theirs flare to life, and so on, and so on. Our world is ringed in dots of fire, in points of flame that keep away the deepest of the dark, and give us strength and courage enough to dance around the flames, casting our own shadows into the night.
My people believe if your shadow stays too long in the dark, it brings some of that dark back with it; because your shadow will always return to you, you will forever hold a touch of that darkness.
Because of our knowledge, because of our strength, we were a mighty people, with armies that covered the sands and the grasses, and we looked to the mountains and the oceans and declared ourselves gods.
We did not know it, but those proud days were our last; by the end of the world turning, when the stars had returned to their places in the sky like the shadow must return to the form, we would be scattered like ash to the wind, and the proud Jodaan would have nothing left, not even cities, to remind any futuregoers that we were once here, walked these stones and drank these waters.
