Tales of Aran'rae: The Stars, the Sea, the Sun, the Moon

Before the world, there were the stars.

They have always been there. They have always shone. For so long, from so high above, they watched, and they sang their songs to the cold, unhearing world below.

Perhaps that is why she fell. Or perhaps her form simply came loose from the veil of the sky and she could nothing but fall, pulled endlessly down down down as the blackness rushed passed.

No matter the reason, she fell. The brightest star in the northern sky came to what would become our world in a shower of silver flame, and the oceans themselves scattered from her light to reveal cold, firm stone beneath.

The star was dazed at first, confused. She had lived all her long, long life in the sky above, surrounded by the light of her brothers and sisters. But when she fell to earth, she was in darkness. Utter darkness, save for the light that she herself emitted, a silver glow that swept out over the island of which she now stood in the center. It glinted off the still retreating waves, catching the star’s attention as light and water danced against each other. Curious, the star moved toward the waves, her bare form searing the stone beneath her feet with every step she took. A scrap of night sky that had clung to her form as she fell fluttered around her silvery body like a tattered cloth, trailing behind her to dampen the fire she created with her steps.

It wasn’t until she had almost reached the water, watched it suck back away from her heat and light, that the star realized what she had done. She turned to look behind her, saw the embers of her path, and she felt her heart grow heavy. No life could truly thrive in utter darkness, she knew; but neither could it begin with such constant, burning light. While from afar, hanging above in the firmament, her light was just enough to nurture, so close it brought only destruction.

So she tempered it. She gathered up the scraps of night that still trailed behind her and wove them into a cloak with which to cover herself. As she did, her form shifted. The bright, silver-white maiden fell forward onto four feet, her neck arched tall and proud, her eyes better suited to the now dim light.

High above, her kindred stars saw this transformation and marveled, for they had never seen the like before. They called her Rae’íl, Night Mother, the Great Black Mare. And thus she has been called ever since.

***

The Night Mother spent her first few days in the lower world learning the boundaries of her new home. She paced the land that had risen from the sea in every widening circles from where she had landed, feeling the stirring of both earth and water echo up through the soles of her feet and into her entire being.

It must be said that days isn’t entirely correct, for there was still no sun or moon to mark the dawn and dusk. She measured time by watching the paths that her siblings traced across the sky so high above her. She sang to them, sometimes, as she made her journey across that first island. With her burning light now shielded by a skin of night, her footsteps left only life in their wake.

When she reached the edge of the island, she took a moment’s pause, considering the sea before her. She could sense the stone hidden beneath the waves, and was suddenly struck with the desire to raise these potential islands from the deep.

She tried first to simply burn the water away, as she had when she first fell and created the land on which she now stood, by allowing her cloak of night to slip and reveal a portion of her light. In the form of a maiden with raven dark hair and eyes of gleaming silver, that same form she had worn just before fashioning her cloak, she stepped into the surf with one hand outstretched, brilliant white light cutting a path before her.

To her surprise, the sea surged against her, great waves raising and crashing down around her to prevent her light from reaching the stone beneath. Again, she stepped forward, baring her light, and again the sea pushed her back. Three times she attempted this, before accepting that unless she shed her cloak completely, she simply would not be able to reveal these new islands from the sea. And that was not a sacrifice she was willing to make, for already the land she had brought into being with her fall was beginning to bloom with the first green shoots of life.

So instead, she settled herself by the water’s edge and began to sing. It was the song of her brothers and sisters so high above, still looking down on her. She wove her voice into an intricate pattern that reached out to the ocean and pleaded forgiveness, for she realized now that the waters before her were just as vibrant and alive as the islands she wished to raise.

Intrigued by her plea, perhaps even moved by it, the waves calmed, lapping gently at her bare feet. There was a trembling moment that seemed to stretch between star and surf, delicate and infinite. Then, suddenly, the sea parted, revealing the lifeless rock in which she had seen so much potential.

Elated, Rae’íl leaped to her feet. She allowed her form to change back to that of a sleek black mare in her excitement, and bounded out into the waves. Where her hooves struck the water, the waves curled and leaped, and she tossed her head back with a high, clear call as she traced out the shape of these new islands beneath her feet.

When she finally returned to the place of her falling, she left four new islands in her wake.

***

But, as is the way of such things, the Night Mother soon found herself lost once more, lost within herself. She had created so much potential for life with these islands, but for so so many cycles of the stars she was alone. And that loneliness ached.

From her place on the once bare and rocky shores, now slowly beginning to bloom with new life, the Night Mother could see the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea. In a way she envied them. Her islands were now green and growing, basking in her soft light, but there were no creatures who made the place home.

Once more she sang, though this was a wistful tune, a song of loneliness and grief. For the first time since she had fallen, she realized that she missed her family in the skies above. But once a star has fallen, there is no way for her to return. And though she was proud of the life and lands she had brought into being, she was lost in her solitude. So she sang her grief to the skies, as long ago she had sung with her sisters, looking down on the earth where she now must live.

So far above, so far away, her siblings heard their fallen sister, and they wept for her.

And so the stars called to one another, sang to each other, and decided that they would do the best they could for their sister. While they themselves could not reach the earth and stone and sea below where the Night Mother now must live, their light could. The eldest stars called their sisters and brothers together, and they crafted a plan. With each journey they traced across the darkened sky, the left just the edges of their light on the horizon, gradually collecting it into a glimmering fabric that stretched from end to end of the domed sky.

Once they had enough light, the stars called to each other once again, and they set to work weaving their light through song. But rather than create a cloak of starlight, as Rae’íl had done with the piece of night when she fell, what these stars wove was…something else entirely.

They crafted a creature in their sister’s image, a being of light and love with gilded skin and hair of gleaming silver to serve as Rae’íl’s companion through the long centuries that she must spend walking the earth. When their work was completed, they called their creation Varryn, for he was filled with their desire to ease their sister’s loneliness.

Though he was made of starlight, and in the image of Rae’íl’s two-legged form, Varryn was not a star himself; and so, when he came to earth at the gentle urgings of the stars that had made him, his light did not scorch the stone and chase away the waves as Rae’íl’s. He needed no cloak of night to make his light bearable on the earth, emitting only a soft glow.

Varryn was placed on the shore of that first island, and for a long time he simply stood where he had landed, watching the ebb and flow of the tides. Life was so new to this being, and he was fascinated by every tiny detail of it.

Eventually though, the need to know more, to explore his new home, drove him from the shore and farther inland. Like Rae’íl before him, he learned to mark time by the passage of the stars above his head. He spent many cycles simply wandering the islands, constantly searching, though for what he was not sure. He knew he had been created for a reason, but stars are not always the most apt at explaining their motivations. He knew he had a purpose, but he didn’t know what it was. And so he continued searching.

While he wandered, Rae’íl too traced the paths she had walked before over the islands, enjoying each new bloom of life she found, though with the sight of every one her loneliness ached a little sharper. The stars watched helplessly from above as their sister and the starlight companion they had created for her simply…passed each other by. It seemed almost ridiculous, that these two great beings could not find each other on such relatively small lands.

But fate will not be rushed. Everything must happen in its own time.

And so it was for Rae’íl and Varryn. After several cycles of their wandering, the Night Mother caught a glimpse of light near the center of her first island, close to where she had woken after her fall. Curious, she went to investigate it, holding her cloak of night around her body with a wariness she had not felt in a long time—if ever.

It did not take her long to find the source of that soft light, and once she had she found herself momentarily frozen in shock. She had never expected to see something so similar to herself on these islands, both in form and in the light that shone from him. They were not identical by any means, of course. Where Rae’íl was silvery pale, this man of starlight’s skin shimmered with a golden hue; while her hair was black as the night above, or indeed the coat of her equine form, his was white as the light of the stars. Unsure of what to make of this stranger, Rae’íl approached cautiously.

“I am the fallen star,” she introduced herself. “Who, and what, are you?

The stranger simply stared at her for several long moments, and the Night Mother found herself, perhaps for the first time in all her long existence, at a loss.

Then, suddenly, he spoke. “I am called Varryn,” he told her. “And…I think I have been searching for you.”

Of course, Rae’íl was not satisfied with just this answer. She demanded to know what exactly this person was, and where he had come from. Varryn answered her questions easily—eagerly, even. Slowly, the Night Mother’s wariness and curiosity abated, and she began to realize just what it was that her sisters and brothers had done for her.

She was no longer alone.

Overjoyed, Rae’íl clasped Varryn’s hand in hers, and the two made a vow. They swore that they would not be parted now that they had found each other, a promise witnessed by the stars above.

***

Varryn and Rae’íl wandered together through the islands for days, months—and they could call the passage of time such now, for their union had given birth to Aíne and Gaern, the twins of the sun and moon, keepers of time and tides, who eternally chased each other across the skies above. Their vow bound them tight, and they lived contentedly in this meandering way for some time.

But soon enough it became clear to them that while this wandering was pleasant in its own way, they both desired something else, something…different. Varryn was a creature of home and hearth left without either, and it pained Rae’íl to see her lifemate cast into such melancholy. For her part, the Night Mother wished to people her isles, though how to do so exactly still eluded her. Her first two children were gods of the sky, as she had once been—though Aíne and Gaern could not reach all the way to the blanket of stars far above the world.t. Rae’íl loved her children dearly, though she knew that she could not make them stay upon the islands with her and their father, and she knew it was possible that any future children they had may be the same.

So while Varryn sought a home for them, somewhere to be settled and content, the Night Mother continued her wanderings, constantly seeking new life, or a way to create it.

That is when she met Lytahn.

The life in the sea fascinated Rae’íl, as it had since she first glimpsed it when she had sung to the waves all those cycles of stars ago. She continually found herself drawn back to the shores of her islands, where she would watch the ebb and flow of the tides while her daughter passed over her head on her carefully sculpted moon. Sometimes Varryn would accompany her, but more often than not she found herself alone on these excursions to the coast.

By now, with the light from Gaern’s sun nurturing the sparks of life that had sprung up over her islands, they were lush and green, with the beginnings of what would become our ancient forests mere sproutlings climbing the mountainsides.

But there were still no creatures, nothing like the shimmering fish she saw dart through the sea, or the colorful birds that traced intricate patterns through the skies that even she could not fully comprehend. It crossed her mind that perhaps these islands were simply not meant to be more than what she saw around her, not meant to cradle the varieties of life that she had been so certain were locked in the latent potential of the stone.

Once more she sang, not to her sisters above or the sea before her, not even to her lifemate, the man she loved so much who was still searching for a hearth they could call their own. This time, Rae’íl sang for herself, a song of hope and loss and love and grief all bound into one.

As it had once before, her song reached out into the waves, and something in the ocean responded to her voice.

No, not something. The ocean itself answered her song.

At first it was little more than a ripple, a shiver in the lapping tides that , waves curling gently over the pebbled shore. Then the ripple grew—as ripples tend to do, of course—and it set the surface of the water trembling.

Rae’íl, who had never seen such a thing before, quickly stood from where she had settled herself overlooking the sea and watched with wary fascination. From her eons watching the earth from above, she understood that the new could be as much full of danger as it was potential. But she could not deny a spark of curiosity, so as the water grew more tumultuous, she crept cautiously closer.

The ocean thrummed, waves suddenly stilled and the tide shivering in place, then quite abruptly it burst into motion. The waves that had previously lapped peacefully at the shore suddenly swirled together, stretching up toward the sky in a cyclone of salty wind and water. Rae’íl raised a hand to shield her eyes from the ferocious gusts, staggering back from the force of the gale.

When she could once more see clearly, what she beheld was a creature whose like she had before only seen in glimpses of her own reflection as she raced across the islands on powerful hooves. Galloping from the ocean came Lytahn, a massive stallion trailing seafoam from his mane and tail—the sea given form. The creature tossed his head proudly and fixed his eyes on the watching Rae’íl. The Night Mother could not tell if that gaze was a challenge or an invitation, but she moved toward him anyway, allowing her form to ship into her equine shape as she did.

The two great horses came together halfway between the sea and the land, and the islands trembled at their meeting.

There was so much to be said, and yet nothing to be said at all. They knew one another, Lytahn from her songs and Rae’íl from the crashing waves and roiling storms she had witnessed spill from his seas. The stallion tossed his head again to call her closer in the language of horses; she responded with a merry call of her own and raced away, goading him into a chase.