The Digging by Marc Chantler (fantasy books to read txt) 📕

He pulled something out, it looked like a circular crystal, and held it out in front of Chorg. "Listen, this is a link-up. It'll connected my thoughts to yours. The telling will be easier if I place this on your head. Like I said, it won't be comfortable. The discomfort won't last long though. It'll be like a pulled muscle, if you've ever experienced it, that's only sour for a short period after."

The crystal was clear, but it held the glow in the tunnel. It was a fairly large, flat piece of crystal, cut more perfect than any rock he'd ever seen digging up rocks in tunnel. Etchings stood out on one side of the disc. Symbols of some sort, like the ones his father taught him when he was younger. He never had use for symbols in his digging so he rarely used the skill, but he could remember and these reminded him of those symbols. He didn't understand what was going on, was very scared, but he wanted to know more. He wanted to find out if the being, Faerylwake spoke truth. 

Chorg nodded. 

Faerylwake placed the crystal on Chorg's forehead. 

Chorg saw... Everything. 

Faerylwake spoke as the roving images came to Chorg. He heard the low sleepy rumble in the back of his mind. The rumble only told the story the images showed Chorg. A world forms from the light in the void. It's his world before it was his world. 

Molten rock, metals cool. Congeal. They revolve around a hotter distant mass. He sees it, but not really. He imagines he feels the heat, beyond unbearable and completely unimaginable. He doesn't feel heat, but he imagines it anyway. The sphere of cooling fire spins on it's on. The voice of Faerylwake tells him the scene did not move this fast in reality. He believes him. The sphere of his world is huge. He never imagined it so. The other is even bigger. The knowledge awes him. 

Where are the Alteuine, he begins to say, but cannot find his tongue. 

It's fine, Faerylwake projects to him. There's no sight here except the past. No tongues, yet I can "hear" you just fine. 

Chorg understands. The Alteuine?

We were some other place in the universe now.We'll enter when the world is fit for life. Watch a bit longer.

Chorg watches and isn't disappointed.

The world cools and forms. Storms gather. The likes of which he'd never seen before in his life. He stood in their midst, again in awe, again imagining the feel of the torrents and sheets the fell around him, fell through him. Vast waters roil, roar, rush. These were the first huge bodies of water he'd ever seen. Seas. They were frightening, but beautiful. If Chorg had eyes to cry he would have did just that and that would have been a first for him too.

The Alteuine enter the scene and at the same time creatures leap from the seas on to land. In the waters are creatures of all sizes. He sees above and beneath as time shapes the creatures, making a variety of forms, shapes, and colors. Many fly. Some move the way he did, with four limbs. Others swim like the first creatures he witnessed. The Alteuine don't descend to the land. They stay above even the flying creatures. It occurs to Chorg they look nothing like the being he'd met in his tunnels. 

My form is different when I appear to underbeings like yourself.

Chorg feels affronted by the statement. He wants to tell Faerylwake how weak he and his siblings look to him. They were barely solid, light passed through them like water. He could venture they couldn't do half the work he did in a day. They were large fluttering things. Leaves falling into the wind. They could dig anything, they didn't even have fingers. Chorg would have told him all this, but he realizes Faerylwake already knows what he was thinking. 

We are great and old creatures, Faerylwake tells him and Chorg senses amusement coming from theAlteuin. Our power comes not from brute strength, but from our wisdom and age. 

Your kind still couldn't best me at real work, Chorg thinks. 

Aye, is the Alteuin's reply. 

They are both silent then Chorg asks, Which are you, Faerylwake?

The Alteuin pauses for awhile, what seems to Chorg like ages as he watches beasts come in go, live and die, in the elements on his home world, and Faerylwake finally answers. I am not sure which myself. We didn't have distinctions.

Chorg watches as the Alteuine switch from passive observers, splitting up and descending on to the world, just as new creatures appear on the formation scene below them. They are creatures that walk on two legs. He sees them come together, something he witnessed in other animals as the scene played out before him, but how they were different. They were doing more communally. Working together better. Building structures. Going after other animals for food and wearing the other animals' skin. They're brutal like the animals in the scenes that flit before Chorg, but they have a tenderness and intelligence that he didn't witness in the other animals' living. 

They're humans, Faerylwake tells him. 

He tries the word out for himself and decides it fits as good as any. Humans. They are more like him he thought than the other animals he viewed before them. He feels a connection with the humans of this world. He wonders then if this is his were why had he never met any humans before, or really, any of the other creatures for that matter. 

Faerylwake answers with, Watch. 

Chorg does. 

He's watching things he'd never seen before. He knows plants. They grow back at his home, but not much. It rains rarely, but rains a lot when it does. It doesn't help the sparse vegetation much. Couple the infrequent rain with the clay and rock that it's mostly watering, it takes tough greens to thrive where he lives. But in this world (it was hard for him to think of it as the world he comes from) vegetation abounded. Chorg watches greens spring up like sweat on a brow during a long days work. Everything seems to grow so simply. He never before had thought about the plants, or most of the critters, of his world because they were above ground things. His focus had always been on the things below. The clay and rocks, every now and again a critter, the grub-mills and the worms. Now he thinks about how nothing grows there, about how he probably wouldn't have a problem with all the green. 

The creatures are another thing though. He thinks how awful it would be to live with so many different kinds of creatures, doing so many different kinds of things. Movement everywhere and all the time. Disturbing the quiet and peace. Plants stay where they grow, like rock and clay. They wouldn't disturb.

He starts to watch the humans in particular. There was something different about them. They were weak compared to many of the other beast and creatures. They had nothing special about them. They had little strength in their bodies compared to the corded backs and limbs of the larger creatures that lumbered and sprinted across the lands. They were not small and many as the crawling critters and they didn't have wings like the fliers. The humans swam clumsily compared to any of the sea beast. So it was difficult for Chorg to understand what was so special about these young creatures. Maybe hidden under their armorless, muscleless surface lay something unique. Some sort of poison like the Walg bush back in his own time. Or secret spikes like the Teapnes that burrow under the earth. He didn't know, but from the looks they were just weak. Probably couldn't even dig well.

Seemingly unseen, the Altueine start to interact with the humans. They bring them something Chorg had never witnessed before. Fire is the name of it. It is special, it's obvious to Chorg even before the fire is put to use. It changes everything. 

The story begins in earnest and Chorg heeds in spite of himself. Man at first was not much different from the beasts that inhabited the planet. Everything moved to and fro working the way Chorg worked underground in his own world and man was no different. They hunted and gathered food, made shelter, took care of their little ones. All seemed to revolve around these. But once fire came to them, was given to them by the Altueine. Everything changed and now man has broken from their earlier, more common way of living. Now they are unique.

Fire flickers and light. The night is less night to the humans now. They are people. Or, at least, becoming so. They stay out later now that their cave shelters, mud dwellings, long houses are safer. Flames warm. Heat. Burn. A gift and a curse.

ihoju

Text: Mr. Chance
Publication Date: 07-13-2012

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