The First Pilgrimage

Back in the beginning of Time, the gods fashioned the Earth.  They shaped it round, like a fruit, and they scattered it around with stars, and they hung over it a sun and a moon.  At the north of the world, where on a fruit might be a stem, and on the south where might be found a blossom, the gods placed ice.  And they shaped the Earth into mountains and rivers and lakes and islands, and they placed the People upon it.

Now the People all came from one place in the beginning, for all tales start there.  And over the years the People did move in all different directions, separating, rejoining, marrying, and making war.  And so it came to pass that the People did live in every corner of the Earth.

Some of the people in those days were crossing the ocean, and the oceans were rising, though know man today knows why.  And there was one among them who was named Chamandra.  And Chamandra was young and foolish in those days, and he believed that he could stop the rise of the oceans and save his people, and he taunted the gods with his foolishness and he dared them to cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And Chamandra boasted that although he might die, he would be reborn, and thus it was so, for Chamandra was the first Immortal.

Now Chamandra was reborn at the will of the gods, but he did not return to his people on the ocean.  He was reborn first in a faraway land where men and horse were one beast.  He lived there, and died, and was again reborn.  And each time he was reborn, he became less a fool, and he began to understand the grand creation of the gods, and he began to repent his previous ways.

So Chamandra began the First Pilgrimage, and he walked and walked and walked, until he died and was born again.  And when he came of age, he again walked and walked, until he reached the place where the land fell away into ocean, and from there he sailed, until he died and was reborn.  And when he came of age again, he sailed and sailed until he reached the place where the Four Gods had cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And when he saw that island, which he knew of old, he knew that he had been a fool, for he had not been sacrificed, and yet the oceans had fallen.

And Chamandra regretted his boast, and he renounced it, and he decided his Pilgrimage must be over.

It was then that the women of the sea whispered to Chamandra, “Your Pilgrimage is not at an end.  Have you not learned?  Are you not wiser?  Do you not recall that you swore to protect your people?”

Then Chamandra knew that the real purpose of his Pilgrimage had been to remind him of his duty to his people, and thus he set off to follow in the footsteps of Windstrong Ravvy and Copperdawn Dainar, who last he saw, a hundred years ago, had talked of sailing for the mainland.