CHAPTER 1. THE BREAKING OF THE WORLD
I remember when I was younger, which wasn't that long ago, Marika and I would sneak into her father’s hut. He was a village elder. He was the village elder. The man had no love for me, but maybe that is another story. Marika and I were probably head over heels in love with each other ….as in love as 7-year-olds could be, I suppose. It was a rickety old place, that hut. Surprisingly small for the man’s stature. The two of us had long since oiled the doors to keep them from creaking. I don’t think the elder ever noticed the difference. Locked in one of the smaller rooms, the elder kept his scrolls. Parchments that formed the great book. He used to hide the key under the giant ale gourd behind the front door. There were hundreds of scrolls in that dusty room, worn with age. Scrolls that told us who we were, where we came from, and maybe where we were going. My favourites were the ones that spoke of the old world, about deities that pulled this world from the air by simply speaking the word. I imagined it would be the greatest feeling in the 4
