Bloodheir

When the One Race was no more, and the Gods resolved to make five to fill the void its destruction had left, the Gatekeeper first made the Huanin. Next The God Who Laughed made the Kyrinin, and the Light, who sang, made the Saolin. Then the fell Wildling, The Spear, made the Whreinin.

The maker of the last of the five was to be The Goddess. More than any save The God Who Laughed, she loved the green places of the world. More than any save The Raven she saw what lay beneath the world they had made, and saw that not everything that mattered could be touched or held in the hand. Thus she made the Anain, who have no substance save what they borrow from tree and leaf, who dwell in all places and none. And when he saw what she had done The God Who Laughed was pleased and said, “This is a good thing, for you have put life into that which is most beautiful in our creation.”

But the Gatekeeper said, “This is a fell thing you have done. These you have made are too potent and too deep. They will not love these others we have made, for all life save their own will seem to them a small and brief thing. They will know too little of death and of failings, and too much of things that are hidden from the others. This is not a gentle thought you have breathed into the mind of the world.”

The Goddess was not angry at these words. “These my children will be gentle in their way and in their own manner. But none can be always gentle. Your Huanin, Gatekeeper, will be sometimes fierce. The Kyrinin will be sometimes cold, the Saolin sometimes foolish. The Wildling’s wolfenkind will be sometimes most cruel. And my Anain, they will sometimes be more terrible and wondrous than all the others. For every world must have terrors and wonders in it, just as much as gentleness.”

from First Tales, transcribed by Quenquane the Simple