There wasn’t a room there when Agalon woke up.
When he opened his eyes, surrounded by darkness and time,
he had to build the antechamber by himself
with his own two hands
out of the shards of his own past.

There was his wedding to his wife;
There, his earliest memory of his father showing him the Tree;|
the doorway was the time he had watched the Dragons with envy;
and there, tucked away in a corner in the back,
that was his brother pushing him into the Darkness.

It was a long time before the Gatherer came for him.
“Who are you?” she asked without words.
“I was banished here,” said the man at the Threshold,
and he explained himself. “Do you know the way back?
I want to return to my family. Can you help me?”
“Back?” the Gatherer did not understand. “Help?”

The shards were still all around them,
pieces of a broken past
pieces of a puzzle.
“I may be able to bring you back,” said Nesnas.
“But first you must help me.”
“Anything,” said the newcomer.
“You must help me gather all the shards,” she said.
“Gather them all up, every one.
We must fit them together.”

And Agalon looked around him.
He looked at the shards of time and saw they were still falling.
He saw the Gatherer meticulously piece together
a single moment
of a single day
in the ocean of eternity.

“And should others come,” said Nesnas,
“while we’re here working,
do greet them in this nice little house.
Put them to work, too. We will need the assistance.”

When you reach the end of your journey,
after all of your revels and trials,
whether you have found peace or the end of a sword,
The world will leave you behind in its wake,
nothing but another shard of a past it has already forgotten.

The world doesn’t care about you.
The world only lives for the moment
And yours is fleeting.
But when your body shatters,
when your spirit can find no hold,
the Gatherer will claim you.

Every moment as it passes
shatters like a pane of glass.
We try to grasp at the smoothe edges of memory,
but they slip away into the Darkness.
They belong to the Gatherer.
She scoops them up, snatches them out of thin air.
She inspects every one, looking for clues.
In Her Museum of Time, She has assembled the pieces.
Here, She keeps the past alive.
What there is of it.

The world doesn’t care about you, but she does.
Or she might.
You might have to make her.
There are jagged edges to some pieces, too.
There are bits of the world that don’t fit together
There are bits of the world that are still holding on,
Always
Until the end of time.

Make the Gatherer care about you.
Live a life so interesting that once you Fall Behind,
the Gatherer will need your help
in putting all of these interesting pieces
together.

The following is a translation of one of the oldest Icathi poems, possibly itself transcribed from Antediluvian Skytongue. It is offered (for now) without commentary.

I call upon the Dragon-Gods to take me to the future,
to guide my path across the shards of time into the Undiscovered Country,
to earn my hope and feed my dreams and make my wealth increase,
to show me to a better place while they make my body older.

Acarius, Icaria, I put my faith in you.
Great Dragon-God, Great Dragon-Goddess, show your love anew.

Acarius, help me reach my goals
as you once broke your way through Time.
Icaria, give your blessing,
grant me a miracle like your birth.

Before you, Goddess, all He knew was a moment of time,
(a blink of an eye, a blind-man’s waking dream)
In the Void, in the deep black nothingness of nowhere,
You appeared as a reflection in Your lover’s eyes
And He burst forth to find You,
dragging the shards of Time, His prison, in His wake,
and You were seized,
to hurtle into the dark unknown forever.

Now come and find me.
Help me find you.
Bring me the miracle of Your sight.
Bring me the miracle of love and happiness
to light my way into the Undiscovered Country.

You want to do what you want to do.
You want to be who you want to be.
Fate might know better.

You choose your own Destiny.
You make a life, forge a path for yourself,
Unless Fate knows better.

Fate knows better because Fate knows what–
What should happen, what has happened
In the future.

Time has happened already. For her. For them.
They have seen what must be in their past,
What should be in our future.

Their Fate is more important than your destiny.
So choose what you can, but if you fail, remember
Fate just might know better.

Great Diozé was angry.
Why was the Lord Diozé angry, good singer?
Diozé was angry because Sharvin had broken his vows.
Freed from their father’s belly,
Free of their grandmother’s scorn,
Sharvin had vowed obedience.

But Sharvin lied.

Diozé’s anger was everywhere.
The Lord’s fury was absolute.
The Tree shook.
The Egg quaked.
The Garden all but burned.
Diozé pursued his false brother for thousands of years.
They ran through the plains, making rivers.
They ran through the mountains, making caves.
They climbed all the way to the second branch before the Veil rejected them.

With nowhere else to run, Sharvin leapt towards the Undiscovered Country.
He leapt all the way to the Dragons, and his brother pursued him.
The two brothers clung to the scales with their free hands
even as the swung their weapons at each other,
Diozé his Sword, still stained with the blood of Ormalager and of Utnavisor,
but Sharvin had a Staff, a branch from the Tree of Life itself,
which was longer and allowed him to parry out of reach.

Diozé slid around Acarius’s belly
even as Sharvin climbed up Icaria’s back
hoisting himself up her wings to her shoulders.
Diozé leapt with his sword raised high to strike Sharvin low
and Acarius, seeing this and fearing his wife was in danger,
bent forward and snapped at Diozé.
Diozé twisted, then, careful not to strike the Time-God with his sword,
and caught himself on the Dragon’s lower lip to pull himself to safety.

Just then, the Dragon-God and his consort
crashed through a moment in time like a pane of glass
The memories and events of that moment tumbled all around,
shards raining down on the Lord and His terrible brother.
Much as they slapped and ducked and evaded,
Both still ended up covered in the scars of time.

“It’s over,” Sharvin screamed at his brother. “Why do you still pursue me?”
“You have been nothing but trouble to me,” said Diozé,
“since the moment I pulled you from death!”
“And you have been a cut on my heel, dear brother,” Sharvin replied,
“since before you were born!”

At the mention of his own birth, Diozé leapt from Acarius’s jowl,
swinging wide, slicing in circles,
but Sharvin clung to Icaria’s wing.
He swung his own staff back, pounding down on Diozé’s head
and let Him fall Behind, back down to the Garden and the Egg.

But time was too much for Sharvin.
Soon Icaria managed to scratch in just the right place
and caught Sharvin and swallowed him whole.

But Diozé never forgot the lessons,
his pride in leaping between Dragons
or his foolishness in trusting his false brother Sharvin.

Sayuni had two faces, one either side of his head.

He stood in the middle and when he looked around, he had no idea.

He couldn’t tell what was where.

An Old Woman came to Sayuni out of the Void.

She carried two Eggs.

She told Sayuni to watch the two Eggs for her until she returned.

Then she disappeared back Beyond the Veil.

As Sayuni stood scratching his head, one of the Eggs shook.

It hatched and out popped Tychael, a young woman full-grown.

This is was bad news for Sayuni–he was supposed to watch the Eggs.

He should probably get word to the Old Woman, he thought.

So he said to Tychael: “You, Newborn, go find the Old Woman!”

But he had two faces and no idea.

That’s why Sayuni sent Tychael out the Wrong Way.

Sayuni waited a long time for Tychael to return.

While he waited, he got hungry.

So he ate the second Egg.

In the beginning, there was only the Void, and She was at peace.
There was silence in Her kingdom, and She knew the rest eternal.
She was at peace. She was serene. She was whole.

But then came the Dreamer.
He was Beyond the Veil, but She perceived Him there.
The fact that She could perceive anything at all was an annoyance.

But the Dreamer knew She was there, too.
And the Dreamer was bored.
The Void did not care that the Dreamer was bored.
But the Dreamer did care that the Void didn’t care.

All the Dreamer wanted was for His older sister to play with Him.
This is why He showed Her us, His Dreams.
To annoy His sister
into loving Him.