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Our first user submission comes from one of the Chaotic Bunny "staff", Sophie Boyce. If you'd like to see more of her stuff then visit her website. www.sophieboyce.com

Concept of Time (working title)

Hind sight teaches many things, perhaps the most profound lesson it has for us is that we do not learn. We do not allow history to teach us what it knows, although the lessons are all there. Much can be learnt from looking to the beginning of things and watching how everything unravelled, but very few are still aware of the beginning. The slate has been wiped and the past remains shrouded in uncertainty, as much of a stranger to our minds as the path that lies before us. Very few know how everything began; I am one of those few.

In the beginning were the dragons; a mighty breed that held strong across the world. There were other, smaller, creatures, but it was the dragons who ruled. They were born of the very magic that turns our world and every moment they tread this earth they are keeping that magic alive.

Things were still for many years. The dragons bred, as they lived and eventually died. Time honoured this way of life and let it continue for a long while, but Time becomes restless when things do not change, she wishes for them to move on and if things do not move by themselves it is not unknown for Time to change them herself.

Whether something is given or taken, change will come. Which it was that Time did on this occasion is questionable. Did she give immortality, or take mortality? Was it simply a case of doing both? That is not my question to answer, but if I were to give my opinion I would say that something was taken. When the dragons became immortal they lost the natural order of their lives for they could no longer breed. No longer did they mourn each others passing, yet similarly, they were no longer able to rejoice in the birth of another. When that happened nothing was new to them anymore, no face, nor mountain, nor river. Things became stagnant for them without the sense of having something new to learn each day, they became lonely. They all had each other but now everything was too easy. Though they had the ability to change the world with the magic it had gifted them with, they could not undo Time's magic. They had no choice but to find a way around it, all the while knowing that no more dragons would ever be born in this world if they didn't.

For years they tried to alter the conditions of their lives and for years this was the very thing they failed to do. They tried in solitude, as they did in great numbers, and whether night or day none of their efforts bore the fruit of success. Eventually most gave up this fight that they now saw to be a fruitless affair, and continued to live the life prescribed to them by Time. Very few continued the search for a different life, but in the end that did not matter for it only needed one. Through the ages it has been uttered by many mouths that when hope is at it's weakest, miracles are born. By all accounts this would be the one thing that could explain what happened to the dragons, for all had given up, bar one.

The dragon that continued to search for the answer was indeed a rare creature. Not only because she never gave up searching, but because she was the first. Things such as this are often forgotten in the grand scheme of things, but with every new happening there is always one to experience it before any other, and it makes that experience their own. The first was a cliched symbol of purity, or at least she would have been had she been remembered throughout the world. A dragon of purest white, of the gentlest nature, an honest soul. She was able to see the ways of the world and knew that if you wanted something you had to be willing to part with something to secure it. That is the balance of the world. If you want something small, you are bound to give something small. Likewise, if you want something more than anything in the world, you must be willing to give something that also means that much to you. When you have become as lost as the dragons had, there are few things you value that much.

The first, however, was clever. She knew the only thing of worth that Time hadn't taked with her cruel tricks was the very magic the world had gifted the dragons with. Once she had concluded this it did not take her long to decide which would mean more to her; her magic or a new comapanion born of her own blood. She denounced her powers and though empty on sleeping, felt new hope spring up inside of her the next morning. On awakening the next day she found the world to be the same, the same as it had been when she still had her powers. the grass beneath her feet felt the same, the air beneath her wings the same, yet there was something new. It didn't matter that she didn't know what it was, she knew something was new and that was enough for now, her sacrifice had made change. She liked to think it was a change in the world but that was yet to come, this change was within her. This change was new life.

Months passed before she was able to identify this change, this life growing within her, and even once she knew it she was still uncertain; as she had never before felt a life grow from her own. A year passed before this new life was born. The first built a nest early in preparation and waited for Time to usher the days through in to the nights and the nights to days. One morning she awoke and the feeling of change was strong, as was the pain within her. She writhed in her nest for the duration of the day and through in to the night, awaiting the emergence of her egg. An emergence that was never to come, for there was no egg. Though a reptile, the first was to give birth as if she were a mammal, to a fully formed new life. What she was to give birth to would not be a dragon, but something similar in appearance to what would one day be known as man. The basic shape was there, the limbs the same, the face of a similar nature, but the skin was that of a dragon, one of the many gifts given this creature by her mother. It did not spread across it's whole body, appearing only over it's stomach, part of it's arms, legs and finally over part of it's face. It was female. It was what would one day become known as "Talari". This new life was a Talari, "born of dragon". Though fully formed, she yet had much growing to do for she was but a baby and it was the first's responsibility to look after this life that she had created. A responsibility that she embraced fully.

They remained in the nest together until the Talari became a stronger, more independant creature. The dragon was awash with the love she felt for this new life, astounded at every noise and every moment. This love she felt would bind them for as long as they were both alive. It was some 9 years before they left the nest together, but both had learnt much in this time. The Talari had learnt the dragon's language well and they were able to communicate as if they were the same. the dragon had learnt a new respect for the world and it's magic. Together they set off, the Talari upon her mother's back, to find the other dragons and tell of this new magic. To tell of this new, for that is what the Talari really were. New.

Before long, many other dragons had too given over their powers, passed them back to the world from which they had been given. It was longer before they all learnt that these powers had not been lost. The magic sacrificed by the dragons had merely passed from mother to daughter, dragon to Talari. Not all dragons had forsaken their powers when this discovery was made and the day it was discovered that such powers were re-born in the Talari, any dragon who had not already done so was no longer able to give their powers up. Such was the way.

Life continued for the dragons and the Talari, time treated them well and accepted this new twist to the tale, but she was by no means finished with these characters. She allowed the Talari to exist with the dragons, did nothing to effect their lives. The Talari were born, lived and died. It was through them that the dragons now learnt how to live again, remembering great love as well as great loss. Both races were content with each other and neither wanted for more. But with Time came change, and it was the next change that has shaped the world in to the place it is today. For good or for ill.

Time manipulated the Talari to want more, to grow discontent with the lives they lived with the dragons, a feeling that developed to coincide with the birth of Jawid; the first male of the Talari. He did not have much of an effect at first, but like many things if you give them some Time, they will often develop. As Jawid grew older he bacame beautiful to the females of his kind. They lusted after him with a ferocity to compensate for never having lusted before. The Talari grew more and more discontent with the lives they spent with the dragons and longed for a life that consisted merely of their own kind, forgetting the sacrifice the dragons had made in order for them to live.

Jawid, however, was happy with his dragon. Like the first, he understood the ways of the world and knew that for the Talari to breed amongst themselves would cause a great rift in the world. When dragons gave life to the Talari they were not meant to breed. The Talari were to be born of the dragons and no more, companion to their creator. Jawid knew that to bear offspring from two Talari would be a great sin. Yet even Jawid, the purest Talari, already displayed the kind of weakness that would become more famed in his descendants. A weakness of emotion, of love. For even Jawid could not resist the lure of love.

Orinthia was no different to any other of the Talari, only to Jawid she was everything. The gentleness she possessed that was common to their race became hers alone and he could not help but to love her, and she to love him. They tried to deny their feelings, to lock them away, but Time and absence only served to amplify their feelings to the point at which they could no longer be denied. Orinthia was soon to fall pregnant with the child that would unbalance their world, but they could only see their love for each other.

The day Cadence was born the skies rained blood, the blood that would one day be spilled on account of this sin. But like the dragon before her, she was the first, although her presense was of a nature never seen before. Her nature was not evil, but the cause of it. It was not long before other male Talari were born, and more children born from two Talarian parents. They were to be know as the Corsive, "The Forbidden Ones". This generation of Talari grew apart from the dragons and lived a life shared with the Corsives until Time made so that in their villages only the Corsives remained. Through the years the number of Corsives grew until Corsives were born of Corsives and so an age of history was written. Yet from the dragons a new generation of Talari were born after them and after them another, and another, through to this very day. 

Time caused the Corsives to forget the ways of their forbearers, the Talari, until they knew little of the magic that they were born from. Some of their kind remembered this magic and attempted to control and manipulate the powers that were passed on to them, whilst the rest of them grew fearful of the magic. It was not long before their kind completely split between the two groups, forming two more descendants from the dragons. The magic doers travelled to the east of the lands and became known as the Tark, "tainted". Those that shied from magic dwelled in the west and Time named them Human, "betrayers of the Past".

And so the history of the land was and is and will always remain. Though few know of this past it will always be so and will continue to influence the world in ways that people have never realised.

Such is the way of time.

Copyright Sophie Boyce 2005

FOOTNOTE. This is not a starting chapter, more of an interlude, I wanted to introduce a fuller picture of the world I had created for a larger story and as the words fell to the page Time became a character within her own right. Partly in this passage, but more so in others it became evident that it was in fact Time who was penning them, giving the history of the world that she ruled over. Whether this works for everyone else I don't know but i really enjoyed writing it. All comments would be greatly appreciated but please bear in mind that I have deliberately used a lot of fragments, they are stylistic choices and not grammatical errors. Any comments can be directed through bouncing@chaoticbunny.com.