Fall of the Pillar
Before the many ages of men, giants roamed the world where time had not yet touched. Where they went, the giants carved lakes and rivers and planted their gardens which would one day become the woods known to humans.
The lonely giant Jomporta planted a tree at the very heart of the world, where primal waters met the earth and the sky. Here stories begin to differ, some more, others less.
This tree, in most stories a type of oak, grew to be taller and more beautiful than any other tree in the world. Its silver-green leaves reflected the light of sun and moon, and for that, in northern versions, it was admired and favored by its planter and creator: the giant Jomporta.
In the east, the tree possessed a will of its own much akin to a human. With this mind came ambition, and the oak tree was determined to grow so tall as to bring light to every being in the world, thus rivaling the celestials themselves.
Time meant little in an age before the Silence, and so the oak could take its time to reach its goal. Every year its branches reached a little further, until the silver-green leaves touched the edge of sky.
But the tree could not shine its own light, but only reflect what was given by sun and moon. Thus while the oak swam in brilliant light, the world below suffered in the cold and dark. The beautiful gardens of giants made of pine and spruce and the sapling rowan trees greyed and withered beneath the oak both beautiful and terrible.
Here the stories differ once more. In all tellings the oak falls, and in most it was felled, but it was in the northern tales specifically where it was the giant Jomporta who, with a broken heart, took an axe and cut down the tree he had so loved to save the world under so much pain from his deed.
With its fall the oak shattered, or fell apart, little shards of its branches floating down the primal currents in every direction both normal and abnormal. From these shards many things were created, but that was much later.
In some tales, though rare, one additional piece of information is shared; a great bird of copper and flame had made its nest on the branches of this great tree. When it fell, so did the nest, and the fallen feathers of the bird melted into the waters below, coloring them crimson red. From this iron was born, and later the red blood of man and animal alike.
Spread
This tale of the tree and its fall is most known and rather popular among those who follow the Old Faith, namely the lands of the North and East. It is rarely a secret, but rather a story told to children and thus is likely to have changed from a simple tale to a story of morality and particularly the dangers of ambition.
From all the lands where people follow the Old Ways, the eastern Sīna Aqāye tell it perhaps the least, while in the southern parts of the northern Tenwä the tale is likely to be known by every child and elderly alike, though slightly different versions arise in every generation.
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