Old Old Mother

The women of the river worship and honor the moon in accordance with a legend that describes how the moon put all things into the world. That legend is older than anyone knows, and arose from the life of a real woman with an unmatchable 200,000-year legacy.

Who was she?

An Ancestor

She was so ancient no one remembered her name. She was called only "Old Old Mother" because she was the matriarch. Every member of the band was related to her by blood in some way, and no one living could remember a time when she had not been old.

A Teacher

She had trained every mother in handworks. She carried fire and taught its care to the ones who handled it now. She knew where a rock should break, how to make a knot firm, when to climb trees for fruit. Almost everyone had spent time at her side striving to copy the deft motions of those old hands.

A Storyteller

But far more than anything else, she was one of the first to tell stories, not simply recount events. The way she spoke of the things she imagined left her listeners in awe. She seemed to bring things to being even with such simple language as they had.

A Memory

When at last she died and was given to the fire as all fire carriers were, the new matriarch, a granddaughter who was now a grandmother herself, stood and used the most powerful words she knew to release the woman's spirit:

Old Old Mother, she was with us. Here she made fire. Here she made sky. Here she made land. All of the people, Old Old Mother made them. The people hold fire. The people hold sky. The people hold land. Old Old Mother, go up.

When infants grew old enough to understand, their mothers repeated these words to them, to tell the children about the woman who had known them but whom they could not remember. And when babies were born without Old Old Mother to welcome them, their mothers repeated these words to them, to tell the children about the woman who seemed to have created the whole world for them to live in.

How did it happen?

The story of Old Old Mother was told and retold even when there was no one left who had existed while she had been alive.  It was difficult for those who hadn't known her to explain why it was so important to keep passing her knowledge along.  There were many fire carriers, many mothers, but storytellers were rare.  She made things with words.  Not quite understanding this, successive generations concluded that things came into being when she spoke of them.  So they continued to scrupulously honor the power of the mother of the world, greatest and first of all women, who had gone into the sky.
Although the story the women tell now about the moon is in different words, at its core it is still the same praise of Old Old Mother.  No one knows who she was, but in this way she is still remembered.

Professions

• fire carrier

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Other paths

When nomad bands meet, they exchange news and stories. Those who had also known and respected Old Old Mother listened to and repeated her eulogy, but not as faithfully.  It did survive in a few places in much abbreviated form:

• One culture still recites "Oldmother, go!" to ward off the spirits of the dead.
• Elsewhere it gave rise to a children's naming game: "[Name], where are you? [Name] is with the fire, the sky, the land. Everyone, find [name]!"

It found its firmest ground in a culture who interpreted the story of Old Old Mother as that of a bird-god giving people food and shelter until in death they fledge to become birds themselves in the afterlife, a belief that also persists to the present day.

View from the future

Moon worship in ocean-going cultures faded around 800 Oce, and on the vastland even earlier than that. However, one member of the bird-worshipping people made his way to the Ocean, bringing some small part of Old Old Woman back to the people descended from her.