The Need for Wine
It is remembered by most that Zheenkeef has been the cause of much of the world’s worst mischief, and so the weak do not trust in her as they should. But all know the truth: More than mischief, Red-Haired Zheenkeef has brought the mortal races joy, wonder, and delight.
When other gods made their gifts to the mortals, Zheenkeef the Shifting watched with interest. The gifts were practical and made lives better. Yet, no matter how greatly the gods (such as her son, Darmon) gifted the mortal races, their lives were still hard, and they knew death and misery most of their days. They were given fire and shown how to build homes, how to smelt iron, how to sail the wide sea, and more. So many gifts, and yet the mortals had no life in them but toil. They lived to work, and worked to live.
Finally, Wild-Eyed Zheenkeef could stand no more of it and traveled her many ways to the mortal world. Assuming the guise of a red-haired mortal of each race, she went to the homes of the greatest among them. Appearing to them as a mad woman, which was not far from right, she showed the mortals many tricks. One she taught the skill of counting out rhythm.
Another she showed catgut pulled taught, and plucked it to make a pleasing noise. This one she showed the warm sounds made by a hollowed-out gourd when blown upon, and that one she led through planned steps for dancing. Unlike the other gods, she gave no race a complete skill or art. Instead, she sat back and watched the races invent their own music from these basic tools, and their own dances from these simple beginnings.
And soon they began sharing their inventions with other races, and music and dance grew among all peoples. Yet still, the humans were not happy. Art gave them an outlet for their longing, a way of expounding upon their misery, but they were never free of their deepest sorrows. One day the Mother of Madness overheard a woman say to her friend, “I wish I could feel this way all the time” as the two of them spun and spun in a great circling dance that combined elven music and human steps.
So Zheenkeef the Gnomish went to her favorite folk among the mortals, the gnomes, who were so like her in temperament. She saw that they too enjoyed the arts and reveled in the skills they had learned from the gods. But they also longed for the exultation and freedom they felt when dancing to last longer.
For a long while she walked among the gnomes as a red-haired lady of their kind, and she inspired them to experiment with dances and chants and contraptions of metal and fire that might capture that feeling for longer. And in those days the Gnomes came to know this red-haired lady as Inspiration, for so she was to them, an inspiration for all their wild schemes and foolish inventions.
Zheenkeef of the Many Ways walked nearly every part of the gnomish lands, and still they were no closer to capturing the sensation of euphoria. One night she stayed with a poor gnomish family, Glor and Glin. The old couple had a small grape farm and no children, and the Mother of Madness saw that sorrow was heavy on their hearts. Yet the two old folks, seeing her red hair, took her into their home and fed her like a queen. Glor, the husband, gave her his pipe and best pipeweed, and Glin, the wife, stayed up all night baking bread for her travels. When Zheenkeef parted with them, she blessed their grapes so that they should always give them the greatest happiness.
From this blessing, of course, great things arose. Within a year, Glor and Glin were famous among the gnomes for the spectacular drink they had invented from the grapes. Wine, they called it, and in it one found the euphoria of dance and the happiness of the sweetest music. But Glin and Glor were not proud, and they never accepted the praise, telling all who would listen that it was Inspiration who had given them this gift.
So it was that Zheenkeef brought music, dance, and wine to a world that was suffocating under the weight of blandness and toil. It was not long before the prayers of artists and musicians bored her, and she gave her daughter mastery over these things (yet another decision that has forever benefited the mortal
races). Yet she never parted ways with her favorite thing, the best invention that came from her time among the mortals: wine. It is said by those who know the sacred drink best that if one drinks enough, Inspiration will pay a visit.
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