The Long Night
Listen, Children. Long ago, before our modern stories, there is one last tale from the ancient people. This is the story of the long night.
Our people sailed far from our home to avoid the strange weapons of the Zut. After weeks of sailing, sickness ravaged our people. After a month, our food had either gone bad or been eaten. Two weeks later we were starving. We asked the Makers to stay their hands and deliver us from the punishments we had earned.
They did not.
Our forebearers witnessed the sky come alight with fire and the sun was blotted out by clouds like our ancestors speak of in The Night of Four Moons. Dark clouds blotted out the sun and roiled as if filled with the strange cloud-snakes from myth. We sailed toward it, ready to embrace our destruction. We were sure our world had been destroyed and we would be next.
We were not.
We landed in a bay where we could see three massive mountains - The Three Sisters that welcomed us home by still spewing ash and glowing with an internal fire. We found a Stubtu, an idol-stone with a trapped Zun, and Eis Everwise, the founder of our society, was the only one brave enough to touch it. She wept until her eyes bled, and trembled as if in great pain but she did not buckle. As she communed with whatever Zun was in it, the other refugees split up. When Eis finished she pulled her hand away the Stubtu crumbled to dust and blew away. Eis made her decrees about how the new K'vut society would be, and built her syuth's home a day's walk from the site.
The darkness did not subside until the last refugees joined Eis' new society. When the last holdouts gave in after days of bickering about special considerations and receiving nothing from Eis, a great wind blew from the east and a fine mist of shards and ash blew through. The clouds parted, blown away, and the sun shone at last. Eis stopped the family from taking credit for the coming of the sun, chastising them for taking so long and withholding the sun for greed. They quickly stated that they had no real connection to the sun's return, and Eis agreed that it might be coincidence, or the Zun want them to unite and build a better civilization than they had before. After all, that's what the Stubtu had told her, and the Niechellaiz Wazin began that sunny day.
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