Jusin fir’si: Cata varsea - Chapter Five: The Golden City.

The Cujerim were curious and industrious. They spread quickly from the place of their birth and began to explore the world around them. They tried to understand all that they saw and used what they learned to make exploring, understanding and living in the world easier for themselves and their families. They also turned what they knew of the world around them into beautiful art, music and poetry. The Revanim watched them with pride as they mirrored their creators, so like each of the Five were they. 

The one thing they lacked was freedom, for that was Syatya’s domain. Instead, they obeyed the Revanim utterly, never questioning an order, not even from the lesser Dreamers, and so the first of mankind's many crimes was committed: a man murdered another for they had both been commanded to love the same woman, and all for the entertainment of one of their gods. 

The Five learned about this and were greatly angered. They punished the lesser Dreamer, banishing him into the wilderness, and they taught the Cujerim that they must only obey the Five, which, of course, they agreed to do.

So, the Cujerim began to worship the Five and built temples and statues in their honour all throughout the land, but though the Five were pleased with these offerings, the Cujerim were never satisfied and so, with the gifts they had been given, they dreamt up a great city where the Revanim and Cujerim could live alongside each other. Again, the Five were pleased and they showed the Cujerim places where good stone and precious gems and metals could be mined from beneath the mountains. 

The city was built in the shadow of the mountains, many times larger than any of the Cujerim’s other settlements, and when the stonework was finished they lined it with gold and decorated it with many images of the deeds of the Revanim. The Five and all their children, Revanim and Cujerim alike, celebrated with a great feast which lasted for many days and filled the streets of the city, which they had named Cata varsea, with light and colour, beautiful music and fragrant aromas.

But the Feoldim Syatyad had been watching all of this and they reported to Syatya all that they had seen and heard. She was greatly angered that she had not been included in the adoration of the Cujerim and she pitied them also, for they had no freedom to choose what was best for themselves. So, Syatya spoke of her concerns with her children and they agreed that the city must be destroyed  so that those within could know the freedom of the forest.

Jusin jran’si: Marco Feoldirs Revanirs - Chapter Six: The War of the Children of the Dreamers. 

The Feoldim Syatyad hit the city at night when most of the inhabitants were asleep. They climbed the walls as if they were trees and sneaked into the houses of the Cujerim. The men and women they gave terrible nightmares but the children and babies they kidnapped and took into the forest. The Cujerim slept poorly that night.

When they awoke and found their children gone the city was filled with the sound of wailing and the streets were flooded with tears. The leader of the Cujerim, known as Yeno cireo, called all the men of the city together in the Vallano Menil and made this speech, 

“Last night we sensed a shade upon our dreams, 
A darkness we had never felt before, 
And as we slept we thought we heard the screams
Of little ones asleep across the floor. 
With dawn we found our nightmares come to life 
As all our homes were filled with empty cots
And each of us has now a hollowed wife, 
A hollowed soul, our lives but hollowed lots. 
There none can be who caused this great distress
Save those whose rebel hearts wish nought but ill. 
So now, I vow, we’ll seek out cruel mistress
Death and fight with bloodlust for the kill,
For nothing right will ever be until
We take revenge and put our rage to rest.”

The men took up arms and marched out of the city towards the forest.

First, they took axes to the trees, cutting them down in tens and hundreds, building them up like a broken wall along the fringes of the meadow.  Next, they set fire to the branches and made the smoke billow in amongst those trees that still stood until the Feoldim Syatyad were forced to come running out through the gaps in the wall to be felled like trees themselves.

Then the women of Cata varsea awoke from their grief and looked out from the windows of the city to see the butcher’s work in which their men had become lost, and they ran outside as one to stop them. 

In the bloody, smoke-filled meadow, the men saw not their wives, nor heard their cries to stop. And so, when they ran out in front to become shadows against the flames, they could not tell them from their enemy and their axeheads struck deep into the flesh of those they loved. 

Then Yeno cireo saw the bloodied form of Jina area, his wife beneath his feet and he dropped his weapon and fell to his knees beside her. She stared into his eyes and, with the faintest breath, sang this song ere she died. 

“Yeno, my darling do not be dismayed
Though my heart has been riven by fate’s bitter blade
‘Tis not I, but our children your war has betrayed, 
For they sleep now, I know it, atop these old trees. 
Our enemy hid them, yet our enemy flees;
The forest is flame and our enemy flees!
I will sleep now, my darling, but save them, I pray.
The furnace is growing, yet I fade away… “

As Jina area passed away before him, Yeno cireo rose to his feet and, with a cry of rage and sorrow led the men of the Cujerim into the forest inferno, slaughtering the fleeing Feoldim Syatyad as they went. Many died in the fire or from the smoke, but, when the survivors emerged that evening, they brought the children with them. 

This was but the first action in a war that lasted for three generations and about which many other tales have been told, of the deeds of the Revanim, both brave and fell, of battle of Khardo Siread and the darkness that befell it and of the great love affair of Ratyano and Vicara, which took them away from the live of mortals for many years and allowed much sorrow to be sown. By the time the final battle had been fought, however, the forest that had dominated the land had become many times smaller, the Feoldim Syatyad had all but been wiped out and Syatya herself had submitted, with great reluctance, to the will of the Five.