Writing Myths #1: Why the sun rises and sets

It’s November so that means writing. Some people have signed up for NaNoWriMo, where they try to write a novel in a month, or DigiWriMo, where they write whatever they want to in a variety of forms. I’ve considered to join both but have decided to go with neither because I’m not prepared. Plus, I just don’t feel like it.

However, I want to make November a writing month so I’ve decided to write something every day for the month of November and maybe post something on here everyday as well. With that in mind, I was glad to discover Jason’s post, Writing Myths, this morning. He found 20 writing prompts on Facebook for writing myths and I liked the idea so much that I decided to do it too. Here’s my first for November 1^st. (Let’s see if I can post it before midnight.)

Write a myth to explain why the sun rises and sets.

In the beginning, there was the Creator, an amorphous being made from Time, that wanted to give shape to the energy forces about him so he fused them together to create things that could be heard, felt, smelt, seen, tasted.

He made trees, animals, insects, humans, and all things needed to sustain them. He was proud of his creations, but they were mere figures and though he created them, he could not give them life. No matter what he tried, he could not wake the figures he created so they slept. Days would past with nothing moving so the Creator sat in despair, worried that he had failed.

One day, in the wee hours before dawn, he sat contemplating the first bird he created. He noticed a spark within it, the energy force he used to make it, and, bored, he began to fiddle with it. He lazily moved the energy about the bird while wondering how to get the animal to move. Frustrated with his lack of progress, he decided to destroy all he had created and return all the figures to their formless energy state. But an amazing thing happened.

As he pulled at the energy in their bodies, his figures began to move. They began to wake. Surprised at this, the Creator gave a shout and in his excitement, loosened his hold on the energies, which slowly returned to the figures’ bodies as they returned to sleep. Noticing this, the Creator made a plan. He took bits of energy from the figures’ bodies and fused it into a big, round, fiery ball, which he threw into the sky. As the ball rose, the bodies began to rise and move. The Creator was glad.

But as he added more energy to the ball, it blazed so bright that it almost vanquished all the figures he had created. So he moved the ball further out into the blackness beyond the sky and made the world he’d created for the figures to rotate about the ball so the full force of it never hits the world all at once. Because of this, the fiery ball is only seen at certain times during the day; so the Creator set the fiery ball to appear at dawn, when he discovered how to wake the figures, and to disappear at night. The first bird he made, the rooster, was set to always signal the rising of the fiery ball.