Goddess-Adrift

The Goddess-Adrift is the common name for the Moon Goddess amongst the Gnomes. She is also known as Sister Moon, Mother Moon, the Gardener, or The Mother of Gnomes. She is a benevolent goddess to her worshippers, but preoccupied with preventing the collapse of the heavens, and so unable to devote the attention she wishes on her worshippers. Her worshippers believe that upon death their spirits enter her retinue and help in her efforts to rebalance the cosmos.

The gnomes have a redemptive myth of their goddess, that one day she will stabilize the heavens, and then she will come to earth to free her children from thralldom and reward them for their loyalty. The myth itself is kept largely secret, as many elves would consider it treasonous.

### The Tale of the Goddess-Adrift

Long ago, the sky was an orchard, thick with trees and heavy with shining fruits, and over the orchard two sisters stood: Sister Sun and Sister Moon.

Sister Moon would tend the trees, would dress their roots and water them, would feed them and protect them. So well did she feed them that every morning the branches would be thick with new growth as if it was the autumn.

Sister Sun would walk through the orchard with her saw and her shears and cut back the branches, pruning the overgrowth and the diseased limbs, taking them to her great pit to burn them.

Both together then, when evening came, would hold hands and walk through the rows of trees, plucking the shining fruits and eating of them. The juice was so rich and so sweet it would run down their chins and drip to the earth, to fill the lakes and rivers and seas.

The trees grew and grew and grew and the sky shone with the millions of shining fruits. Each day the trees grew greater and wiser, and each day more and more of their limbs were trimmed and thrown to the fire, so that always there was room for them to grow taller and taller.

Sister Moon was the first to think of having children to help her in the orchard. And so she took up a handful of the rich earth and formed it into a child. The child was small and strong and her bones were soft and filled with the giving of life and succor. She gave her hands that were good with tools, and minds that could hear the whispering of the trees to know when they thirsted or their roots needed to be dressed. Then she took the child in her arms and gave it the kiss of life, and this was Lorelillowei, the First Mother of the Gnomes.

Sister Moon loved her new child very much and she taught her to dress the trees and to water them and they walked the orchard all the day. And in the evening when they met Sister Sun, tired from the days pruning, Sister Moon ran to her.

“Sister, sister look at the daughter I have made!”

And Sister Sun, was astonished, and said, “but look how thick the trees have grown with two hands tending them. I cannot prune them quickly enough!”

So Sister Moon kissed her sister and smiled, “Don’t you see? You too must make children, and we will  be able to tend the garden much more easily, and have more time to walk between the trees and eat the shining fruit.”

So Sister Sun took a hard, sharp branch that she had pruned and carved from it a child. The child was tall and pointed so that she could reach the uppermost branches of the trees, and filled with the spirit of trimming and burning. Her mind was filled with cutting, and her belly was filled with the fire of dragons so that she could take down the diseased branches and burn them in the pit. She gave hands that were good with blades and with the magics of the end of things. Then she took the child in her arms and gave her the kiss of life, and this was the lady whose name we cannot speak, First Queen of the Elves.

Sister Sun loved her new child and she taught her to prune the overgrown and diseased branches and to burn them in the pit, and they walked the orchard all day.

With so much new growth, Sister Sun carved more and more children, for she found that she loved this work, so that eventually she hardly pruned at all, sitting by the fire pit all day and carving her children. Sister Moon, too made more of her children, but soon it became apparent - each day there was more and more pruned branches for carving, but there was not more earth for forming, for the trees grew taller and their roots grew deeper and needed more and more earth to support them.

The fire now burned at all times, and Sister Sun get accustomed to its warmth, so that even walking in the orchard chilled her now. So Sister Moon would bring her fruits, and her children would gather the fruits alongside their work of dressing the trees.

But flame is a funny thing for the more it eats the hungrier it grows, and soon the children of Sister Moon could not dress the trees quickly enough to make them grow enough branches to keep the fire so bright. Now the fire shone so fiercely that its light pierced every corner, and Old Woman Shadows was gone. But even so, for Sister Sun, the fire could not burn warm enough and she shivered in fever even as she crawled into it’s very depths to try to stay warm.

So the children of Sister Sun seeing their mother suffering felt pity for her, and their minds were minds for cutting, so they decided they must bring her more wood. So they went out into the grove to it’s loneliest corners, before the children of the moon could arrive there in the morning and they took the youngest tree who gave least fruit and said, “come, let us cut this tree to its roots, for it profits no one here, so lone and fruitless. And our mother is cold, she needs fuel to keep her warm so that her fever may pass.” And they cut the tree to the earth and carried it back to the pit. And throwing it into the depths, it burned with such force that for a moment, Mother Sun was warm.

So it was that the children of the sun began each day to go out into the orchard and cut one of the trees to the earth. They started with the weakest, the diseased, the undergrowth, but each time they threw one in, there would be a flash of warmth and then Sister Sun would shiver, more chilled and feverish than ever. Soon they began to take strong healthy trees, trees heavy with fruit, and then began to take two trees or three. And then the day came when mother Sun wept with such cold that they set fire to the entire orchard.

The Children of the Moon were too few. Sister Moon and her children ran to and fro to save what trees they could by pouring water over them, but the Children of the Sun had grown too many and the dragon fire in their bellies too hot.

In those days, then, the sun filled the entire sky, for all the orchard burned. But each day, more and more burned away turning the sky black with ash, leaving behind only the few shining stars that Sister Moon could douse with water, their fruits spare and dimly lit. Each year now the sun grows smaller, for there are so few trees left to burn: only one small circle around the burning pit where in its heart each year Sister Sun grows colder and colder. Sister Moon runs to and fro across the sky each night dressing the few remaining trees and watering them, for she knows that in the end, fire cannot warm her beloved sister, only the fruit of the trees. It is thus that gnomes, the Moons Children, must fend for themselves, for now the work of the sky is all dressing and watering, there is no pruning to be done, and their mother can spare only moments for her beloved children. And Sister Moon is for this reason called the Goddess Adrift, for she must wander through the ash of the night sky from tree to tree to water them. But in nights of her greatest despair she sits and weeps beneath the trees weeps for her sister and for her children, and this is why the night rain makes the flowers grow fairest. It is said though that the wisest of them can hear in the sound of the rain a promise: for one day the fire will live only within the circle of the burning pit, and Sister Moon will have the spirits of the dead to tend her trees. And in that day, Mother Moon will again be able to pour her blessings upon her children, and her children will grow as strong as the trees of old, and once again shall be free to walk their own orchards. And in that day, Sister Moon shall pour a great storm into the burning pit and walk into its heart, where she will feed fruits to Sister Sun and her fever shall pass. Then will they never rest by the fire again and all souls, both the sharp and the gentle, will walk the rows of the returning trees and tend them health again.