Copyright © Poetry Corner
Design by Dzignine

Lirons of Liloram - 10.09.08


 “How shall we begin?” The god asked himself and then he chuckled, for it was a rather funny statement. This was because he had in a sense, just finished. The God of Elements, Oram, had just spent the last 50,000 years piecing together a small rock like a jigsaw puzzle to be his very own world and home. The work was exhausting but Oram was a persevering god and would not be discouraged.

“I think I will begin with what I understand the best, elements of fire, wind, water and earth. I will start with a city of fire.” And he did. He started with a rocky and rugged terrain, then added dust and mist to the skies with a smoldering dry heat clinging to the air. Out of the ground grew tall mountains full of liquid lava that sometimes shot up in the air as geysers. One of these volcanic mountains was particularly larger than the others. Oram took this hollowed hill and removed all of the molten lava from it. Then he began to carve out passage ways and chambers within the mountain, humming to himself as he did so. The city took many, many years of hard work to build, but the end result was pleasing to Oram “This shall be their city, and it will be called Amoryp. I will now start on my city of water, just to the east of Amoryp.”

Oram gathered together thickly nit clouds in the sky and instructed them to rain. There were already deep holes in the ground that quickly filled with water, creating large lakes and rivers. Where mountains stood, beautiful shimmering waterfalls began to cascade to the ground and pool gently at the bottom. Oram then turned the muddying dirt to soft clean pebbles that the rain could roll off of with a gentle grace. “Theirs will be an open city with no walls or ceilings to block the enriching, ever constant rain of the sky. This will be called Niram.” As the great god said this he turned once again to the east, slowly working his way around the new world to start his work on his city of wind.

Oram began by clearing the land into a wide valley for better and stronger wind currents. Upon the tops of each mountain surrounding this valley, Oram placed a freezing snow and reaching down he simply touched the flat ground of the valley and watched with a twinkle in his eye, as it all turned to ice. He calmly raised his arms upward, and a giant, glorious crystal palace rose up from the ice. It continued to grow higher and higher into the sky, even to the point of being taller than those snowy mountain peaks. The sight was angelic in its beauty and with tears in his eyes, the peaceful god exclaimed, “Oh, my wondrous crystal city, what name could hold your glory? The only name I could possible deem worthy is the love of my life, my belated Thume. My long lost mortal love, whose beauty was beyond description. Her name will fit you well. Glorious city of Thume.” And with this he gathered up the softest of clouds and covered the valley with them. Though if felt as if it had taken him no time at all, in reality it took Oram a great deal of time on this city in particular. Oram really liked the city of Thume and wanted everything to be perfect.

With a content sigh, Oram turned to the east for the last time to fill the gap between the city of wind and the city of fire. He closed his eyes as if to rest and when he opened them the land came alive. The dirt became grass and lush, full trees sprouted into wild forests of green. Numerous flowers of every color filled the fields and plants of all sizes filled the forest floors. When Oram completed the creation of the surface, he began work on the intricate weave of tunnels he had planned beneath it. “These will be a timid, burrowing people. They will find great comfort in the great underground city called Lios.”

As the God of the Elements stood back and admired his works he smiled, delighted with himself. “What a marvelous accomplishment, and in so little time. How quickly those 10,000 years passed since I started. Now all that is left is a name for my new home and a people to dwell on it with me. I will call this place Liloram after myself meaning: place of Oram and my people will be called lirons. There will be four different types of lirons in Liloram, one for each city.

“Of the city of Amoryp, they will be armor plated over the entirety of their bodies. Their spine starting from the top of their head all the way to the tips of their long tails will be spiked and lastly, from their mouth and nostrils will come breath of fire making them fierce and mighty creatures. Then, in the city of Niram the lirons will be smooth skinned and soft. Their tails will be wide and their feet webbed for long swims deep in their cities’ lakes. After them comes the graceful lirons of the wind. They will have feathery, white skin which is easily broken but extremely fast in regeneration, and they will have tiny padded feet and strong wide wings that will carry them high to the tops of the mountains and the crystal palace. 
Lastly, my little burrowing lirons of Lios. They will have rough skin and long razor sharp claws, both helpful in digging deep underground. These are my people, and this is how I will create them.” As old Oram said this, slowly and meticulously, one by one each liron appeared in their proper places. 25 of each element were created so there were 100 lirons placed upon the land. Oram worked day and night as he did this last most exhausting act. Finally, as the world of Liloram began its first completed year, its god collapsed upon its surface north of all of the cities falling into a deep undisturbed slumber.


~100,000 Years Later~

“What is that noise? What is that ruckus? Who else is there besides me? Oh, of course, it is my people, but what is it that unsettles them? How long have I been sleeping?” As the gentle god rose from his sleeping place, he stretched and unfurled his mighty wings to their full length of 20 feet, gliding down to Thume where all of the noise came from.

“There is nothing wrong with him!” yelled a beautiful white wind liron who was obviously their queen. “Just because nothing like him has ever existed before does not make him wrong or bad.” This drew Oram’s attention to the tiny red liron cradled in her paws. The crowd of lirons continued their confused babble and the volume grew until finally a booming deep bass voice came from a short ways below. Even though he could not fly, the king of Amoryp still looked fierce and powerful where he stood.

“Silence!” He yelled and the lirons all fell quiet. “A very long time ago your queen and I fell in love and decided that we would be partners until the end of Liloram itself. If a son is the consequence of that decision so be it. It is a consequence my queen and I are happy to bear. We do not care that he looks like an Amorypian with the wings of a Thumean, but it is true that I must take the boy to live with me. As you may have discovered, he has inherited my breath of fire and has singed his mother many times. He must learn control before he can return.”

“Yes, our son will become a symbol of peace between our two cities, not a symbol of fear. I will call him Phynious, meaning peacemaker. All will be well.” As the god, Oram, watched these things happen he became extremely curious. He had been much too exhausted to consider how these people and cities would interact and here they were, interacting without him! What made him the most curious though was this new mix-breed and this interesting love that seemed to have formed between the king and queen.

As the years went on, 1,500 to be exact, Oram watched from afar as young Phynious slowly grew. He could still remember that day Phynious had been allowed to visit his mother for the first time. He had almost lit her on fire in his excitement. Oram chuckled at the memory, but his face grew sober again as he watched Phynious playing with a new found friend. His name was Silo and was of the city of Thume. The god continued to watch as these two males, neither one more than a foot and a half tall, tackle each other and do barrel rolls in the sky. For some reason this troubled Oram. Then the thought came to his mind and he realized the truth behind it. “This friendship will lead to pain and anger. I know it, but I do not know why.” He muttered to himself, contemplating the idea for many years but the idea did not come to light until one fateful day.

Young Silo had begun his daily journey to Amoryp to visit his friend, Phynious. The worst part of his journey was always when he had to fly across the rainy skies of Niram. This was because his wings could not handle the rain well and he was often clumsy in his flying. It would have been just the same this day except for the unknown truth beneath him. A young Niram liron a couple years back had come to envy Phynious and came to be jealous of Silo’s friendship with him, so as Silo flew overhead that day young Cephl used his horn of water and knocked poor Silo out of the sky. Silo landed with a hard thud on the pebbled ground below and Cephl, chuckling to himself, slipped back into his lake. Little Silo was in pain, his body was badly damaged and his regenerating skin could not stifle the agony of it. Oram did not realize that this ridiculous act of a stupid Niram liron would bring his peaceful world to ciaos. No, not until a worried Phynious arrived on the scene. Oram had never seen such a tiny liron so angry in all his days. The determined male would not be calmed. Phynious gently placed Silo on his back and flew him back to Thume. From there he went to Amoryp. Silo was healed over time but it did not change the anger that resided in Phynious.

By the end of that very day, Phynious had both cities in a rage at the unknown attackers of Silo. Both the king and the queen came quickly to Niram to consult the king there. Oram watched all of this in horror as accusations were made and as the peaceful king of Niram back-handed the queen of Thume for one of these. Oram knew what this would mean, the rage in the Amorype’s king’s eyes and the hurt in the queen’s, the peace in Liloram had been shattered, possibly for good.

The following 1,000 years were very difficult for the gentle god. He could not handle to watch as his cities tarred each other apart. It was awful and unbearable as lirons, who should have lived for millenniums to come were slayed at the hands of others. Oram was a god of peace. He wept silent tears as he watched all that happened. Finally, Oram was no longer the only one who couldn’t handle it. The timid king of Lios traveled north to visit the god and pleaded with him.

“Please Oram. I know you can fix this, you can make them stop. My poor city is in ruins; on the one side my plants are dying because they are being drowned and on the other they die because they are singed with the flames of Amoryp. Please help.” The god looked at the liron with pity in his eyes and nodded curtly knowing what had to be done. Being a god of the elements Oram stood tall and took back all that he had given, except for that of the humble earth city. He quenched the flames, stopped the rain, and removed all air currents. The Amorypians’ breath caught short, the Nirmians’ skin grew dry and the Thumeans fell from the sky with no air currents to hug their wings to. Speaking to his people for the first time, though they all knew who he was, Oram yelled, “This must stop! I am disgusted with you all. Unless someone can tell me how to bring peace back to this land within the next year, I will abandon this world as a wasted effort and take my elements with me, for you are all undeserving of them.” With that said, Oram returned the elements and turned his back to the lirons so that he would not have to look upon them and the king of Lios left him there to return to the safety of his home. Oram stayed this way for six months when the soft thrum of wings beating sounded behind him.

“Oram? Do you still plan to do what you said you would six months ago?” the voice was young, but not quite as young as Oram remembered last hearing it.

Without turning the god replied, “Yes Phynious, unless you have a better plan.”

“In fact, I do.”

“Then let us hear it.” Oram turned to look at an older and more mature Phynious, standing at least 4 foot tall now.

“I propose a fifth city. You do not have a place to live up here to the north. So, I believe that if we all came together to build our wondrous god a city, that we would be united and that peace would be restored with this common goal. What do you think?”

“It is good. Yes, and it might just work.”


- Kimberly H. G. (15 years old)

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Translate