The Exile of Oran-Koh
A short story written in the style of an ancient myth!
The tumbling whirl that had sent his gangly form into disarray felt entirely out of his control. Flashing wavering lights of blue and bright blinding white overwhelmed his adjusting senses. He saw nothing but the rainbow coalescence of color in blinded eyes. Eyes that saw no end. Eyes that felt the darkness wrapping around them. The darkness that came with being disoriented. Too much light.
Strange. He had never felt things this way before.
Soon the tumbling of ethereal nothing felt finalized. Soon, it was odd to think he had ever been thrown out to begin with. He was sitting on the ground. Behind him, he could see a portal filled with eternal screeching and dangerous screams of monstrous creatures now untouchable to him.
The calls were like a finalized “And stay out!” ringing in his ears.
This is where Oran-Koh began.
Oran-Koh didn’t know what beauty was. For he had only seen through the objective eye of a god. But there was something special about this place… this - mortal realm. He knew that’s where he had been spit out at least.
There was something beautiful in its uncontrollable finity. Something wondrous about the art he could paint upon the sand beneath his feet.
Feet?
There they were! He had never known a corporeal form and yet he knew what he balanced his body upon… strange. He had never left his home realm before - a place where to be one with the realm was to be of everything. It was strange to be alone. To be one and not part of the greater one of his home.
Travelers came and went in his home realm and told stories of this experience but this was his first voyage. He hadn’t fully believed them until now, and although it left him disoriented at first, he started to like experiencing the world in this new way. He only hoped it wasn’t how he’d die.
Koh steadied himself on long spindly weak legs. Legs that didn’t feel right under his heavy form. A form that could easily change. Maybe he’d like to be some sort of four-legged beast, but for now he tried to steady on ground that sifted beneath his feet, and he faltered again and again.
How ridiculous he must look! He knew she was watching him every moment. Every moment he wavered, he could feel himself being mocked. He knew his sister - the wretched goddess that she was - mocked him from their home realm.
Laugh now, He thought. I shall make my home in this world. I shall make it an affront to all the realms.
Though frustration clouded his first moments upon the mortal plain of existence, Oran-Koh did not last long in this form. Soon - though such relevant time cannot be fully quantified to mine or yours - he was taking slow single steps atop the sand, his form growing lighter with each step. The god’s legs were thin, but soon he realized his body was too.
He was a man by the loosest of terms. Man enough for a binary one may say, but he moved like nothing of the world, so how could he be anything within it? His sister called him brother. He guessed that was enough. What more is a man than a brother - he was sure his thinking wasn’t complete in that aspect, but he assumed it didn’t matter. It was enough for him to accept his role in this realm.
Koh would call himself the man of the mortals. Maybe leave the god part out for now.
Of course, these were all strange confusing thoughts that battered his brain as he struggled across the sand. Without an endless world of collective thoughts and nothingness to bounce himself off of, his thoughts battered him like a ballista upon an old hut. He was at the mercy of his own mind. A feeling not familiar to gods. Or at least not this one.
Ah! But had he become so selfish that he was focused on what would become of him and not the very world he fell into? Take it in! Take it in!
A vast darkness.
But he could see! There was a moon in the sky, yes. He knew the handiwork of the creator anywhere. In the distance there were indeed the fates - those strange creatures who twinkled an array of colors across the sky - and even further he saw Them. They Who Created and Came Before. There was no longer a They of such power in his realm. He and his siblings were too powerful for that. But he heard stories… this one was much stronger.
Much… scarier. Authoritative and yet… uncaring. They did not like interference, though maybe They grew tired. He could make out Their moon-like shape lingering in the distance where even more Fates coalesced around Them.
And so, with arms like that of a great oak, Oran-Koh waved to Them in the sky and called out “It’s dark!” But They did not hear him or maybe they didn’t care. Koh continued taking in the world and saw there was a deep green that covered the ground beyond the sand. Moss? Such words came to him from on high. Or was he creating these words? Such thoughts of a god. He felt it and it was soft though moist. Such a beautiful thing to feel in one’s long thick fingers. His smile widened to meet his ears before he rolled down into it with a thud that shook the earth.
Sensation! Feeling! Words and nerves formed as though they were never meant to have come from anywhere but his own mind!
This is why the gods come here! This is why the mortal realm is so loved! Where else can one feel such feelings and think such quiet thoughts? Alone.
But upon this moment, the strangest thing happened. A light in the distance. A fire.
Yes, fire.
“My my how life finds its ways in the dark…” His voice boomed and echoed off what he assumed to be the globe that contained all life. He took long strides into the night to search out the fire and found a people.
Many people! He was aghast at the way they looked, and he wondered how he looked to them, but there they were cowardly. Frightened little things huddled together by the fire light, hoping the long figure wouldn’t reach out and snatch the light away.
“Oh, little things!” Oran-Koh said with a smooth and sweet voice of honey and liquor, “Don’t sit in the dark… I can give you the sky. I can give you light.”
Oran-Koh reached down, and the beings scattered like leaves taking flight from their tree. He scooped the light from their fire and left only smoldering embers.
Then he sat, taking his fingers to the shape of knives and spoons.
Sculpting.
Their fire ran cold, but the humanoids soon saw he was of no threat. No, he was now the holder of the sacred flame. The only thing that kept them alive in the cold dark world.
Slowly, they brought him food from the darkness. Slowly, they brought their own meals, and sat amongst the tangled long legs of the firekeeper where they were warm. They didn’t know what he was. They didn’t care. They wanted safety, and when they learned to trust this strange creature who loomed out from the night, they learned to fall in love with the obscene. With the mysterious.
Then they grew warm.
Then they were alive.
Much time passed, and Oran-Koh never stopped working on the fire. He kept it warm for his people, but he never stopped his great mission.
Soon, his people had to sit further away. The fire was getting too big. Too hot. Too bright. The world was beginning to glow a hot metallic orange. Koh realized the world around him was burning. He looked to his people and shuddered to see the way they began to glow as though they were infected with a plague of light.
“My children…” Koh called unto them. “I will leave today, to bring you a beautiful tomorrow.”
And the people watched, for Koh was wrapped around the fire like yarn, his head poking from atop as he slowly unraveled.
The people of Oran-Koh praised him - as mortals often praise the powerful - and bowed to his everlasting love. Then he floated away.
Where Koh thought there was a dome atop the world, it turned out to go on and on. Here he found space. The place between the worlds of this realm. A place where the fates bickered and just within reach of where the gods watched from on high.
And that is where he left his first miracle after an unknown time of creation.
He brought his people a star. Their sun.
It wasn’t long before he returned to the ground where his people had since built a home. The land where he first landed was a small village. A village with a name he couldn’t read, and a people he had never seen. He had seen creatures live and die. Humanoid and otherwise, but today there were none left that he remembered. The blood of his followers were forgotten, and for the first time, he saw the people of the ground in a clear light.
He realized some misjudgments he had made of them through the darkness and the sun. For example: they were rather hairy little things. He was not. He did his best to mimic now that they were all exposed in the sunlight, but hair did not seem to stick to him as it did the mortals. He did well to cover his head with a cap, and shrink to an acceptable humanoid height. He lacked features, but now in the daylight, he saw they had smiles with plump cheeks and eyes full of wonder that he struggled to create himself. Though it wasn’t easy to contain so much in such a godly form - that’s what a lord would say of course - the great Sunweaver created a mortal image to model himself after so they wouldn’t think anything of him - he was close, but he saw the way the people looked at him. He was still strange. Wrong.
He dressed in the nearby fashions. It looked to be shirts and long pants of fibers. He walked amongst the crowds and almost danced as though he floated on the wind. As he walked time seemed to move faster and he saw towers begin to build towards the sky, brick walls and glass buildings that people came in and out of reached for his sun. He didn’t understand their technology, but he felt the energy of their progress. He knew it was from his power - the very sun itself that they built their future.
But he noticed something. Many people here had a strange… glow to them. Yellows, reds, purples, blues, and perhaps more he didn’t see. It reminded him of his people. Those who worshiped him. It took him quite some time to notice, but once he did he couldn’t seem to stop noticing.
Around the quickly advancing village, he trotted about to the music of the people. He began to notice drawings on walls and in front of buildings. A figure made up of black lines, like yarn tying together the sun - holding it together upon the Astral earth.
It was him. And those who worshiped these pieces of art had that colorful glow.
They were sun-kissed. Koh-kissed as he later called them to his siblings.
They were beautiful beings that had stood too close to the sun as it was being built, and because of this, they had a glowing aura unlike any other. And so he gathered these people using the rhythm of the drums. He brought all of the town together and broke his humanoid form to present himself as their lord. Their Sunweaver.
He regaled them with the tales of their ancestors, and tales of the darkness. Before he brought each of the sun-kissed beings to stand before him and receive his blessing. He kissed each one upon their foreheads.
He promised them salvation. Their children. And their children’s children. For they will all be of him.
They would all be the children of Oran-Koh.
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Now, the keen eyed among us may question this story. How could Oran-Koh have stayed in this realm for so long without coming to a demise? The half-life theory of the gods tells us that gods can spend a very limited amount of time in the mortal realm before they begin to decay - this time is usually merely hours, and yet the Sunweaver appeared to have been trapped in the realm for much longer than this.
Many scholars have theories as to how this could occur. One theory states that the god was forced here in an exile outside of his own control where he was rejected by his very home, so the very power of the exile kept him alive. This theory hypothesizes that this was a maker’s exile. Not until he had satisfied the other creators of his realm with great creation and innovation could he truly return to his own home.
Although some of this may be muddled in historical retellings and oral tradition, these are the tales as they were passed through generations of the Koh people. It is said that after he blessed each of the people, a portal opened beneath his feet and he fell through it, returning to his home as though he had never left it.
How much time passed with him upon the mortal realm?
No one knows for certain. The time spent here for a god can be miniscule. But it appears it was for at least 3 generations for him to not recognize anybody upon his return from creating the sun.
For further information, we would recommend visiting the Eucan Scholar of Koh in the city-state of Euco. Though many children of Koh have vacated their holy land, the scholar remains and was a fantastic source of information for this first edition written text of the history of Oran-Koh in the mortal realm.