“Shall we not make someone to appreciate the
wonders you have made, father?” Onera asked Neron.
“I have made you,” Neron said.
“And I am alone,” said Onera. “Who shall play in
the fields and swim in the sea with me?”
“I will,” said Neron.
Nomra watched.
Nomra watched from the peak of Amalteron and Onera
was always with Neron and Nomra was alone with the birds. Onera still desired
Neron to make another being.
“Make one for each of the elements,” she begged
him. “Make one for earth, for fire, for sea, and for air that wherever I go
there will be a companion for me.”
This idea pleased Neron and at last he bowed to
her wishes. First he made of water, Triona, half woman, half fish. Second he
made of fire, Phiron, the salamander. Third he made of air, Ariaj, the swift,
who was a shapeshifter and very beautiful. But he could not give life to the
earth, which was Nomra’s.
Neron approached her on her throne surrounded by
birds. “Nomra, together we shall make this, our second child,” he said.
“These beings are strange and terrifying,” Nomra
said. “I do not wish to make another.”
“Love you not Onera, your very likeness?” Neron
asked.
“Yes,” Nomra said. “She is sublime and sufficient.
Triona is fickle, Phiron is brash, Ariaj is uncanny. Why create more?”
Neron could not prevail upon her to help create a
being from the earth. When he told Onera that he was unable to complete her
request she was insistent. The four beings must be accomplished.
“But I cannot give life to earth without Nomra,
and she refuses to aid me,” Neron said.
“I will speak to her,” Onera said. But Nomra hid
from Onera and would not let her daughter see her.
“She will prevail upon me,” Nomra said to herself.
“For I cannot resist her.”
“We will trick her then,” said Onera. “Form the
creature as one of your animals that she loves.”
So Neron formed a hart of earth and brought it to
Nomra.
“This noble hart is dying,” Neron said, showing
her the lifeless form. “Quicken him.”
Nomra was filled with pity for the beautiful
creature, one of the first that Neron had formed for her from the Dark. “My
power is in the earth and the growing things,’ she said. “You are the one to
quicken this dying creature. Yours is the power of the living, moving things.”
“It will not respond to me alone, perhaps together
we can save it,” Neron said. They lay their hands upon the hart and it sprang
up, its false hart-skin falling away to reveal the man shape with the hart’s
head.
“What is this?” Nomra demanded. But she knew what
had happened and that she had been tricked. Amalteron rumbled and cracked with
her anger. Onera whisked the new creature away to the Island Onerae and waited
while Amalteron erupted. Onera named the earth creature, her brother, Nemrus,
the first son.
Thus was Nomra’s ire kindled against her daughter.
Nemrus was not like his three sibling elementals.
They were wild, tempestuous. Nemrus was quiet, solid, and temperate. But when
his wrath was stirred, his anger burned and convulsed with all the power of his
mother, and all the strength of the earth. He made his abode in the mountains
and watched over the animals, a king and a judge.
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