Tales from the Shadows: Creation

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. What they didn’t tell you is that He also created my world, Adamah. The year is officially 00001. The beginning, that is our creation, is a bit hazy. I can’t be too sure of the exact date, so I’ll call it Day Five, assuming that it took four days to create the first plane.

The previous four days are as follows:

Day One, there is nothing (nothing means nothing). So, following tradition, God created the light. Needless to say, it was good. Like I said, it was good, so He takes the darkness and sets it apart and calls it “night.” That was good, too. And that’s that.

Day Two, God makes the sky itself. Since the world was a complete desert wasteland, it was probably a bit more difficult to do. Anyway, this was also good. Then he put lights in the sky. He made the sun, a floating pale mass of light, and the moons, three dimmer masses of blue and silver. That was really good. Then there was evening the Second Day.

Day Three, God made water. Like I said, before day three there was no water. So he had to invent something that our world had never seen before. Something fluid, drinkable and useful. He called it water. Where it gathered, he called it an “ocean” or a “sea,” and where it wasn’t present, he called it “land.”

He also made something eerily similar to water. It wasn’t drinkable, but it was still incredibly versatile. We call it dentenite today. And guess what, it was all good. In fact, it was probably one of God’s better days.

Day Four, this is where He departed from an earlier operation of similar design. Instead of creating land, water and vegetation all on one day, he created the land and water first. Then he created vegetation the next day. So He created trees and bushes and seaweed and all sorts of different stuff.

It was good. Very good indeed. He liked it. Personally, I can’t blame him much. The best part was that he made it all with no restrictions. We weren’t designed to be perfect creatures. Too many failures… But that affair was earlier by at least a month.

Anyway, on Day Five, we were created. The Shadow Guardians (myths in and of ourselves, but not really since I’m alive to tell you this). I remember opening my eyes for the first time. I thought to myself what a novel experience it was. Not knowing what else to do, I picked myself up. Only to fall back flat on my tail again. Speaking of tails, that was the reason I fell. It was one of those moments when you know something in theory, but when you put it into practice you fail miserably.

That happened when I tried flying too, for the record. Also for the record, the Wind Guardian and the Thunder Guardian failed too.

But I tried again, figuring that if I kept at it I would get the hang of standing soon enough. I was right. About the fifth or sixth try, I stood. Then I discovered I wasn’t alone in my vain attempts to move about.

I said hello. Yet another novel experience. Voice? New concepts apparently scared me. Not too much to say hello again, but it was certainly enough to stop me from saying anything other than hello.

The said hello too. They conversed and tried to get me to converse as well. So, putting aside my unreasonable fear of talking, I spoke. I remember our first conversation quite clearly.

We talked about the strange thing walking towards us and about how everything was so pretty and natural. We also talked about how the-strange-thing-walking-towards-us made probably made everything seeing as how he was here first.

Little did we know the strange-thing-walking-towards-us was God himself. That changed when he spoke. For something that seemed so small compared to us, He sure had a commanding voice. (I’d like to say now that I was really afraid of Him).

Never again have I heard a voice like that. The only way to describe Him was that he looked pure. His voice was pure, his face was pure, his stance was clear. We were all in awe of His presence.

But he spoke. Perhaps you’d like to know what He said. Well he first told us what exactly we were and what we were made of. He called us Shadow Guardians and told us we were made of Spirit. So there we are: ten spirits and God, standing/sitting/falling in a circle.

Then he told us what we were for. He said our purpose was to protect our world from natural disasters by using our abilities to lower the effects of them. Seems complicated at first, but once you understand the principles behind it it’s really quite simple.

Then came the fun part. We got all our elements at that point and learned how to use them properly. I got fire; therefore I am now called the Flame Guardian. Frankly, I enjoy being a pyro. Aside from giving me fire; he also gave me the ability to use other elements in smaller amounts.

He took us out, one by one, and taught us how to do some really neat tricks. My personal favorites were the elemental combinations. Mix fire and wind in the right proportions and you get a pyro tornado. Mix ice, fire and thunder, and you get flaming hailstones. (Real nice for back burns during the wildfire season).

Out of all of them, though, I liked the combination between light and dark. If you do it just right, you get a glow stone. A glow stone is a really rare commodity in our world. Only really talented elemental benders (by really talented, I mean one in fifty billion talent) and three of the Shadow Guardians can make them, myself included.

When you think of a glow stone, think of a mood ring. Those are really crude, chemically engineered and enhanced glow stones. Nothing but really, really, really cheap imitation knock-offs.

All that happened on Day Five, wow.

Day Six came slowly. I had settled down for the night, curled up next to a fire of my own making. When I woke up on Day Six, He was already at work creating stupid animals. That took Him all day.

So, while he was working, the rest of us were deciding who would lead us, per His instructions. The Light Guardian was elected to lead us. The Dark Guardian was appointed second in command, and I was appointed third. That was something special for me.

We also trained that day. A lot. All day in fact. By the end of it, I was sure I had improved a hundred-fold. I’m sure everyone else improved a hundred-fold too, but I was too tired to notice. But before evening, He showed us what he had done that Day.

He made the beasts of the sea, the land, and the air. They were, so far, the crowning glory of his achievements here. Then came Day Seven.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. When He made the Earth, he made it in six days and rested the seventh. But when He made Earth, he didn’t make us or train us. He didn’t have to worry about all that.

Day Seven: this is when He created the first people. (Absolutely incredible the way he did it. He took electrical charges from lightning already in the human world and fused that with organic materials.). I was again in awe of His ingenuity.

The amazing thing was that he didn’t create just one. (By first, I mean in the plural form of the word). He made hundreds of them; tiny little balls of flesh and they were, surprisingly, intelligent. It was absolutely wonderful. These were our charges. The ones we were assigned to protect from the dangers of such a harsh world.

There was just one thing that I was found shocking. They were not designed to be perfect. (Neither were we for that matter). They were still a little naïve, but all in all, they were ok, not that they could see us or hear us. They didn’t even know we existed.

The rest of the Shadow Guardians and me were fine with that, though. They didn’t need to know. I was happy to be doing my job, the Creator (that’s what we started calling God) watching our back.

Anyway, that’s the Adamah’s creation in a nut shell. My personal account of it at least. I like to think that I was witness to something extremely special when I saw what He did. To leave you with something nice to think about, think about the first time you remember looking up and seeing the stars and moon(s) in your “sky.”