How the World Came to Be
In the ancient days before man or the Antafani ever existed, there lived the two gods Hum and Dum. They lived in a vast black darkness through which even they could barely see and spent their lives quarreling over various things. Among the most persistent subjects was Hum's desire to create beutiful things; trees, animals, rivers, lakes, and the like, and Dum's desire to destroy them all.
Many a time Hum would vanish out of the emptyness some little being when Dum would scream, swipe at it with his hands, and throw it into the abyss where it would, half-fashioned, whither and die. For hundreds of years this would go on until finally Hum decided to stand up to his partner.
When Hum created his next little animal, he threw it a very short distance ahead of him. When Dum dived for it, Hum took the chance and pounced on him. Dum screamed when he realized Hum's cunning and the battle began. At first Hum was on top of Dum pounding away, but the latter soon rolled around until the situation was reversed.
Hum took a good few punches to his jaw, but remained unaffected. As gods of course, fighting purely amongst themselves was useless as they were both equally strong. But still they both had pride, and neither was about to let the other land the more blows. So the fight continued, and each kept rolling untill he was on top.
So fast were they rolling that the darkness around them began to get ripped apart. Soon there was white... and out of the white came other colors, such as grey or brown. Before either of them knew it they had rolled themselves into a thick brown ball, with just a little exit on top. Hum, the quicker-minded of the two, left his legs on Dum's body and jumped up. As he exited through the ever-narrowing hole, it soon closed and what was left was a sphere and Dum enclosed in it.
In Dum's rage he bellowed fire, and the little ball was enveloped in it. For ages and ages, there was nothing but fire on this little ball, and Hum could create naught. Hum contended himself by creating the best beings he could in his spare time. As the years went by, Hum became so good at this that the little figurines he whirled out of the darkness achieved perfection. He gave them the ability to survive in the darkness lilke himself, and thus the new gods were born.
But the gods were too few, and Hum was not content. He wept at his companion's foolishness and destructive nature, and to his amazement his tears mixed with the fire until there was left water, enveloped around the world. Enraged, Dum punched up against the barrier around him to try and get through, but it held firm. Instead, the marks left by his thrusts became the continents.
Hum was overjoyed, and set to creating beings. He first created the Great Fish, Uriqua, to inhabit the oceans. On the land he left the Great Monkey, Hiyum, above the land the Great Eagle Syroka, and under the land the Great Mole Sikurt. Each he made the protector beings of their dominions, and gave them the duty of protecting any others he would create.
For years he did so, until one day he desired to make a being as good as possible, but still under the gods. The result was people, who he quickly blessed with the ability to walk on two legs like himself and an intellect superior to that of his other creations. Upon seeing this, the enraged Dum once again spit fire, through the tiny little cracks in the world. But this time, the humans took the gift and learned how to create it themselves. Dum's unintentional present would spur people to new heights.
And that is how the world and people came to be. Hum, who had put so much of his soul into his creations, died after age unimaginable. The mole, the monkey, the eagle, and the fish all cried, as did the infant gods. The early people were never too familiar with their original creator, and in time they strayed away from him. Dum would stay buried inside the earth. His tantrums would be the earthquakes that would often haunt the people of the world in the future. And so the world that Hum created, filled with his own soul, changed forms and shapes by itself, interrupted only occasionally by the never ceasing rage of Dum, who himself had died and left his soul at the core of the earth; the vengence to destroy all that Hum had created. It was the age of creation, and this strange time and place would remain until many years later, when the gods had grown up and split up their duties, given the humans instructions of worship, and so begun the age of the gods.