Making Babies
a Balazaring Myth
In the days when the grass was greener, the hills were less steep and
berries were on every bush our ancestors were strange creatures. They
had two heads, four arms and four legs and two heads. The two heads
of our ancestors were very happy to look longingly into each other+s
eyes,
in fact they spent all their time doing just this. So much staring did
they do
that they started to weaken from hunger as they were too busy gazing to
do any grazing (back in those days our ancestors ate only plants just
like
every other animal did). Well, our ancestors got weaker and weaker and
became less and less able to do anything (other than lie around
muttering
pitifully and looking yearningly into each other+s eyes) that the
Creator was
moved to do something. He came striding along with Squirrel the
Trickster
scurrying along beside him and looked down at our ancestors. "Look at
them,"
she told Squirrel, "Pathetic. I created them that way so they wouldn+t
get lonely,
not so they+d lie around moaning from hunger because their heads are too
smitten with each other to eat. What should I do?"
"Perhaps I can help them?" suggested Squirrel.
Creator looked sideways at Squirrel with doubt in his face and said,
"What
mischief do you have in mind now Squirrel?"
"Mischief? Me? Why, none. I just want to help these people Creator. I
feel for
their agony. Really I do."
Creator looked at Squirrel with doubt clearly written on her face and
said, "Alright
Squirrel. I will let you help my people but if you are trying to trick
me..."
"No tricks Creator, I will ensure that your people can feed themselves
AND
that they won+t be lonely."
Creator shook his head and strode off mumbling underneath her breath.
"Now," said Squirrel, "I need to visit Stone Man." Squirrel scampered
off to
find Stone Man. He found Stone Man walking back and forth, back and
forth,
back and forth carrying a strange metal object.
"Greetings, Stone Man," said Squirrel, "I come to you from the Creator
to ask a
favour of you in his name."
Stone Man turned his blank gaze to Squirrel and stared coldly at him.
"What favour do you ask of me in the Creator+s name Squirrel?" he said
in his flat
voice. Squirrel shivered inside and said,
"I need to borrow one of your tools."
"I need all my tools for my work,"said Stone Man.
"Oh don+t worry I won+t need it for long,"replied Squirrel.
"All right which tool do you wish to borrow in the Creator+s name then?"
"I believe you call it Axe," said Squirrel.
Stone Man put his metal object down and strolled off with jerky motions
down
into his burrow. After a long while he re-emerged with Ax in its hands.
"Here you go Squirrel. I lend you my Ax as a favour to the Creator."
"You won+t regret it Stone Man, I promise you," said Squirrel as he took
Ax and slowly dragged it off.
"I had better not,"said Stone Man in his flat, emotionless voice.
Squirrel took quite a while to get back to our ancestors with Ax and as
he went
along he scraped a deep furrow in the ground with Ax, cutting bushes and
small
trees down as he dragged it along. Dark Man saw him doing this and
squinting
and peering nearsightedly at Squirrel and shielding his eyes from the
Sun came
over.
"Hello, friend Squirrel," he boomed, "Where are you going and what is
that you
have in your hands?"
Squirrel jumped straight up in the air as he hadn+t heard Dark Man come
up.
"Oh this old thing? It+s something I borrowed from Stone Man."
"May I see it?" asked Dark Man.
"Well, I promised Stone Man I would get it right back to him," started
Squirrel but
then he saw the anger growing in Dark Man+s eyes and he finished
quickly,"
but I+m sure Stone Man wouldn+t mind if you just looked at it."
Dark Man took Axe from Squirrel and easily swung it around his head. He
turned
and chopped a mighty tree down with a single blow.
"I wouldn+t mind borrowing this to show Green Man if you don+t mind
Friend Squirrel."
"Well, I did promised Stone Man I+d get it right back to him Friend Dark
Man.."
"Oh don+t worry about Stone Man Friend Squirrel I wouldn+t mind showing
him a new
way to use his tool too. Besides, there seems to be a weakness about
this, what did
you call it?"
"Axe."
"Ah, yes as I was saying there seems to be a weakness about this Axe."
And saying
so Dark Man swung it above his head and brought it smashing down with a
mighty
crash. Squirrel cowered until he realized that the Axe had hit a nearby
mountain top
flattening the mountain and splitting Axe into two!
Dark Man stooped and picked up both halves and handed one half to
Squirrel.
"Here," he said, "Here+s Stone Man+s half. This is my half."
Having said this he turned and strode off to find Green Man and show him
his
new tool. Squirrel shook his head and started dragging Axe off to find
our
ancestors. Straining and groaning he dragged Axe along behind him
knocking
trees down and gouging the earth. Finally he came upon our ancestors
lying about
looking longingly into the eyes of their second head.
"Greetings, oh people of the Creator," said Squirrel.
No one answered or even looked at him.
"Hello?" said Squirrel a little louder. No response. "HELLO!!!!", yelled
Squirrel at
the top of his voice. Finally this got a response. One head of a pair
languidly turned
to look at Squirrel and said dreamingly, "Hello Squirrel, how are you."
Before
Squirrel could reply the head heard its pair whimpering and turned
quickly
back to look into its eyes, murmuring softly to comfort it. "That tears
it", said
Squirrel, "I can't take any more of this nonsense." And saying this he
took
Axe and swinging it high above his head he brought it crashing down to
cut
the ancestor who had addressed him in half! Each half had one head, two
arms, one body and two legs. The new pair of creaturesscreamed and
howled in pain as their life's blood drained out. Squirrel was apalled
by
the results of his action but thinking quickly he snatched up a pine
needle
and some grass and sewed up their wounds. He tried to do a neat job but
he had trouble gathering the material up so one of the pair was left
with two
bits sticking out up top and a hole in the bottom half and the other of
the pair
had nothing up top and a bit sticking out down below. The pair sat down
and
looked around dazedly at the world they had never given a second notice
to
before. They looked at each other and the world in terror and tried hard
to stick
themselves back together. They grappled for a while trying to force
their bodies
together and struggled in a frenzied manner for quite a while. This
attempt seemed
to have unexpected results and after a while the pair stopped what they
doing and
fell back with pleased and exhausted expressions on their faces.
Squirrel was
amazed and envious. "Huh, imagine that. They get to have fun by
themselves,
yet not by themselves. Now what about the rest of this sorry lot."
Saying this
Squirrel shouldered Axe and went to work with a gusto.
He chopped and he sewed, chopped and sewed, chopped and sewed. Every
time he got slightly different results, bigger or littler bits sticking
out front or down
below. The results didn't seem to make any difference to our ancestors.
Each
pair who was formerly one tried to stick themselves back together and
seemed
to end up enjoying the act. Just to see what would happen Squirrel made
some
pairs the same. These pairs tried to stick themselves back together
again too
and had to resort to some very different ways to do acheive this. The
end results
were the same though, they were frantic at first and then excited and
finally ended
up exhausted. Squirrel was tired too and his poor paws were sore as sore
could
be from all that sewing. He didn't want to rest yet because there was
another trick
he wanted to try. He started collecting up one of each pair and went
around mixing
the pairs up. After he'd done this he lay down for a quick nap. When he
woke up he
saw that the ancestors were grappling again. It didn't seem to matter to
most of them
whether they were with their original half or not. Some of the ones he
made the same
though didn't seem to be too happy about being with halves that weren't
the same
shape as they were but others didn't seem to care. He noticed that some
of them
were looking around and selecting new halves for their pairings. "Suit
yourselves",
said Squirrel and went off to see what other mischief he could get up to
with Axe.
The Creator came upon our ancestors and saw what Squirrel had done. At
first
she was furious enough to eat stone but eventually she realized that
Squirrel
had done our ancestors a favour. Creator smacked our ancestors around
enough to get their attention and told them they would now have to act
like all the
other animals. He gave a present to our ancestors by letting them make
little
copies of themselves whenever they tried to stick themselves back
together
again. (This was supposed to make up for all the effort they were
putting into
sticking themselves back together again but the joke was on the Creator
because
the act was reward in of itself). Well our ancestors still wanted to
stick themselves
back together again but the fact that they were cold and hungry seemed
more
important to them now. They still spent a fair bit of time trying to
stick themselves
back together again (we still do) but they spent time finding food and
shelter too.
As for Squirrel, well Stone Man and Green Man were quite annoyed with
him,
Stone Man because he'd let Dark Man break his tool and Green Man for
what
Dark Man had done with his half of the broken tool. But of course
Squirrel talked
himself out of that trouble too! And ever since that day we Balazarings
have been
trying to find our lost halves and making more Balazarings who want to
find their
lost halves and so on and so on.
Oliver D. Bernuetz
www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/realm/5545
bernuetz.oliver_at_cbsc.ic.gc.ca
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #641
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