Beginnings

While they sit by the fire in the middle of the Great Salt Desert, Hoopla tells this story:

In the beginning was Llyr and Llyr was movement. By moving, Llyr defined Llyr and not-Llyr; here and not-here; now and not-now. Ages passed and not-here, not-now, not-Llyr grew. Thus was the shape of a world born from the pathways of Llyr, in the eternal circle of her infinite roamings.

On a distant dune, a bloody-faced woman wails for her demon lover. The moonlight strips her of all color, all past, all names.

The past piled up and clung to Llyr the ever-moving, dragged at her peaceful memory, and she beat strange and unknowable wings against the touch of it. The past was strong, but Llyr was stronger. Strength was effort and effort was sweat and from the dew of Llyr’s flight was an atmosphere born, thick, fertile and miasmous. And still Llyr moved, flying now, through a world of air and light, up and not-up, flying in the eternal path of her traveling.

They are far from the Tangled Western Woods, and have farther yet to go before they come to Albion on the edge of the winedark sea. Skiff nods his great head, half-dreaming of the great rabbits who move like men through the shadowed trees.

Movement in air was wind, and so the air slowly turned with Llyr, paced to her pacing, moved with her moving, and the waters settled to the bottom and turned more slowly still, and so there was water and not-water, air and not-air, and all moving with restless Llyr, all stirred gently by the never-ceasing wind of her flight, Llyr, the first, the moving.