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PodCastle 352: The Creation and Destruction of the World
* Author : Ann Leckie
* Narrator : Diane Severson
* Host : M.K. Hobson
* Audio Producer : Peter Wood
*
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PodCastle 352: The Creation and Destruction of the World is a PodCastle original.
Rated R. Contains, well, Destruction (and Creation)
The Creation and Destruction of the World
By Ann Leckie
At one time the waters were divided and contained, and dry land was raised up out of the sea, mountains and valleys, hills and plains, and the people lived there. They lived this way for a long time, standing on the bones of the world, until it chanced that they angered the lord of wind and storm. The lord of storms caused it to rain, and it rained for days, for weeks, for months, until there was no dry spot on the face of the world. The low places were deep lakes, the high places awash. In the highest place every step was ankle-deep in water. The clothes the people wore, the beds they slept in, were soaked and dripping. The very food they ate was soaked and dissolved by the rain. And day by day it rained, and the water grew still deeper.
“We will drown!” the people cried. “Alas for us, and for our children! It would be better if we had been fish!” And many of these people, who cried so, were turned into fish, and swam away into the sea. And after this no one gave birth to anything but fish.
There was a woman who gave birth, and the child was a fish. The woman would not put the child into the sea, because it was hers and sickly, but instead kept it beside her. “I will go to the lord of storms,” the woman said, “and beg for the god’s forgiveness, and the life of my child.” And so she did, swaddling the child and keeping it wet with her tears. She traveled far, where even the waters could not reach, until she was too weary and grieved to go further, and some way past that she came to the palace of the lord of the winds.