The Elders track their history back only a few hundred years, infant time in the longer history of the Stone People. Even so, these human Elders who call themselves simply “The Storytellers” have held the stories from all time and understand that all stories arise from Still Mountain as naturally as rain flows down its slopes.
Their early prophets saw a time when stories themselves would be threatened by a too-rapidly changing world. Their mission was to preserve not only the Story Board game, but the generative nature of stories themselves. They saw this generative quality as the primary force of the creative universe. Without it, all of earth would wither and die.
None of the current Elders, except perhaps Simon, knew the exact origins of the Story Board. An earlier version of the board was preserved under glass and is thought to be a thousand years old. Its images, drawn on a tanned hide, were so beautiful that sometimes Simon did his morning prayers before the glass case trying to feel in his own fingers the energy of the one who had drawn such images.
The tanned hide traced a trail of spaces around and around in an ever-tightening spiral toward the center where Still Mountain was drawn. The green of the forests was a fresh, spring green, the white of The Great Desert of Lost Ideas as white as bone, and the dusty brown of Still Mountain itself looked as if the hand that had painted it had just put his brush down that morning.
A quiet reflection
What is it in your own life that feels worth protecting—not because it is fragile, but because it is generative?
What is it in your own life that feels worth protecting—not because it is fragile, but because it is generative?
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