the silver stars

The Silver Stars.

The sun shone brightly on the fields of Gquirema, and the land lived in peace. Out in the fields and on the open plains the people cultivated the land, and on the higher ground stood large, beautiful cities with towers painted in splendid colours. Flags wafted in the wind from the tops of the towers, and the streets were paved with granite and stones. They wound in narrow, snaky paths through the lovely houses and market-places. Temples to the gods were erected on the hills of each city, and during the rest and feast days great spiritual ceremonies were held in them.

The people of the land were called the Ngayar, which meant 'Nomad' in their tongue, and was handed down by the peoples before them, who had been a travelling nation. But now their culture had evolved to great city-states all across the land. They experimented with the beginings of science, and had a great culture of music and art. Vast, eloborate murals were painted on the walls of cities, and the craft was considered a great art by the Ngayar.

And as the world lay peacefully, and grew under the golden sun, and the silver stars, the people prospered and became many in number. Their farms and their cities flourished, and their culture and their science progressed. Life was sweet as the streams on the Crispian Mountains, and the peolpe flourished happy and contented for generation after generation.

Until the day that gods came down from the sky...

II.

They came in great chariots of thunder and lighting down from the heavens, and life in their wolrd changed forever. The Strangers did not stay long, ere they departed back to the sky and stars, but in the short time that they spent on the planet they passed on much information to the people. New sciences, new arts and new music and speech.

The Strangers left, and none of their kind remained upon the land, but only the knowledge and the secrets that they brought down from the stars. And the new world was reborn again with greater glory, splendour and might. The cities were rebuilt over the ages to great monoliths of stone and marble. The peolpe mastered flight, and all means of modern transport, and the cities were bathed in brilliant artificial light during the inky, star-spangled nights. Science became a religion, and the mind conquered all means of brute-force and nature.

But along with progress came disension, greed and envy. Machines of war were built from the new-found knowledge of science, and the peoples became devided with one city-state waging war on anothher. Terrible destruction were sown on one another, and the wars raged for centuries like wild-fire. The beautiful cities burned, and countless people died; both military and civilian. After a long time the fires of hate burned themselves out, and the world entered a new period of peace and prosperity.

With time the wars became forgotten, and science was once more applied on more progresive purposes. One day they themselves reachhed for the heavens, and started thhe beginings of space travel, and some of them chose to leave those rich fields of Gquirema, and settle the dark reaches of space beyond the silver stars.

Long ago the gods had come and gone, but life went on always, and now life itself reached for the heavens, a new begining, new dreams, and a new home...

The End.

JP Brown - 09/08/2008.