In the Beginning, There Was the Crocodile

From the first cycle of The Song of the Naacals:

And so it is said that the Home-God having roamed on long wanderings came to a place of rest and there said to himself ‘And here I will sleep and dream of all of the many things that I have seen, and I shall wander no more.’ And so he made for himself in his mind an ocean and set upon it all of the many things that he had seen, that he might dream of swimming among them. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that after long years the People who had learned the Ways came to the Home-God and saw that his slumber was filled with dreams and said to one another 'At times let us ascend to this ocean of memory to linger there in bliss beyond the woes and dangers of the World.'

And so it was so.

And so it is said that among the People there were those who cast aside false teachings and said to one another that famine and pestilence and war were close upon them in the World and that they should not remain there. And so it was that those among the People who said such things ascended to the Home-God and there dwelt amongst his memories without returning and said to one another that this was good. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that the People who had ascended to the Home-God built for themselves a city to float upon his ocean and that they said to one another, ‘Let us call this place the Unremembered City, since it is the home we have created here and it is not remembered by the Home-God but built afresh. And let us call one another the Unremembered People.’ 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that the Unremembered People knew great peace and that they prospered there. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that after long years in which the Unremembered People knew great peace that Others ascended one by one and that these Others were finally seven and so they came to be known by the Unremembered People as the Seven. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that the Seven did not know the Ways and so what they brought with them also remained and so did their memories remain in the dreams of the Home-God. And so it was that the Unremembered People saw this and were dismayed, and they said to one another, ‘What is to be done about the Seven and their memories which now remain the dreams of the Home-God?’ And so it was that the Unremembered People made war upon the memories of the Seven and sought to cast them out. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that in the war between the Unremembered People and the Seven there was great power and might and that there arose many heroes and that there was much wrath and woe and ruin. And so it was that in the tumult the Home-God awakened from his slumber and was filled with malice on his waking after his long eons of sleep. 

And so it was so. 

And so it is said that the Unremembered People and their Unremembered City, and the Seven, and all of their memories and the memories of the Home-God too in his malice descended upon the World afresh and that all was in confusion thereafter. 

And so it was so.