© Daniel S. Wall, October 4, 2026.
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This is Chapter 6 of the most authoritative account of creation contained in the Stone Philosophic. A full table of contents can be found here.
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When Mirona next found herself with child, she sent for Eleenian to aid in the birth of her child. She sent word through Hare, but Hare couldn’t find Eleenian, so he asked Raven to take wing and search for her from up high in the skies. Exhausted, Raven returned to ground and asked Coyote to try the desert, but Coyote soon became distracted with a small bird. In the end, he returned with feathers in his mouth and a small cricket in his paws. The cricket tried singing for the Goddess, but this only took away her dreams and filled her with fear. When Raven returned at last to Mirona, he brought only clay. Hare tried to fashion the clay into a baby, but he succeeded only in making a rattle. This too irritated Mirona, and thus her mind became winter. At the first signs of quickening in her womb, Mirona felt strife within her. In the evening, she heard wolves howling in the night, and foxes could be seen hunting about in the morning. By midday, bears and wildcats wandered about Mirona’s home.
Mirona did not give birth to one child, this time; She gave birth to three. Only two of them survived. Effinthistle, Goddess of the Elves made her appearance first, followed soon after by Ogath, Lord of the Orc hordes. It is said that the two of them, brother and sister, smiled upon each other for a brief moment before the birth of their youngest brother.[1] Who he was, and what kindred should have been born with him, nobody will ever know. That child and all its domain was lost to the world in the stillness of its birth, as was any hope of peace between its siblings. To this day, each blames the other for the death of their youngest sibling, and their words soon gave way to blows, and Mirona wept for an age.[2][3]
Ogath called his hordes into being and Effinthistle sang the trees into being along with the elves and so many of their kindred. but Ogath brought fire to kiss the branches of her sylvan fortress. Effinthistle sang the fire back upon the orc hordes, even as Ogath cut down the greatest trees and scorched their seeds.
Exhausted, Mirona finally stopped weeping long enough to beg her youngest children for peace. Neither listened to her.
Hearing a sound just beyond his sight, Ogath chased it all the way into the wastelands whereupon Coyote finally dropped his rattle and slipped away. Seeing her brother with his back turned, Effinthistle readied a great arrow, but Raven threw sparks into the skies and the elven goddess soon turned her attention to the wondrous new stars. For his own part, Hare taught all the gentle creatures of the earth how to hide and to run, and thus to survive the presence of new creatures with which they now had to share the world.
And finally, there was peace.
When winter finally gave rise to spring, Mirona gave her blessings to all the new creatures of the world.
Rabbit Sage took note of all of this from his home upon the moon.
Nobody ever learned where Eleenian had been, but her apologies were met with forgiveness and love.[4]
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[1] A minor sect among the Łigen holds that the stillborn child of Mirona was neither male nor female, being neither or both. They maintain its legacy is carried in their own kindred, and in the lives of all who escape the logic of two genders. Most Łigen deny this of course, and few outside their circles doubt that the stillborn child was anything but a male, or that its nature was lost in the stillness of its birth.
[2] Few scholars would doubt that the death of the stillborn child was the work of the orc lord. Still, the wretched creatures of the Stone Philosophic put the cause of his death on Effinthistle. The greatest crime in all of history, so their shamans will tell you, was in fact carried out by the fairest of kindreds, and blamed on the children of the wastelands. True evil, so the orcs and goblins will tell us, lies not in their own filthy homes, but deep in the most beautiful forests of the world.
[3] It is of course a forgone conclusion that many of the worlds creatures did not survive this long winter. One can of course find the bones of great creatures buried deep in the soil of the Stone Philosophic. What they were and how they lived, we will never know.
[4] The Preisthood of Eleenian commonly suggests that Eleenian was lost in prayer throughout this chapter or the creation narratives. What it would mean for a goddess to pray is of course an interesting question, one asked of Eleenian perhaps more than most deities. Indeed, few of the other gods have ever been thought to pray, but Eleenian is often supposed to engage in prayer, or something like it. Critics of the cult of Eleenian are prone to suggest that the prayers of Eleenian are actually some truly malevolent form of magic. They will commonly point to her prolonged absence during this fretful chapter of creation for evidence of this supposition.