If found, please return to Hureme (13 14 15)

– Most of the pages are illegible, but the following passage remains intact

There once were two friends from many millennia ago, they were the heat upon the horizon, they were the frost of morning dew. In tandem they created a great many works, they built the mountains of Corim, carved the great Mulwich system of caves; even the rakkashe are the doing of the mighty Sule and Aesh, the castoff of carvings.

From their footprints the first people of the earth emerged, they styled themselves after the two mighty beings by making fire and cooling food to ice to keep it fresh. Sule and Aesh, flattered by the mimicry of their art, began to take care of the tiny beings taking turns keeping watch over them. When Aesh was their guardian the days were long, the crops grew strong and the people celebrated Aesh with bread and dance. When Sule had its turn, the nights became dominant, fleece grew thick, and the people praised Sule in sleep and song.

The first communities lived in harmony with Sule and Aesh for many centuries, and as the years past the two beings became more and more distant from each other, obsessed with these beings that had emerged from the dirt no more than a blink ago. Sule and Aesh competed with each other to give the humans the best gifts; Aesh made the mountains it crafted with Sule explode in a vain display of magma and might, Sule held the rivers still so that the humans might marvel at the intricacies beneath. This wondrous competition continued, until one year; Sule had made land of sea by freezing the oceanic strait, and some humans had dared to wander onto this icy abode, venturing towards a place never before known to the people of the earth.

As spring dawned and Aesh turned its attention back to the humans it was outraged at what Sule had done, creating an ice bridge, a landmass Aesh could never step foot on; Aesh believed Sule planned to steal the humans. In anger Aesh undid its friends icy work and returned the oceanic strait to its liquid form, trapping those humans who wandered far from their initial community, Aesh had claimed these humans as its own; giving them warm days and long rains for them to begin their life once more, under its watch Aesh would make sure they thrived like before.

On the other side of the strait, the community which stayed watched in amazement once more at the mighty feats committed before them, and worried for those trapped by the heat. Once Sule realised the Aesh had destroyed their art, the northerly wind picked up and Sule had made itself an outcast to sulk in solitude at the edge of the continent.

And despite spring dawning, the crops of the people left by Aesh did not grow with the vigour they should, day and night could not decide who was where when; disorder thrived, and many tried to leave, to cross the oceanic strait, to no avail. The most ambitious amidst the chaos resolved to fix the state of the world, to reunite Sule and Aesh, and in turn, humanity. And so they left for the north.

Braving Sule’s blizzards to finally reach the distraught being; in a basin of frozen tears, surrounded by the highest snow-drowned peaks, blanketed in frost. The brave humans had travelled far, and time watched as they moved, it was almost time for Sule’s watch to begin; they begged it to shake off its storms, to make peace with Aesh, so that they won’t have to suffer another half year of increasing entropy. Unbeknownst to them, the people under Aesh’s watch were making a similar plea.

The travellers though their words were ineffective, as Sule neither moved nor replied; but as the words echoed inside the great bowl, the message finally pierced the many layers of snow coating Sule’s mind, awakening it.

Collectively they traipsed back to the oceanic strait, one behemoth standing on either side. Two friends making one final creation together, an agreement not to to scorn humanity for each other’s wrongdoings. With their combined talents they formed a beautiful iridescent ice fog that shrouded the humans, and when it parted both had disappeared; scattered into the natural world, becoming part of every pair destined never to meet: the sun and stars, magnetic poles, light and shadow.

They left humanity with all their creations to do with as they pleased, to be neither help nor hindrance.

The divided people never did reunite, but as time moved on, so did they, journeying away from the coastlines that divided them.