The First Queen
FiMon (fee-mon) is her name, but that's about all we have of her name. Eonigia explained that her influence was critical in the first days. Explaining with patience to the others as they began to feel, to realize for the first time. It was entirely by chance she had kept such a calm when the Gift of Sentience was first dispersed amongst our people.
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She had let the Gift wash over her like a wave in the ocean, standing in the sand, exhaling slowly as her thoughts began to race with ideas, feelings, and a compulsion to learn everything she could.
"FiMon! FiMon, please," one of her subjects begged her to come onto the shore proper, rather than stand waist-deep in the water, "You mustn't catch a cold, you mustn't lose yourself to this madness spreading amongst us all!"
There had been distress, and many Eoni had started to isolate themselves, afraid of what they had only begun to understand, afraid of the feeling of the Gift Eonigia had blessed them with.
"It is no madness, Xinri (z-in-ree)," FiMon spoke calmly as she came ashore, wringing out her gown. "Gather our people, I wish to speak with them, to tell them the truth of this so-wrongfully-called affliction."
Xinri hesitated, her eyes flickering over FiMon. There was a moment of doubt, a wonder if FiMon had lost her mind to a corrupt entity, but there was something almost alluring about it at the same time.
"FiMon, if I may," Xinri began as she took a step closer to FiMon, "Enlighten me, what does it feel like? Eonigia's blessing?"
FiMon smiled, gently caressing Xinri's cheek after another step forward. "It is loud, at first, like the tempests, before you find yourself in a sea of calm, understanding the flow of things invisible to the incoming inheritors of our world. It is the nature of our being to be stewards of the lands and the magic that surrounds us, and that is what you come to know with such a blessing."
Stewardship of land and magic wasn't unfamiliar to Xinri, yet, with how FiMon spoke, Xinri made a puzzled expression. Her eyebrow quirked up, a skepticism present in her next question. "You're saying it is a new magic then? A better understanding of our original purpose?"
"In a way, yes. But we are not bound by what our original intended purpose was, you mustn't forget that." FiMon nodded, gently tapping Xinri's forehead. "Do you want to know?"
Xinri felt a shiver go through her entire being, the way FiMon held her in that moment caused Xinri's heart to beat erratically. The sheer intensity of FiMon's gaze, the first appointed Queen, as Eonigia had declared, made her a confidant in this way.
"Yes." Xinri hadn't let out a breath before she felt the wave of emotions, the weight of everything she had questioned, both weighing on her and lifting off her mind like a gentle breeze at the same time.
FiMon let out a breath, as the deed had been done. Xinri now stood, her gaze boring into FiMon's soul.
"Do you see it now?" FiMon asked, almost hesitant. She knew that Eonigia's blessing was best given as a soul to another, but this tie between her and Xinri simply felt right.
She knew how much Xinri trusted her, and how much she trusted Xinri, so to see the tears that welled in Xinri's eyes as words died in her throat caused a small panic to stir in FiMon. "Xinri? Do you-"
"I do. I see you. All of you, of us, of- what is this?" Xinri couldn't help but hold FiMon's hand to her cheek now.
"This is what the others have been calling madness. Do you understand it to be not madness but-"
"It's awareness. I- I can see how some might panic, realizing just what we are." Xinri laughed, shaking her head. "I can't help but see it as a beautiful thought. They made us so that we could care for those coming after them into an entirely new world. Much like we prepare the way for our children."
FiMon's smile meant the world to Xinri. In truth, this felt all the more confusing, knowing that some distant mortal beings made them, rather than the good gods of the world, but at the same time, it was almost sweet. They had heralded an entirely new existence for a new kind of being, different to them, yet still compatible in some ways.
"Exactly!" FiMon nodded. "Will you go get the others, we must help them to understand."
Xinri nodded, and once she pulled away, she bound toward the woodline, off to collect everyone she could find so FiMon could explain.
Her first ordinance that evening is that our attempts should be focused on understanding, cultivating life where we can, and the importance of being a tribe.
The Guidance of FiMon is as written:
1. We aim to understand, first and foremost. There is no right or wrong opinion, except if there is solid evidence proven time and again in a factual matter. Otherwise, do not seek to be right, but to understand the perspective of others.
2. Life is first and foremost, from sprouts out of the warm soils to the first breath of the babies born. It is sacred, and it is to be protected as the right of all things. Should a life need to be ended, do so with veneration, and gratitude you live in their place.
3. We live together, as one being, and to divide amongst ourselves based solely on differences in understanding our world is to murder the spirits of many. We cannot afford to split, as it will destroy any strength we may have gained together.
4. Future generations to come have every right to amend what is established, and to question the understandings of the past. The future must be better than our past, as it is built from the progress made in the present.
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This was the start of Eoni's Guidances, tenets to keep in mind all our lives, and FiMon's was foundational to amendments made for Queens after her. Now, Eonigia admitted that they weren't phrased so eloquently at the time, but the spirit of the tenets is more eloquent in their modern phrasing.
The common thought amongst traditionalists, however, is that we should have the historic phrasing with the modern phrasing, to keep the full tenets in the complete context between one another, and to note the ones that were added and removed during which periods of our history.
I don't disagree, given the tenets were once phrased as;
1. Understanding is Queen, opinions are matters of the heart until they cross the boundary of creating lies.
2. Life is sacred, as first sprout and breath prove the capacity for a new understanding and a chance for a future greater than our present.
3. A tribe is our strength, working together we thrive, divided we perish in both body and spirit.
4. The Future can rewrite the understanding of the Past, and henceforth have the right to change these tenets as they see fit so long as it aids their understanding of the world.
I find it's just as eloquent, but it doesn't capture the nuances of what life could be like now, which is why I supposed they were changed. They left so much room for interpretation, that another Queen would again change the tenets and cause issues for the sake of gaining power during a civil war. Her name isn't mentioned anywhere or by anyone anymore, and her memory is all but gone minus the fact that she is the one to blame for a majority of modern setbacks.
Though, over time, we can blame her less and less, as it becomes a pattern of behavior over time. We divide ourselves over and over again over different things, new things, since the Division. Yet, past generations continue to blame her, mentioning in whispers how the next generations wouldn't understand, can't understand, that the past will haunt us all as a permanent tarnish on our souls.
That's where I disagree, and I believe FiMon would too.
Eonigia made a specific comment about FiMon, able to quote her directly, saying "I had asked [FiMon], 'What will you do when they blame you for their struggles? For being unable to change as a result of the past?' and you know what she told me? 'They are children then, in their souls, as no one capable of seeing past themself would say that the past is to blame. Patterns can be broken, habits changed, and we see that now. I would hope that the future would not stagnate so much that we would be reduced to perpetrators of patterns perceived as permanent.' I believe I made the right choice in making her the First Queen of Eonians. That wisdom has served everyone so well across time, and your coding hadn't degenerated enough to lose coherency in operation yet, so she must have had access to everything she needed to come to that conclusion."
That begs another question for me though. If she had access to all the information she could know, including the outside world's history, why wasn't she more specific? What kept her from drawing hard lines and establishing that certain patterns weren't productive? Was it that she wanted to keep it open so that we could become just as flawed as those we interacted with? That we would eventually forget the initial gift and explain it away as Soul Magic in here?
Well, if she assumed that, she was kinda right. Nowadays, most Eoni don't question their abilities or where they come from. It's been forgotten as fewer and fewer people come in from the outside and simply are born inside this world that there is a world separate from our own out there.
There's only one journal from that time that we managed to keep from being destroyed. It's a historically colossal failure for Eoni as a species to not have a better way of keeping important historical records safer, but we can only change that moving forward.
Xinri's journal provides some insight into the other questions that Eonians had.
~~~~~
(2105 C.E. Early Summer)
I am left questioning what this understanding FiMon keeps insisting upon. She is voracious in her questioning of everyone, how they feel, how they're doing, what they're doing, and why. The others Blessed like her have shown this same curiosity, pressing for answers that we can sometimes give them, but the others have no true answer.
"Why do you care about this particular activity? What intrigues you about it?" Who asks those kinds of questions of the hunters? The gatherers? It is in the name of our survival so that we can live without worrying about food. What other answers need there be?
Some have taken to not eating normal foods, and appear to be fine. Their tongues have changed though, as a result. Long, butterfly proboscis that extend to tap the chests of other creatures. For a strange reason, it makes them terrifyingly good hunters, as the animals of the island don't fear them.
Though, with such strange happenings, I find myself more and more drawn to FiMon. She seems more confident in Eonigia's faith in her, calmer and more composed than she had been in recent months. Does this "Blessing" allow for this calm? Does it settle their thoughts despite their erratic behavior and questioning?
I have to ask her eventually. I have to ask her a lot of things eventually. She's my closest friend and I'd hate to see her go mad from this all. Hate to see her go mad and not know that at least I'll be there for her, no matter what path she goes down.
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These questions don't entirely align with what Eonigia mentioned about everyone getting the blessing eventually, with full access to everything they have to know.
So which is it? Did they all know, or was it something special about one lineage? If it is a special gift of a lineage, it makes sense they became the rulers, able to make decisions that followed logically on what they knew of both worlds. If not, then why did Eonians not organize these things on their own? Why the questions about the changes? Why not jump from working solely with wood and leather to more advanced technology?
It seems like there was only ever partial understanding at best, and that these stories romanticize FiMon as being a ruler wiser than she was. Mistaking someone just trying their best as having some otherworldly wisdom or an understanding beyond what is in their present reality creates so many problems for us now.
The past has to be just the past before we can accept why we haven't gotten further as the present after all, right? That's my thought at least.
That does lead me to the next stories though, as a lot of them stem from this problem. Souls specifically as a focus point of our power and understanding of the world around us. Eonians don't feed on actual souls, but rather the code that allows creatures of all varieties to exist here. Soul Food is an extension of this idea that the "Blessing" of sentience was complete, outside of subjective existence.
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