The Fires Legacy
Eonigia was our home, and now Xarin will be the home to those who accept him. Earlier I mentioned many had rejected the idea of Xarin being our new home and where we can go now that Eonigia has passed. This was especially present in class today as many of my peers remarked upon and questioned his capability of providing that sense of safety for everyone.
It's possible, however, that this dogmatic belief that there can be no other home comes from one of the stories passed down. Each time the name is different, but they all follow the same pattern of calling this story "Home's Origins" or "About The Home of All Eoni".
Home's Origins
It is known that the beginning was peaceful, for our blessed home. It was understood that her graciousness to allow us to reside on her very body, despite our faults and harms to her, was a gift she chose to give us.
Eonigia, as our home, must be protected. We tend and care for the lands, and allow for the balance furthermore to continue. We guard the womb of the Mother that has guarded us in turn from the dangers of a world beyond the sea.
Naveha knew this, knew what it meant to guard and venerate the land she occupied, and kept the tenets of a Guardian with the utmost faith and devotion.
So when the wind threatened to spread the sparks of the fires started by the once-believed dormant volcano, she was torn. Fires, as Eonigia had described them, kept the land from being choked by overgrowth, and while it weakened her, in the end, she described the breath to be freer, deeper, and less of a struggle.
The embers flickered in Naveha's hands, not quite ready to go out, burning the palms of her hands, almost begging to be let go to fulfill their purpose.
Naveha clasped her hands around the embers, looking at the forests just beyond the bottom of the volcano, watching as the lava poured off into the ocean. It was fortunate the river of molten rock was only seeking to expand the island, rather than destroy the settlements already present on the older surface.
Naveha knew that the homes of her people would not survive the fires, they would burn just as the shrubs and undergrowth would. Yet, days before, Eonigia had vanished, admitting to feeling deeply unwell, as though there was not enough air for her to fill her lungs properly.
The volcano rumbled, another explosion of lava bursting from the gaping hole in the crust of the Earth. The smoke curled, reaching up into the endless sky, a horrible shadow of the tragedies to come.
"We cannot interfere," Her father's warning rang between her ears, "the island knows what it needs most, we must trust that Eonigia will allow us to remain, so long as we allow her to maintain herself. We only protect her cycles, we do not determine what is best for her."
Naveha shook her head, opening up her hands, the embers still burning, pulsing like a heartbeat in her palms, growing brighter with the wind that passed through her fingers.
It had always been understood that Eonigia was the end all, be all, of her care, of what she allowed to go on. The fact the volcano was a part of her, that she had allowed it to erupt without thought of the people below, disturbed Nevaha. It was unlike Eonigia to be so careless about the people present. Was this some kind of punishment? Some kind of retribution for fires accidentally set in the past? For some period of overharvest of the plants inside the deep green forests of the island?
Naveha shook her head. If Eonigia was to be so petty, then she could be too. She clasped her hands harder around the flickering embers, snuffing them out, before turning to run down the mountain.
Speaking with the others, she instructed that every home be soaked through with water, every tree and plant having the same done to them.
"Leave no leaf untouched, no kindling shall burn."
When they questioned the direction, she lied, saying Eonigia did not know that the volcano had erupted and that it was their duty to protect the lands and her lungs.
The steam and smoke from embers fizzling out startled her people, but Naveha watched and kept up with the water. By the time the volcano had quieted, her village, and her people, were safe, and their homes stood amongst the steam rising from the leaves.
Eonigia, shortly after dusk, appeared to the village.
"What have you done?" She sounded near breathless, a rasp in her voice, looking exhausted from an ordeal Naveha had no idea she could undergo. "Why hasn't the underbrush burnt away?"
"We drenched the homes and underbrush with water before the embers could catch," Naveha explained, pride swelling in her chest. "We protected ourselves from the fires that certainly would have-"
"So you have so little faith in my protection that you would go behind my back and prevent a clearing I so desperately needed?" Eonigia stepped forward, challenging Naveha, "You would threaten my life because you doubted what I can do to protect you?"
Naveha was taken aback, seeing how hostile Eonigia had become. The rage that burned like the embers that had burned her palms betraying everything her elders had warned her about in Eonigia.
It was her life, this island, after all, it was her body, and only by her favor did the Eoni live there.
"I could not be certain that our homes wouldn't burn! That the people would not get caught in the fires! Every time the underbrush is burnt away, we lose dozens of our own! You cannot call that protection–" Eonigia cut Naveha off from her self-righteous defense of her actions.
"Have you once considered that each time, there has been prevention of overpopulation so that everyone can eat? Have you considered that, perhaps, it was the request of the elders to go?" Eonigia questioned Naveha. "What you have done is keep those from the peaceful warmth of an end they requested, you have started to suffocate me and prevented so many from eating without fear! Naveha. You have failed your people, and you have failed me."
Eonigia could feel it becoming harder and harder for her to breathe, to speak as clearly as she could. Exhaustion hung off her form like weights. It had taken too much from her to have the volcano erupt just when she had needed it, and now, she felt helpless, afraid that she may not be able to provide for those now depending on her.
"Naveha," Eonigia began, "If you are so worried, I bid your people a task, to assist in ensuring that their homes are not threatened, and to ensure that the island does not become overcrowded. Only then can you redeem what you have done."
Naveha had been shaken by the declaration that she had failed the Island herself, and in doing so, had failed her people. The shock of such a declaration left her scrambling for thoughts as she watched Eonigia rasping in front of her. Eonigia looked so weak in this moment, would Naveha be killing her if she declined the task?
Naveha knew her people would reject her if she did not repent for her transgression against Eonigia. She understood that Eonigia was the authority above her, the Goddess of her people who shielded them from every harm, that they listened to first and foremost. Naveha had been careless in forgetting that Eonigia had much greater control over the land than she did.
Naveha had taken something that wasn't hers to take, control over another living being's body. A living being that was so much older than her, who knew best for themself, and yet she had made the choice seeing a pattern in the past she didn't want them to repeat.
"I want it known that I was acting in the best interest of my people," Naveha was defensive, naturally, desperate to hide the sudden guilt that crept up into her mind. "But yes, I will do whatever it takes to ensure your health and the safety of my people."
"Once every four full moons, in the dead of the afternoon, start fires across the island, and let them burn away nothing but the undergrowth," Eonigia instructed. "Every fourth full moon from tonight, the land will burn and burn freely within the undergrowth. Am I understood?"
"You are, Eonigia." Naveha could only nod through the feeling of a growing pit in her stomach. The fire tonight would have to be watched, and only she would be awake to watch over the homes.
That night, her father's home burnt down, and while he was unharmed, that morning he passed peacefully in her arms. He had reminded her one final time that she had to trust Eonigia and that the task ahead was now her burden to bear, a price for subverting the natural cycle of Life, Death, and Rebirth.
She promised him she would heed his words as he passed.
I feel like this story is a warning that only Eonigia is capable as a living island to protect the people, who knows best and who can assertively set boundaries on what she needs. In fact, there's a repeated pattern where the younger are depicted as ignorant, or just untrusting of a generation or figure older than them.
Miro's Folly, Azira's Law– and so many others all result from the perceived ignorance of the young and the wisdom of the elder generation. That.. Actually that irks me.
I mean, the questions and rationale are somewhat reasonable, Naveha was worried about everyone's homes, and about what would happen to them during the eruption. She acted in a manner to protect them because she hadn't seen what it meant to be protected by Eonigia. Maybe Eonigia knew that, and that's why she compromised on the "penance" portion of this story, I tried to ask her about it and she said she couldn't recall any said incident like that. It's entirely possible it's fictitious, a lie told to keep the younger generation in line with what the elders know traditions to be.
But it is "the elders knew best, and the younger defied them and paid for it" in one way or another in so many stories. It doesn't leave room for the upcoming generations to question why traditions are what they are, and what purpose they serve. This goes directly against the fact that the future should be able to define what works best for them as they reflect upon the past.
I have to wonder if it's a result of the elders getting too comfortable in what worked for them, and wanting to preserve that because it means that they don't have to change to keep up with upcoming generations. It would make sense, change gets harder and harder as one gets older. It would stand to follow that preventing change would make the final years of life easier on someone, making it easier for them to move on knowing that nothing has gone so horribly wrong from their existence, but it leaves too much progress unmade in their wake that the upcoming generations have to make it up.
This push and pull of understanding, of how things worked and how they can work better, is a familiar pattern in politics, and a familiar pattern in how we work with one another nowadays.
I mean, I've had arguments with Xarin about how he does things in accordance with Eonigia's traditions, one she built from her needs, rather than focusing on how he can make better traditions that fit his needs. Maybe I'm already too far gone as his older sister in that matter though, becoming a generation stuck in their own way because "this is how it worked in my day!" has already set in.
I don't think it has, but his insistence that he's making the traditions work for the sake of the others, so they can be comfortable, infuriates me. His comfort should come first because he has become our home. His body is now our home, and he should feel comfortable in it first, rather than the other way around.
