Sit down. Before you name a thing in the creeks, you should know what it is made of. There are eight, and they are kin. Each one does a different work, and none of them ever kills another.
is the stock. The mud, the river, the knife in your hand, all of it is spirit in some shape. Nothing that was made has been lost. It is all still here, still being born.
But spirit on its own has no hands. It is meaning with no effect. It feels everything and takes the shape of whatever it stands in, and it can do nothing until it is carried. In a person, it is carried in the .
These make a thing into something else. They choose what it becomes, and they can refuse. When a spirit-side element leads, it shows itself through spirit, order and justice.
These shift what is already there. They have no will of their own and will do anything they are told. When a flesh-side element leads, it shows itself through the body, vanity and results.
That is why all harm runs through the flesh side. The flesh does not want anything. Watch whoever is holding it. Two spirit-side elements in one person pull them toward spirit. Two flesh-side elements give them a firm grip on the world.
Hold both halves of one pair and you are complete: the two work as one thing. Two people who hold the two halves of a pair help each other just by being near. When one goes away, the other feels it.
is the hinge between spirit and flesh. Fire feeds on it, Iron was born of it, and Spirit is carried in it. Only Light and Time, the twins, are out of its reach. They sit furthest from the body.
Spirit, Sound, Water, Light and Time were there from the start. The first pair spoke them once, and nobody holds that whole word now, so they cannot be made again. Blood, Iron and Fire are the young ones. Each was made from the one before it.
Fire was the hard one. No element could hold it long enough for it to form, and it was lost many times. Then Iron tried. Iron carried the fire as long as it needed, until it was born of the light. That is why Fire lives in Iron still.
Every young one turns on a parent. Blood keeps the Water out. Iron takes the tree. Fire swallows the Light. And what is made can be unmade, which is the only way an elder comes back. When blood is spilled, the spirit goes and the water stays. Rust runs red back into the water. When a fire dies, its light goes out and the iron cools.
Nothing makes a ninth. Every other mixing makes a child, and each child brings a gift. You will find them all under Every pairing.
The people of the creeks are one nation of eight tribes, one for each element. Think of the nation as a canoe. The four spirit-side tribes are the Stools: they sit at the stern and steer. The four flesh-side tribes are the Paddles: they row. Each tribe's leader takes the tribe's place on the council, so the council is called the Stools and the Paddles.
A Stool refuses on principle. A Paddle will take any work, and refuses only over terms. It can name its price, slow down, or stop rowing until it is paid. It does not ask what the work is for. That is why all harm still runs through the flesh side.
The nation's head is the Chosen. The Spirit Stool reads whom Spirit has chosen, and the Chosen can come from any of the eight tribes. So the Spirit Stool makes the head of the nation. The one who sits on the Spirit Stool reads the choosing and is never the one chosen; any other priest can be.
Five tribes founded the nation. Blood, Iron and Fire grew later out of mixing between tribes, and Fire's settlements kept failing until Iron took them in. The ring below is a set of old feuds between the tribes, and the feeding line is the duties each tribe owes the next. A person's two elements are their two tribes. The first is the tribe that raised them, and the second is where their other kin are.
One force wears things down, in a ring that never stops. The other feeds them, in a line. Nothing on the ring is destroyed. It is only worn, and it comes back.
Spirit stands off the ring. Everything on it is made of spirit.
Spirit and Sound stand outside the line. Spirit needs Blood to be carried in a person, and Sound needs Spirit.
When two elements meet in one person, the first one leads. It decides how the pair shows itself. Light then Iron is a judge who holds others to the standard. Iron then Light is a perfectionist who holds the work, and the self, to it. Both come out of the same meeting. Only the face is different.
The leading element is also stronger or weaker depending on who it is with.
A flesh-side lead goes wrong in one of two ways. and grasp: Sound wants to be heard and Iron wants results. and sink: Water drifts and Time hoards. The flesh wants nothing by itself, so the grasping always comes from the spirit-side partner bent toward the world.
Choose who leads, then who follows. Choose the same element twice to see it held alone: holding an element twice is the same as holding it once.
Guide. The field guide: what each element is, how they're related, and all sixty-four ways two of them can share one person.
Part of Creek World by Digi: a museum of a fantasy country rooted in the Niger Delta, with the games and books set there.
← The Creek World museumThe Innermost RotundaWhich of the Eight: find the element you hold