Chapter Text
A brief history of the names I picked
Gaia was a primordial goddess and one of the first to come into existence.
Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation Her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself.
Síofra - (mythology) elf-child; changeling
1300 BCE
The boy felt safe in his chamber in the Hill, he would of liked to stay longer but his thirst soon drove him out. As he and wolf emerged from under the hill he saw a lone woman standing quietly above him at top of the hill, she turned her head towards him and smiled a quiet smile. Beckoning to him she said quietly come, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, other immortals are always a welcome sight to me. He hesitated unsure what this being was, but wolf ran up the hill greeting her as an old friend. He watched as the strange woman reached out and stoke his wolfs head. “Soifra it’s good to see you again” she said. The boy slowly followed stopping a few feet away. She could see her new friend was wary not sure what to expect so she introduced herself to him.
“They mostly call me the goddess though I haven’t really been one for awhile. There have been many names but I prefer Gaia it was one of the first. I travel the world watching the humans bustling about, they’re always so busy striving to get more. They can be entertaining in their own odd way”. Then she paused and looked at him expecting him to speak.
“Soifra? is that her name?” he asked “She’s never spoken to me”.
“Yes, it’s the name she prefers” said the goddess “and you are?”
“I was once called Godric” he said as he let his new senses tell him what they could about her. “I once was the guardian of this sacred hill, but took to wandering as the magic wore out. Now I am this but I don’t know what it is I’ve become. I can tell you are not like me so I guess I’m not a god”, he said with a lopsided smile.
She already liked this one, felt he would be a friend. Not to proud that was always a good start. “Your kind has many names Empusa, Lamia and strige to name only a few and no you are not a god though some of your kind seem to think that they are. There are few different types of what you’ve become all differing in some way but all thirsting for blood”.
He thought for a moment not wanting to anger what he hoped might turn out to be a friend. “You don’t mind that I kill some of these humans you watch?” he asked carefully.
“Oh good grief no, even you couldn’t eat enough to make a dent in their numbers” and she knew he’d eat more than his share. “If you are careful and don’t let yourself be caught you will live long enough to see many wonders as the world changes and changes again. I will find you or you will find me many times in the millennia to come. We’ll talk more on those nights, after you’ve found the way to not just survive but thrive in this world but I must go now” and she shimmered and faded into the air leaving only a ghostly whisper on the breeze. “Long life and good hunting, Death”. It sounded like a blessing and he took it as that.
He stood thinking of the strange meeting until wolf, no Soifra, came to him and nudged him to move, he glanced down at her smiling and said “let’s find someone to eat it’s bad luck to ignore the blessing of a goddess so let us hunt, I’m starved”.
He walked off to the east, a direction he’d not taken before, following the old path he’d last walked as a man when he was brought to the hill. It didn’t take long before they reached the area where his human life had been spent. There was not longer any sign of the village he remembered, In over a thousand years large trees had grown and fallen hiding all traces of it. Next he went to the sea shore where he had spent so many hours fishing, swimming, day dreaming and just enjoying watching the ever changing waves, to his surprise his old seat was still there, the hard stone having resisted the water trying to wear it away. He climbed up on it and sat trying to remember what he had felt all those long years ago.
They traveled south from there then across the bottom of Britannia until they they found themselves standing on top a huge chalk cliff. By the light of the moon he could make out another coast to the east it called to him to explore it, it looked so close, but mostly it intrigued him because it was somewhere new. They went to the coast and explored until they found a small town at the seas edge were a few boats were pulled up on the shore for the night. One of them would do, he was sure he could easily row to the new land so he searched for a safe place to hide from the sun for the day. The next night as soon as it was safe to go into the village he crept into a small hut as the edge of the town and drank his fill from the woman sleeping within. As always the blood dulled the hunger but awoke his sexual desires, he could never seem to stop himself from sucking every last drop from his victims before they stopped and dead flesh repelled him, he needed them alive. The tension tore at him and to appease the desire raging through him he ripped the woman apart finally tearing out the heart and sucking from it the last drops of rich blood. He ran to the boat he’s chosen his body still dripping with blood, quickly pushing it out into the water and rowed away. Soifra in her falcon form soaring overhead, the boy gloried at how fast he could row now that he was this other thing and they soon saw the foreign coast come into view.
The boy Death soon stood on the foreign beach, to either side of him empty beach running as far as he could see and before him a vast ancient forest. He didn’t know it but there were several different peoples living scattered through the land he was about to explore. Some had come from distant lands looking for kinder richer lands than they had come from or ones that had been driven of from their homes by stronger tribes. One day they would all be named Gauls by a race that would conquer all in their path but that was still far in the future.