I was a man. My thoughts were tainted by mortal truth, mortal sin, mortal hunger. Aye. They no longer called me mortal. What is it to live life free from overpowering guilt, colliding worlds and faith set against you? It was beautiful. My heart yearned for every long day I had lost to this world.
This world was here before us and will remain after us, hidden from sight, touch, and mind.
This world and ours were once one. Neither mortal nor divine, neither sinner nor saint. Only life itself. A place of balance. Cothrom, the seers would say, perfect balance.
Then they were ripped apart in the blink of an eye. A blink for the land, but twelve centuries for us. Time enough to undo what was done, for sinners to sin, for evil to kill the good, for mortals to fall from immortal men.
How could such balance shatter? A seer told me once. The tale still echoes.
Inis Fíor, the True Isle in our soulless tongue. There is no creation story. There is no first. There will be no last. The world simply was. It shall be. What is time to something that simply is? Cothrom is balance. Without it, time rushes on, forward, and sometimes back.
The Watchers, Na Faireoirí, you call them gods, are the Assayers of the Scales. They measure as they please and keep the world on its edge. What is equal is theirs to say.
Men, of course. What would the world be without men? They are the weights and measures the gods used to steady or tip the scales. Men to you and me. Sí to this Isle. A measured, beautiful word, pronounced ‘shee’ to mortal ears.
I hear the Sí tongue, old Gaelic as you know it. It sings to you. It rises and falls like your heart, your breath, the tide. A language hewn from beauty, for women to sing and men to butcher.
Invaders came from far lands with horned gods and a wrecking faith. The Draoithe, ancient druids, saw the scales fall. They took Cothrom into their own hands. With the Emerald Tablet they performed a rite that split the invaders from the land.
The Sundering.
A veil rose between them, parting the invaders from the Aos and Draoithe. The same land, each blind to the other. The invaders could still feel, hear, taste the Aos, but they would not meet again. Men, as we had become, forgot the Sí, lost to mound and myth. Yet Old Blood lived on.
The Isle or the Watchers will restore Cothrom. The balance is and always shall be.
And so, we come to me. Aye. Who am I?
I smile.
‘I am the heaviest weight the fecking world has ever seen.’