This story emulates the style of Greek mythology to reimagine what could await us after death and how it came to be.
Please enjoy the read and stick around for a reflection on styling elements and story structure.
Life after life
Long before Earth had a name, the humans who walked its surface would die without an afterlife for which to hope. What would rise from silence would eventually fall back into silence and be forgotten.
There lived a woman and her husband. They loved each other and kept away from misery through their mutual company. One day, while they were still young, the man fell victim to a terrible sickness. His skin became pale, and his muscles became frail. Every day for five years, he became paler and weaker until he could not work the land and provide for his wife. Thus, she wandered into the woods around their land, seeking fruits to feed her husband. She fed him with fresh fruit at his bedside every day over the last year of his life until she came back home to an empty bed. Her husband had vanished, and she felt profound grief. He had been her only love, and she only wished to see him once more, but she knew that even beyond death, she would be alone, for there was nothing more than oblivion awaiting her.
She reached a venerable age, and she felt her end approach. So, the day before her passing, she met with the phantom of death. She called his name —for then, his name was known— and he came because he knew what she desired. The woman asked the phantom of death to see her husband again so that she could remember him before forgetting everything. He answered that he could not bring her husband back because he had ceased to exist on the day of his death. However, he said, she could revive his memory if she found his remains.
The phantom of death wore a black shawl which covered his entire body and hid his face from mortals. It was blacker than a starless sky and looked like a flat silhouette. Though the phantom of death’s appearance was dark, he emitted a bright white light under his hood that blinded the woman’s gaze.
He said he would lend her his shawl to hide her from humans and escape her fate. However, the phantom of death wanted the woman to work for him. For a long time, he had wished to grow a berry garden where the dead could be remembered. They could keep on living beyond their life on earth, but he had always been too busy harvesting the life of humans to sow the seeds for his garden. Thus, he tasked the old woman to visit the soon-to-be dead and bring them death. She would sow the seeds of the afterlife while the phantom of death would tend to his garden. He told her that she would work for him until she found her husband, and once she had done so, she would eat the berries that would have grown from his remains to bring him back. Then, she could stop working and spend eternity by his side. As a pledge of his honesty, the phantom told her to keep his shawl until her quest had been completed.
The woman accepted the offer and wrapped herself in the shawl. She, too, became shrouded in shade and began to emit light from her skin while the phantom of death became a blurred silhouette. He handed her a basket of berries. Some were blue, some were grey, and some were white, but all gleamed when she handled them.
The next morning —the morning of her death— she began visiting the homes of the soon-to-be dead and bringing them death. She knocked on their door, and once they let her in, she sat with them and talked for many hours. She offered them bowls of berries, which they ate together. They contained the seeds of death. They would slowly grow within their stomachs once the woman had left their homes, and on the day of their death, a bush would sprout.
The woman scoured the earth, searching for the remains of her husband. She stopped at every home where death had to be sown. She traveled for centuries until she returned to the phantom of death near her own land. The sky was black and starless, and she could see the phantom of death trimming berry bushes with silver shears. This was the first harvest. In those bushes grew tiny round fruits. Some were blue, some were grey, and some were white, but all gleamed when he handled them. The bushes had grown from within the houses of the dead, betwixt their bones, and had spread into the fields. The garden stretched further than the horizon. She approached the phantom of death and heard him sing part of a song. Behind him, the ghosts of those who had died followed him as though they were charmed by his song.
The old woman told the phantom of death that she had worked for a very long time and that she had yet to find her husband. She wept, for she believed that his remains, too, had ceased to exist on the day of his death. Seeing that the woman was doubting his word and because her pain saddened him, the phantom of death promised her that the garden would spread until it would reach her husband’s remains. When the roots would touch his bones —had she overlooked and missed them— she could stop working and spend eternity with him.
He also promised that war and wickedness would poison the earth until her husband would be found. That way, the garden of bones would keep spreading.
The old woman dried her tears and went her way. She knocked on the doors of the soon-to-be dead and offered them bowls of berries, which they ate together. She sat with them and talked for many hours.
Story time over.
Let’s talk AESTHETICS.
This is one of my earlier texts, and already, I desperately wanted to create a distinct voice for myself.
Please understand that this was written for a literary contest (much like my previous post), and that creativity is vital to make the best out of every prompt given to contestants.
The creation myth style of the story was integral to its plot and had to appear through subtle yet clear prose.
Five main factors contribute to the style:
Generality
Indirect speech
Character names
Lyrical rhythm
Tie-ins with real life
Generality relates to descriptions. You’ll notice that this text, much like Greco-Roman mythos, avoids excessive specificity. This is because it needs to be understood by its reader, regardless of the time disparity between redaction and reading. Additionally, it adds a mystical aura to the world, placing it just out of reach for us.
Take, for example, the very first phrase of the text
Long before Earth had a name […]
Now, we’re not going into hyper specificity like “In the year 50,000 before Christ […]”.
We’re staying general, but not vague. A vague opening would have been “A very long time ago […]”, which simply doesn’t strike the imagination as much.
The chosen opening tells of an ancient time when humans were not even aware that their home was a thing among others; it was all they knew. And it allows a lot of freedom to situate the tale. In this case, it is so long ago that the afterlife didn’t even exist yet.
If you want a comparison, the Greek creation myth starts with this:
In the beginning, there was empty darkness.
Sober, on-ne-peut-plus simple, and precise… yet still general. There was no need to estimate the time elapsed between the creation of the universe and the time of redaction for the tale because it would be detrimental to the knowledge it seeks to teach.
Next, indirect speech is a powerful element of ancient mythology. It creates a distance between the reader and the characters, because the latter are most often deities, or at the very least, heroes. They require this unreachable aura. It also adds to the fact that those texts are old, and the exact words pronounced by these mythical beings were buried under the sands of time, and only their sense remains.
As for character names, they must be used rigidly. In what sense? A character must only be referred to by its actual name (or role), and synonyms must be extremely limited. To curb redundancy, rather use the pronouns “He, She, It”.
This serves to eliminate all ambiguity when referring to characters, and most importantly, to make these characters feel unidimensional.
Now that seems counterintuitive, right? We generally want our characters to feel deep and realistic; alive. But creation myths are completely different. Here, characters represent concepts. (Mars = war, Venus = love and fertility, and so on.) Thus, those deities cannot be anything other than the concepts they represent.
Now, lyrical rhythm. This isn’t the same kind of rhythm you would find in poetry. We’re not counting syllables (or whatever fancy name they give them). No, this is more akin to pacing, actually. We aim to create ample, flowing, and soothing sentences. We use all of the aforementioned factors. Generality, indirect speech, and character names allow for longer sentences, which give breathing room for the reader. It allows him to create grand and detailed mental pictures of your story.
It also takes the shape of repetition, which, admittedly, is more typically seen in biblical texts, but I think that both styles, being creation myths, can be nicely mixed together.
I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am Yahweh your God, who delivered you from the forced labor of the Egyptians.
Exodus 6:7
This quote from the Old Testament is similar to this line in my story.
She called his name —for then, his name was known— and he came because he knew what she desired.
They both create a sort of circular reasoning, which adds emphasis on key elements. In Exodus 6:7, that would be God’s power over men and his ownership of their lives. In my tale, the emphasis is put on the phantom of death’s omniscience and his inaccessibility to modern man. (His name now being forgotten.)
Finally, tie-ins with real life. Creation myths exist to hypothesize on known, yet poorly understood concepts, in this case, death. You’ll have understood that the garden represents the afterlife and the old lady, the relief of death that follows agony.
The ending is also a metaphor for the eternal nature of the afterlife :
“He also promised that war and wickedness would poison the earth until her husband would be found. That way, the garden of bones would keep spreading.”
This, however, is one of this story’s flaws. The hint is too subtle. What I wanted to say here is that the woman has never found her husband, and that heaven keeps welcoming new souls. All of that, proven by the fact that war and evil still plague our world to this day.
It is one of this text's many flaws (syntax mistakes, redundant sentences…), and if I had to rewrite it, I would leave no ambiguity for the ending’s meaning. However, I thought it was best to deliver it raw and honest so that you could see what I had judged as a well-polished story at the time.
Many more things could be said about this short story, but I have already rambled on for long enough.
I hope this gaze into my shaken mind brought you something to reflect upon…