Yin and Din

Too many aeons ago to be remembered, two beings came into existence. After a time they found each other and took the names Yin and Din. A new awareness came over them and they set about exploring the universe they had mysteriously been born into. They tugged at the threads of fate and wove the fabric of the universe, and a world was newly created from the amorphous clouds of cosmic dust. Life sprung forth and blossomed on the earth, and the world was peopled with many races. The land was bountiful, and under the warm guidance of Yin and Din, civilizations were built and culture flourished for many thousands of years.

However, a day came when Yin and Din became locked in dispute, each claiming to have done more in creating and nurturing the world. The two became jealous, bitter and cruel, and they turned upon each other with their own creations. Those inhabiting the earth were faced with suppression and even enslavement by their once kind creators. Yin and Din summoned their forces of demons and celestial beings, and creatures of the soil, seas and sky and wrought destruction upon the world as they battled one another. After one hundred years of conflict the two ultimately met in a searing, cataclysmic burst of lightning and fire, after which tremors continued to wrack the earth. Finally seeing the devastation they had caused, Yin and Din halted the war. The world had been left a desolate and barren place. The prognosis was that within two decades the earth would no longer be able to support life. Yin and Din withdrew from the universe in shame and despair, and fell into a sleep that would last indefinitely.

The survivors of the great war were left on the deserted land to fend for themselves. The environment was unforgiving and bleak, but life continued. Much of the knowledge that had been come from Yin and Din had been forgotten, but the people found the strength and wisdom to survive within themselves and learned to live without depending on an outside force. The now nomadic communities wandered the earth and from time to time encountered remnants of their past. Amid the rubble of fallen cities were shards of lost technology, literary treasures, and murals depicting the lush forests, teeming oceans and fertile plains of long ago. And the people went on living, with the dream that what once had been could someday be once again.