But hearken unto me, my children. Make ye then tables of stone and others of clay, and write on them, all my life and your father's, all that ye have seen and heard from us. If by water the Lord judge our race, the tables of clay will be dissolved and the tables of stone will remain; but if by fire, the tables of stone will be broken up and the tables of clay will be baked hard.

The mother of all living herself asked me to make this record, though that was a long time ago. Those reading this will know what happened to the earth and obviously, because you are reading it, which tablets survived. I say that Eve was the mother of all living, but I suppose that isn't true, for she was not mine. My people were cast out by these humans, then destroyed themselves. Yet, I feel sorrow that the humans will now suffer the same fate. It was a lovely world and the universe will be poorer because of its destruction. I wasn't there for its beginning, but I have walked this earth and sailed its seas and even soared its skies for many years.

No, I was not present for the creation, but I have seen more of this world than anyone on it and come to love it. I saw the beginnings of the nephilim and the varcolac. I was a witness to the ascension of Zion and the departure of Atlantis. I met Adam, Eve, Enoch, Lilith, Iblis, and many more worthy than they. I have walked the breadth of Eden and sailed over the endless depths. I have seen wonders that none had ever beheld before, nor ever will again. I have bargained with spirits, djinn, and fae. I have spoken with wyrms and seraphim. I held the death of gods and the fate of worlds in my hands, yet never had anything of value. I have felt the gratitude of nations, yet was denied the one I loved. I was a part of so many great and terrible things, but in the end, I was only the latter.

My name is… I have been going about this wrong. Any story worth telling deserves to be told from the beginning, so let me start there. I am a willful, prideful, arrogant man, but I do know that the world did not start with me. Since I wasn't there, this part of the story is all second hand with a healthy helping of myth and legend, but in the beginning the gods created the heavens and Eastward they caused Eden to rise from the depths. In Eden was a garden and in that garden was man. Thus was the doom of the earth placed at its very center. The first man and woman had children and among these was Cain. He was ostracized by his family and shunned until he slew his brother, Abel, and escaped into the wilderness to start his own nation. Five generations later came my adopted father, Roulan.

I never knew my original parents, but even when I discovered their names, it wasn't a shock to me. It didn't fill any holes in my heart, because I already had a father and a mother. They treated me like any of their other children even though my skin was pale, my hair was blonde, and my eyes were blue in stark contrast to theirs. Though I did often wish for their brown complexion and black hair, especially when I was dealing with a sunburn, I never felt unloved or like I didn't belong. 

My family lived by the sea, which, if it is not unusual in your new world, was quite unheard of in mine. Roulan found me on a wooden vessel washed up on the beach. He didn’t even know what a boat was, though he had once used a ferry to cross a river. I was dehydrated, emaciated, and almost dead, but the woman that he assumed had been my mother was well into decomposition. I was barely old enough to speak a handful of words at the time. The only thing they could glean was that my name was Namir.

Roulan took the little bundle of frail sticks that was me home to his wife, Kiara, and I was instantly adopted. They had two other children at the time, as their older children had moved on about thirty years before, and I think I was actually part of their fourth batch. I know they have had many more in the centuries since; after all, some women bear children well into their five-hundreds.

My childhood was pleasant and uneventful, as the lives of all children should be. And so, my story begins when I was a lad of fourteen and was going for my first trip to Irad. My family only took the journey every five years, so this was the first time I or my siblings had been old enough to come along. We loaded our wagon, hitched our cummoms and were on our way. My young brain ran circles around the wonders of civilization I was sure to witness. Growing up a hundred leagues from the nearest person and many times that from the nearest city made me curious. It was not every day, or even every year, I saw a human being that wasn't my family. Nigh on a thousand leagues we had to travel. For weeks we journeyed inland, ever Eastward. We encountered more and more people the farther we went and it is on one of these encounters that my story truly began.

Some say that our lives are just a few key moments and the rest is only waiting, the in-between. I don't believe it, but if that is true then this was the defining moment when my life started.