Ruins Cat Colony Lore
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This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 17 Dec 2021, 00:42.
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OrganizationThe Ruins Colony considers the first-born kitten of each litter a tithe to the gods, and therefore of the Sky, whereas the later-born kittens are of the Earth. This societal division forms gender-type roles, in that what a cat may do for the colony is determined by whether it is Sky or Earth. The Ruins Cats have no sex-based gender distinction.
Roles within the Colony:
Naming
Sky cats are named after things that are high up or in the sky - birds, insects, weather, or things that drift on the wind like leaves, dust or feathers.
Earth cats are named for colors - often their pelt colors or markings, but sometimes other colors as well.
Religion
The Ruins Cats believe that the world was created long ago by the Great Cats, immortal cats nearly the size of the world itself. After they had made the world and placed the dome of the sky on top of it, most of the Great Cats left to live in the land of light outside it, and forgot about the world.
Only two Great Cats remained near the world. These are the Watchers, who watch over the world by night and day, standing on the top of the sky.
The first, Sun, a she-cat with a bright-shining yellow eye, watches the world in the daytime. She is wise, but proud.
The other Watcher, Moon, is a tom with a light gray eye. He watches over the world at night. He is playful and has a strange sense of humor.
Once, a long time ago, Moon lost his grip on the top of the sky, and had to scrabble and dig his claws into it to get back up. His claws made holes in the sky, that let light in from outside - these are stars.
Because he is watching over the world at night, Moon sometimes grows sleepy, and his eye slowly closes. When he is tired, he tends to lose track of time, which is why the crescent moon can sometimes be seen in the daytime as well. But then he wakes up and it reopens.
The Watchers do not interfere in the world directly, but they may help cats indirectly. If a Ruins Cat faces a dilemma, it can sleep on the highest point of the Ruins (a still-standing, tall arched stone wall), nearest to the sky. Within 24 hours after it sleeps there, it will find a solution. The cat can sleep under the sky either during the day or the night. If it sleeps there during the day, the answer will be practical, by-the-book and logical, as it has been inspired by Sun. If it sleeps there at night, the solution will be unorthodox and innovative, inspired by Moon. Inspiration may come as a dream, or as something the cat sees the following day/night.
Full Creation Story
Far far back, after Time but before the world, the Great Cats lived in the Land of Light. They built the world (more on this later as I make it up), its valleys the scores of their claws, its plains the prints of their colossal steps. They built it, and then they left, bored with their creation. Except for two.
The two who remained were young in the estimation of the Great Cats, barely more than kittens. They were littermates, a molly and a tom, called Golden Eyes and Silver Eyes. Golden Eyes was the elder, dutiful and orderly, with eyes that shone like bright fire, and a snow-white pelt; Silver Eyes the younger, more slapdash and unconventional, with eyes of mottled silver-white, and fur black as a raven's feathers.
Nothing moved on the world; it was ever the same, dirt and rocks, and plants that would never grow bigger nor die. The Great Cats had left it that way, deeming it complete, but Silver Eyes and Golden Eyes found it yet unfinished. Golden Eyes breathed on the world, and the winds rustled the branches of the trees and the leaves of the green plants, and they began to grow. Silver Eyes spat at the world, and the clouds formed, and began to rain and snow down onto the land, and created lakes and rivers. But still no animals lived on the world, nothing that could think or speak or breathe.
"It is unfinished," Golden Eyes said to her brother. "It has no minds and no life, and I do not know how to make them."
"We have minds and life," Silver Eyes said, "perhaps we must make them from ourselves."
So Golden Eyes clawed out her left eye. The blood and tears of pain ran down onto the world and created the salty oceans. The eye itself she shaped into a cat like herself, but much smaller, and mortal, and golden-pelted, with grass-green eyes. This was the First Cat, Ailuros. Sun Eyes placed her into the world, where she wandered about. After this, Golden Eyes was called Golden Eye, or Sun.
"Sister, you have made life," Silver Eyes said, "but I bet I can do it better than you." And he gouged out his right eye, and became Silver Eye, or Moon. Everywhere the drops of his blood and tears fell, animals sprang up - land-prey and predators from the ground, fish from the seas, birds from the trees. But then he wondered what to do with the eye itself, for he hadn't thought quite that far ahead.
In that time there was no sky yet, and all the life on the world could look up into the Land of Light. Ailuros, the first cat and the first mortal mind, looked up at Silver Eye and asked him: "Of each kind of animal that sprang up from your blood, there are many. Yet there are no others like me. Why must I be alone?"
Silver Eye took pity on her, and shaped his eye into the Second Cat, Felis. Felis was shaped like Silver Eye, with a white-silver pelt and beautiful deep-blue eyes, but was mortal, with a mind and heart like those of Ailuros. Silver Eye placed Felis into the world, to join Ailuros. They met and befriended each other, but Felis was very curious, and wondered about many questions whose answers Ailuros did not know.
Felis looked up to Golden Eye and Silver Eye and asked them: "Who are you, who look like us but greater, and stand above us in the distance and the light? Why do you stay here?"
"We did not build this world, but we are the ones who finished it," Golden Eye answered her. "It is our duty to watch over the life we have made, and keep its flame from dying out." And thereafter Felis and Ailuros, and all other animals that heard Golden Eye say this, and their descendants, called Golden Eye and Silver Eye the Watchers.
Later, the animals on the world discovered that they needed to sleep. But none of them could, for it was too bright; they could not even look above their heads, for the brightness. They all cried out to Golden Eye and Silver Eye: "Watchers, help us! We cannot live with the eternal light from your land. Please, let us rest once in a while."
Golden Eye and Silver Eye listened to their pleas, and built a great blue dome to cover the world, which was named the sky. But it blocked out too much light.
"Now it is too dark," the animals of the world cried out. "Please give us some light, for we cannot see."
"Our eyes are the only lights bright enough to pierce the sky," Golden Eye said to her littermate. "We must light the world with our gaze, and become Watchers in truth."
That day, Golden Eye climbed slowly up the dome of the sky, watching everything, lighting up the inside of the sky bright blue, and illuminating the world with her single eye's yellow-white light. As the day went on and the animals began to grow tired of the light, she climbed carefully back down.
Then it was Silver Eye's turn. Like his sister had, he watched everything on the world, although his wide silver eye was less bright, and gave less light to the world and the sky, so that the sky looked black. Many of the animals could not see well in the dim light, and slept; but Felis and Ailuros could see, because they were made from the eyes of Golden Eye and Silver Eye, and their own eyes glowed green as they hunted.
When Silver Eye finally climbed down from the sky, Golden Eye climbed back up to replace him. And so it went on, for the next few days and nights.
But Silver Eye, looking down into the near-darkness of the world for so long, started to become sleepy. Each night, he was later and later for his shift of world-watching, and his eyelid drooped more and more nearly closed. Fourteen days after the beginning of days and nights, he simply fell asleep on top of the sky in the middle of the day, as Golden Eye was watching the world. He slept for two nights, and then groggily awoke, realizing what he had done. Rushing to get down from the sky to start his shift properly, Silver Eye slipped, and had to scrabble on the dome of the sky, digging his claws into it and making many small holes. These holes let the light from the Land outside shine through onto the world, but only as pinpricks in the night sky.
"Watchers, what is happening?" the animals called up to the sky. "Why are there small lights in the night?"
Silver Eye was ashamed, and confessed to the animals of the world what he had done. Some of the animals were glad at the small increase in light, while others wished for less.
"It is not much more light," Ailuros said to Felis. "It will make little difference to our hunting. Yet it reminds me that there is light outside the sky, and that even if it was too bright for us, it was beautiful; silver-white, like your fur."
ugh I can't be bothered to finish in fancy language but felis asks moon to make more stars so he does, and he's groggy but slowly wakes up over the course of the next half moon and then falls asleep again and that's why there are moon cycles and also the stars are still there in the daytime but golden eye's eye is bright enough that you can't see them
and ailuros and felis have lots of kits and beget all of the species of cats idk. and the first kit of every litter grows up to have powers or be sacred or something idk
and there's a legend that the highest point of the ruins is over the spot that golden eye and silver eye put ailuros and felis into the world and so you sleep up there when the sun or moon are up if you have a problem in your life and you're supposed to get a prophetic/omen dream that will help you sort it out; if you do it in the daytime it will be inspired by sun and be rational, if you do it at night with a full or gibbous moon it will be inspired by moon and be unconventional/crazy enough to work, if you do it with both sun and moon in the sky - bit of both.
oh yeah i feel like the world being made by the first great cats has some kind of longer story behind it, like maybe it was made from the corpses of some enemy they fought, or maybe there was a civil war and it's made from the dead great cats. idk.
also fyi ailuros and felis are both mollies and felis is trans. this brought to you by the words ailuros and felis both being feminine gendered in their respective languages. also because fuck cisheteronormativity
also felis is the scientist of the couple while ailuros is the poetic one BUT they're both as sappily romantic in their own way. and not self conscious about it at all bc self consciousness hasn't been invented yet and also every other cat in the world is Their Kids or grandkids etc. so they can't say shit to their founding ancestors lmao.
supposedly due to being the original two cats and made directly from the bodies of the watchers, ailuros & felis do not age and die like other cats. according to legend felis found a way for them to be immune to the brightness of the Land of Light and they left the world to explore the rest of the universe, and they're probably still out there today
Far back, before the oldest Old-cat's bearer's bearer was born, only the lawless cats roamed this land. At that time, three lawless-cats fought over the Ruins. On one side were two sky-cats*, called Midsummer and Robin, who had for a year nested together in the stone-dens and hunted between the high-walls. Against them strove a huge grizzled earth-cat** named Red, who wished to take their territory for himself. Around the Ruins their battle chased and scratched and hissed, until at last, at twilight with both Sun and Moon in the sky, all three cats fell exhausted along the top of the tallest high-wall, and sank instantly into sleep. None of them knew it, but they slept on the point where Ailuros and Felis, the First and Second Cats, were first placed into the world.
There each had a dream, sent by Sun and Moon to the long-children of Ailuros and Felis, of what had been, and what could be. Midsummer dreamed of the pride and wisdom of Sun, and of leading many-and-many cats to hunt the Ruins as their shared home, feeding the sick, old, and young before the hale. Red dreamed of the creativity and insight of Moon, and of strategising to defend the Ruins from outsiders by thinking as the enemy, to stifle their plots. And Robin dreamed of both Watchers and all that they had done, and of telling their deeds to many-and-many cats; and the lore of healing was revealed to her, and the meaning of Sky and Earth, and many more secrets besides.
When they awoke, the three cats realised that they must work together to found a new Colony in the ruins, where many-and-many cats of different bearers would live with peace toward each other, and hunt the same lands for the feeding of all, and know the stories of Far Far Back, and keep the land of the First Cats safe. And so the three lawless-cats became the three Founders: Midsummer, the first Wayspeaker; Red, the first Foespeaker; and Robin, the first Lorespeaker.
* Sky gender, assigned to the firstborn of every litter, translated with she/her pronouns
** Earth gender, assigned to all non-firstborns, translated with he/him pronouns ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article
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