Otherwhere
From "A Brief Primer on Aisling History, vol.1 of 1,738: The Early Years."
by Beatrice Ann Gold, Prime Essence of Ghosts
In the Beginning…no, that's not right.
The Ancient Essences tell us...no.
The Tales say...almost there.
Ah, I have it.
Once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there was Nothing. Nothing was lonely, so Nothing became Something. From Something came Everything, and at first there was a place for Everything and Everything was in Its place. But Everything had given birth to some Things and some Otherthings, and that is where all the trouble started.
Some Things were concrete, and some Otherthings were abstract. Some Things were felt and some Otherthings were thought. Some Things were reasoned, and some Otherthings were dreamed.
And there was hatred, and there was fighting, and there were wars. The great tales of both people tell of great battles, with many fallen. Eventually, the First Essences came together and it was decided that Something must be done. Something separated some Things and some Otherthings and bound what remained together into the Laws. To the Things went Where, and to the Otherthings went Otherwhere, and the Laws became the Seasons which bound the realms together.
Eventually, among the Things in Where, a single race came to dominance, Homo Sapiens, called humans. Since humans were preoccupied with naming things and singularity, Where became called the Human Realm. In Otherwhere, a race also came to dominance, the Aisling or Dreams, and as tends to happen, these two very different peoples expanded over their very different worlds.
Scholars and adventurers of both realms soon discovered the existence of what, for them, was a strange and mysterious new world. Tales in both worlds record wanderers straying into strange woods and coming out into a world populated by fantastic beings. Soon, regularities were discovered in the Laws, and it was found that the seasons that both worlds went through were the key to moving between them. Thus the Cycle of Alignment was discovered.
In both worlds, the existence of the other and the Laws of the Seasons shaped history and culture. In the Human Realm, patterns of life and death associated with the seasons were celebrated through special days when the worlds were most aligned, while in Otherwhere the Aisling divided their world among the seasons and the Essences associated with them. Thus it came to be that our people, the Autumn Aisling, came to live as we do.
Annotation
Added by Stephan Falconing, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.D.T., A.D.H.D., E.T.C., Scientist.
Recently, a strange thought has occurred to philosophers and mystics in both worlds. It has long been noticed that the Aisling lived out the dreams and fantasies of humanity, just as it has long been realized that human culture and history was shaped by their dreams lived out in Otherwhere. Each has always assumed that their own world was more "real", while the other world was merely a shadow or reflection. There are now hints that the situation is far more complicated, and that each world somehow equally creates the other. There have also been recent conjectures about the existence of other realms, tentatively called Here and There, after tradition.