Secret of the great white mountain

It began, time began, untouchable, but unstoppable….and with it began life. Earth was green and fertile. The plains were wide and filled with life; the forests teemed with the creatures of nature. There were no mountains, no deep valleys. It did not snow on the land. The cold regions to the South and the North belonged to the kingdom of the seas.

It was in this time that man started forgetting the wisdom of the patriarchs. Man had grown strong and he craved for power. Too soon he forgot and the wickedness of man overcame him. The Great Spirit sent the waters to clean the earth. Great fountains broke the earth, rock and water flowed from the core and the storms came down under the command of the Great. The wickedness of man was met with a violence unthinkable that tore open the plains and drowned the forests. In the agony of this judgement there rose the mountains from the plains. The earth pushed up its insides to the sky so that there may be remembrance.

The water cooled the earth, the sun did not shine and the clouds did not part. It snowed on the earth, and it cooled the mountains. It was also the birth of the great White Mountain in the plain of what we now call Africa. The animals found it first. They had multiplied from the few that remained and for a while there was peace on the great plain around the mountain. Until men retuned with their wickedness. There was one creature that still remembered the time when the mountain was not there, the time before the water came, and he knew the wickedness of men. This elephant was the oldest and wisest of all the creatures on the plain, and he carried with him a secret from the time before the mountain.

Men were weaker now, but they were searching for power. The great elephant knew he could protect the secret. He knew that he should keep it from them, he knew what had happened. So when the time came for his spirit to depart from the plains, the great elephant climbed the mountain, into the snow, beyond the clouds to where the air was thin. The elephant went to sleep in the great circle at the top of the mountain, and the snows of time covered him, and the secret was lost. To this day the skeletons of his bodyguards can be found on the slopes, and the children of his children still guard the Forrest.

But for all his wisdom the great protector could not foresee that men would again grow strong, and this time their own wickedness would be their end. The greed of man had heated the earth. The snows were melting and the water was rising again. And on the great White Mountain the time was coming very close, when man would remember his past. Someone will see the magnificent tusks emerging from the ice. Men would come and get it. They would find the secret. Will they listen to its warning, will they remember in time, or will time stop