At the start of all things, there is movement in an ocean of nonbeing. A dot of something new, a spark that wiggles and then spins and swoops through nothingness. It encompasses all that exists, both creation and destruction. Everything humans would call good and evil is within it, and by itself it is perfectly balanced in all things.
As the essence of Being began to understand itself, it conceived of the first words, and in so doing, gave birth to the opposites within it. These are the first principles, called sometimes called yin and yang. Everything we can touch and describe and understand comes from the first principles.
Here on our world, the first principles took the form of the dragon and the firebird, and it is through them that we understand balance.
Firebird:
When the world was new-made, xie and I wandered across it, seeking to learn what we could from what grew. We took whatever forms suited us then, and had not yet taken the forms of dragon and firebird as they're known.
Sometimes I was the sun and xie the moon, shining down on dew-flecked fields of wildflowers. Sometimes we took the shapes of the plants and trees, and sometimes the animals. We both liked the forms of the clever, feathered lizards that seemed to be everywhere and learning new things all the time, and then they became less common and there were mammals everywhere, curious and crawling.
I still favored feathers, though, and xie favored claws and scales, and so we found the forms the mammals would know us by later. We were not the only powers that were taking shapes, and the mammals were just learning to call us by name when everything changed.
Dragon:
When the outsiders first arrived, the other powers came to us.
"Dragon," they implored me. "We do not trust these strangers. Some have gone into their places and not returned."
"Firebird," they begged her. "We would know what they are about, and what has happened to our brothers and sisters."
Unsure what was necessary, but knowing something had to be done, we took to the air and approached the land mass they had built around the vessel they arrived in. We were greeted warmly and ushered inside.
Only the fact that we did not trust them protected us when we were betrayed.
Firebird:
I needed to rest, to rebuild myself from the damage Oc Ha had done. My other half carried me away from what remained of Mu, swimming through the waters and flying over the land, until we came to the mountain that held up the sky.
My body was dissipating, but I didn't want to return to the void beyond the Way. I loved this world - and my Dragon - too much for that.
Instead I focused my energy and shaped it, the way I'd seen the outsiders do it. I let my consciousness melt into the stone, and then I was able to rest.
Dragon:
I watched the humans make war, but it was never just the humans. The outsiders, or their children, always seemed to get involved on one side or the other.
I met a human boy, a chief's son, during one of these wars. His father was fighting a sorcerer who let Chenek use his body and in return used Chenek's magic. The boy was earnest, and desperate, and afraid.
Reaching out to comfort him, I could tell he carried some of the outsiders' blood in him. I saw a way to help.
"Let me in," I told him, "and I will help you defeat your enemy."
Eventually, curious and lonely, I lead his sister to where my Firebird rested. I had found a way for us to be together again, even if it was only for a short time.
Firebird:
Ying was hard at work with her hammer and chisel when I found her.
I had been alone for some hundred years or more after my human's death. Her lover had found me in the ocean, quite by accident, but I was lonely and the bond had been easier this time.
I brought the stone to Ying, presented it as a lover's gift, and was rewarded with my firebird behind her eyes.
They touched each other with ease as we rode with them, a sense of joining we hadn't had since... too long.
Dragon:
I took Juemiao first. The boy burned so brightly and so desperately that I could not ignore him.
We were seated along the stream near his workshop when Feiyu approached. Juemiao could tell something was different, but he wasn't sure what. He reached for me.
The recognition hit me hard enough that the lungs lost their breath.
"Hello, my pretty bird," he said, not in Feiyu's voice at all, and I answered.
Firebird:
I did not want to come for Xiu He when she called, but she corrupted the words. I came before her against my will. The ice in my cave had melted, and she was ankle-deep in freezing cold water.
She didn't care.
I fought her. It was harder than it should have been, and it took me too long to figure out why.
Dragon:
There was still an echo of the Dragon in my mind. It didn't surprise me; I'd lived with him long enough that I could tell you what he would say most of the time. I missed the weight of his presence, but he had left too heavy an imprint on my mind to be totally gone.
Robin carried a breath of the Firebird about him as well. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but those marks seemed somehow stronger than the burn scars from Xiu He. When we curled together in bed, I felt a sense of... completion that convinced me of it. Even just an echo was enough.
Firebird:
It could have come crashing down and drowned me a hundred different ways. I'm still not sure why it didn't, except that I apologized.
It doesn't matter why it worked. I held my Lin, my Dragon, close against my chest. I breathed deeply of her, and I promised never to let her go, and I meant it.
The elements are the things that make up the universe as we understand it. I think how different people understand and interpret the elements can vary, so I don't think it's particularly strange that different people "use" different elemental systems. For myself, I use a five element system that's something of a hybrid between eastern and western systems: earth, fire, air, water and metal.
Based on a series of dreams I had when I was eleven or so, I have held that Fire was the first element to manifest, followed by Water, Earth, Air, and finally Metal. Each element pairs with an aspect. Aspect is not actually a very good word; functionally, light and dark, chaos and order and (void) are also elements. But I started using the word when I was a preteen and it's stuck.
This is one of those areas where my work is intensely personal, not because it's private but because I'm not sure it's meaningful to anyone who's not me or practicing with me. I don't think the elements as I understand them are a universal truth; pretty much the opposite, in fact. I know it's a unusual to dream of a religion when you're eleven, spend two decades trying to figure out what that religion is and then give up and start reconstructing it instead.
The first dream I had was actually Earth's dream, but inside the dream I knew that Fire and Water were there because they had already manifested. Air came later, and Metal was the last piece of the puzzle. This was where I learned that the world ends, and life goes on, over and over again. Each element, fully manifested, can change the world and break it. There are little apocalypses and there are big ones but always someone picks up the pieces; therefore the elements, and the world as a whole, are linked with the threads of fate. Magic is the process of learning to see those threads, to pick them apart or mend them, to create minor adjustments or make something else entirely.
The light falls across her body in colored shards: red, green, cobalt blue. The Daughter of Light is unmoving aside from the soft twisting of color with each note she calls. She breathes in plain air and sings out promises and stained glass and hope and a spray of blood. Her throat was ragged from the sharp edges of color, and still she sang.
"Doesn't it hurt?" her auntie Dark asks, concern pulling her lips tight.
"Oh yes, very," the Daughter of Light responds.
Darkness wraps her arms around the younger spirit and pulls her into a tight hug. The Daughter of Light squirms, trying to escape.
"Why do you do it?" the Dark Lady asks with a sigh.
Light lets out a soft, smiling laughter. "Oh, it's just exquisite, the pain. It's lovely. You should try it."
The Dark Lady, who had held her daughter through more bawling and nightmares than this, shakes her head and only holds tighter.