The Litany of the Salt-Sown Fields

Translation

Kaelos walked the ridge of fire, His breath the wind that kills the grain. Mara rose from the indigo deep, Her hands the weight of a thousand rains. [Note: Thorne suggests 'indigo' is a mistranslation of 'bruised', implying a more violent sea state during the initial encounter.] They met where the sand turns to silver, Where the river forgets its name. He demanded the soil for his furnace, She demanded the shore for her flame. [Note: Vane argues that 'flame' here refers to bioluminescence rather than combustion, which would shift the elemental dynamic from a conflict of heat to a conflict of light.] A pact was struck in the hour of eclipse, A boundary carved in the marrow of the world. Kaelos poured the white ash of the void, Mara washed the land in a bitter shroud. [Note: The term 'white ash' (Silt-Scripture: kahl-shari) is almost certainly a reference to salt, though Thorne maintains it refers to a specific volcanic deposit found in the northern reaches.] Now the plains are a mirror of silence, Where the seed sleeps but never wakes. The pact is written in the crust of the earth, A hunger that neither god ever slakes. [Note: The final stanza appears to be a later addition from the Third Dynasty, likely inserted to justify the failure of the 4th century harvests through divine fatalism.] Behold the white waste, the gift of the two, Where the wind tastes of brine and the sky is a bruise. Walk not upon the salt with a longing heart, For the pact is a chain that no mortal can loose.