The Origin of the Tsol'aa - Aetolia Online Help
16.5.5 The Origin of the Tsol'aa
As sung by Ta'hena, the sage: There was a time when all the world was mysterious to the eyes of ignorant mortals, and trees were companions in their silence. The Celestine had gifted us with sentience, yet still did we live like beasts from the kindnesses of the forests. They brought food when our bellies ached, shelter when the demons of thunder roiled, and water when our throats were parched. In this time of safety and contentment, there was one mortal more ambitious than the rest. She was named Losi'al, meaning gaze of the moon. She spoke to the forest thusly: "I am wracked with guilt, my friends! Kindly have you provided for me all my life, yet I can give nothing in return! I take from you, and take again, with nothing but my gratitude to offer. I am a wretch, O Great Provider, unfit to walk your ground. What can I do?" The Canopy listened and thought. Losi'al waited, but then as now, mortal patience was not as long as that of the forest. While she waited, she married and bore a son. Eventually her life came to a clumsy end. Losi'al died believing the forests had not heard her plea at all. But when her son (called Sironn, meaning wide smile) came of age, the forest spoke to him, saying: "What is a song? We do not know what it is to sing." And Sironn, little more than a boy, hastily explained the mortal concept of music and composition. "Though not as beautiful as dawn through your leaves," he said earnestly, "we yet make sounds pleasing to our ears. Can you not hear us?" Again, the Canopy pondered. The young man grew, took a wife, and raised five children. All the while he sang and played upon a thousand crude instruments. For fifty years, it seemed the leaves crowded closer in audience and the ferns trembled in anticipation. Sironn's bones grew brittle and mind crisp with age, his fingers shaking upon his pipes, yet never did he lose hope. Finally the Canopy answered: "If you wish it, you may become our song." Sironn did not know the meaning of this offer, and was loathe to ask for a clarification he would not live to hear. After a brief discussion, he and his family agreed. Together, they asked that the Great Provider make them its song, as well as the departed Losi'al. The Canopy, in rare excitement, accepted their offer only five years later. "The green tongue we give to you," said the wood. "You are the Tsol'aa, the Song of the Canopy. Sing to us of your life that is so fleeting, and we will care for you as we ever have." And so it remains.