The Christmas Nymph: Origines Universe

By Agnès Rabotin

For having saved Love, the nymph Echo is rewarded by Hera. The goddess, in her great kindness – which must be quickly seized – offers her the fulfillment of her greatest wish: to regain her voice. It's time for the nymph to discover Christmas, this wonderful celebration she has heard so much about.

In the shadows, the mischievous little creatures who gazed at the World Tree all year long come out to stock up on chocolates and retrieve a mysterious object.

Echo's encounter with Romain in the Parisian subway could change everything. Sometimes, it takes very little to alter the course of the world...

Disclaimer. Before starting this story, be sure to have some salt at hand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Agnès Rabotin
• Release date: Nov 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667465128

Book preview

Prologue

Aiôn opened the Great Book of Time. He looked to the right, to the left, under the Book, on the floor. He scratched his head and stared at an atom in front of him, looking for any memory. There was no trace of his quill. His inkwell laid where he had left it the day before, but his quill... In his drawer, were quills of all kinds: goose quills, glass quills, bronze quills, gold quills, and even something they called a ‘Bic’ pen. But this quill... It was a precious and irreplaceable object! It had been picked up from the very first bird of creation, a rainbow-coloured phoenix, even before light-footed Iris drew the very first rainbow – it is said that Iris was inspired by the beauty of that first bird, which was the pride of Gaia.

Well, intervened Kairos next to him., who was sipping a hot chocolate with goat’s milk. We don’t have the whole day. The Reader does not have all her[1] time. A human’s time is precious.

Certainly, certainly, Aiôn said without stopping to look around him, even in the molecules of the air, in case his pen had mysteriously disappeared.

Forget it, you’ve lost it.

No, of course not!

You should do it the old-fashioned way! said the god with the thick black hair that sometimes gave him the audacity to make insolent proposals.

Aiôn froze before looking at his brother in the white of his eyes:

No history has been told without writing it down since the eighth century before the Common Era, he pontificated with the slightly troubled tone of someone who misses the good old days but will never admit it, even under the threat of being thrown into Tartarus.

Kairos burst out laughing:

Come on, make yourself happy! It doesn’t make much difference to the Reader after all. And there’s nothing to stop you from rewriting this story next winter solstice. By then, you’ll have your quill.

Aiôn suppressed a small smile that did not escape his brother. Yes, he was bound to find that feather. Everything always came back in the end. After all, he was the god of cycles and seasons.

He cleared his throat a little to give himself some composure.

It was a beautiful day among beautiful days on Ortygia. A human could have thought it was spring, because the sun never stopped shining, that the only scattered clouds had been added like little touches of paint to complete the picture, and that the flowers seemed to have just come out of the ground, breathing in all day the freshness granted by rose-fingered Eos in the early morning. No inhabitant of Ortygia could have imagined for a moment that in the northern hemisphere of the planet, at this time of year, the temperatures were so low that humans – who were called mortals in our country, although this was a reductive term since there were immortal humans – were forced to heat their homes, eat hot chocolate with marshmallows and go out swaddled in thick layers of clothing, saying to themselves, I can’t wait for Christmas. On the mythical Ortygia, otherwise known as Quails Island, where the gods and creatures known as ‘mythological’ resided peacefully, so to speak, no one cared much about the approach of a festival known as Christian by some, and pagan by others.

Aiôn...

Yes?

"I’m sorry, but... are you going to tell this story with such long and incomprehensible sentences? The aim is not to put her to sleep.

"Indeed, well... it’s to educate her. At best, to entertain her. I was simply told: Tell the readers the myth of the Christmas nymph. Well, first things first."

Well, judging by the way your Reader is already yawning, it’s not a great success. The beginning is not going back to the creation of the world either. It’s a short story, like all myths.

Ah. Yes. I have a bit of trouble with the concept of ‘myth’. It’s a story about our people, isn’t it? So initially a true story of our deities. And if you tell it later to your children who then tell it to their children over centuries and centuries, then the story becomes a myth, and it’s written down in all the twenty-volume encyclopedias of mythology.

Uh... yes, I think that’s it. Then, you know, with the internet, encyclopedias... Anyway. The myths have been told by poets over the centuries, it’s true, and each one has transformed them in his own way. That’s why there are many variations of each story.

"But we know the real stories. They are the ones I write in the Great Book of Time."

Yes, that is certain. But let’s face it: your narration is boring. You start and already you’re going round and round. At the same time, for a cyclical god...

Oh. Well, then, since that’s the way it is, Mr. T-Moment Specialist, do it yourself. Tell the Reader the true story of the Christmas Nymph.

The Christmas Nymph

In which the story of Echo is told orally. Having regained her speech, she decided to travel ‘round the world of Paris’ so as to experience a magical Christmas.

A short educational story presented and annotated by Kairos, god of the T-moment, under the supervision of his brother Aiôn, primordial deity of cyclic time.

After combing her long red hair long enough to repeat several times the speech she would never give, Echo sighed in front of her mirror. Then, with slow movements, she adorned herself with her most beautiful earrings, the brazen ones from the Underworld that Hermes had given her. It would be pretty enough to please the goddess of Beauty and Love, but not so pretty as to awaken in her a jealousy capable of bringing chaos to Ortygia with a foul mood.

There, Reader, far from the considerations of beauty and rivalry between deities, you wonder why she could never give this speech, don’t you? You know the story of the nymph Echo? That’s another story, which we’ll certainly come back to, but just remember one thing: because of Hera’s anger, she could only repeat the last word she heard. So you can imagine that she had no choice but to keep her speech to herself, and she knew it well. Nevertheless, she wore on her pink lips that shy smile that had not left her face for several days. From her own point of view, nothing would ever be the same again.

Wherever she went, she was greeted with the respect usually given to a goddess. Aedes, lyre in hand, were writing songs in every corner of the island about his exploit. The news had spread faster than Pan’s syrinx. The timid Echo, who could only utter the last word heard, had achieved the feat of saving Love[2].

Aphrodite could not remain insensitive to all these passionate manifestations towards the young oread[3] who usually shone by her discretion. Until recently, the nymph had never overshadowed her, content to work discreetly in the service of her son, Eros. This tribute was well deserved, and she would have been ungrateful to take it back. But it was time to temper the enthusiasm of the Ortygians. It would have been unfortunate for her own reputation if one of these songs had crossed the island’s border to be heard by mortals and become a new myth. It was time for her to show the people of Ortygia what a grateful goddess she was so that we could finally move on.

Goddess, said a small voice behind her. Echo is here, accompanied by Hermes.

Aphrodite turned away from the mirror of her dressing table, not without adjusting a lock of her blonde hair, and towards the girl made a small movement of the hand, commonly called on Ortygia the sweeping gesture. Then, addressing the god:

"Thank you, Hermes, for accompanying our heroine.