Creation Genesis – Day Five
Chronicle Entry – Secret Annex
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 918
Known As: The Fifth Day, Y Pumed Dydd
Source Text: The Holy Scriptures (Book of Genesis), with preserved traditions among the learned
Status: Canonical in summary, careful in detail, kept in the Annex
The fifth day marks the first quiet turning in the labour of creation. Scripture teaches that the waters brought forth living creatures and that birds were set in the air. Older teachers, whose writings have travelled through the hands of scholars and the Cwmni’r Llwybrau, preserved further details of how that day unfolded. These accounts do not stand against Holy Writ. They rest beneath it, like firm ground beneath a traveller’s path, and may be read by those whose faith is settled.
The Command to the Waters
God spoke: “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.”
At that word, the life-force suited to the seas came forth. Souls of the lesser kind, fitted for water and current, were called into being. The outward forms that would bear them were again entrusted to the ancient craftsmen. Dragons, Titans and Jötnar worked according to the pattern already given, each with the skills long held among their kind.
The dragons shaped bodies for the deep. Their craft lay in understanding how flesh must move under weight and shadow. The Titans lent strength where endurance was needed. The Jötnar tested each form in colder reaches and under pressures that would crush weaker frames. Brenin Fawr watched over this labour as architect, guiding the work along the lines he had studied since the third day.
The life within each creature remained the gift of God. The craftsmen shaped what they had been given and produced no soul of their own.
The Great Creatures of the Deep
The preserved traditions speak with care of the earliest sea-creatures. One account from the Cwmni’r Llwybrau describes a form whose back rose like a ridge of stone when it neared the surface. Another speaks of jaws wide enough that a full-grown ox could have stood between them. Travellers from the east told of bones found in ancient strata, longer than the beams used in the great churches beyond the seas.
Such reports might seem beyond belief were they carried by reckless voices, yet those who kept them were measured men and women. They spoke of these beings in the same manner they used for mountains, rivers and seasons. To them these creatures belonged simply to the first age, when the earth held strengths that have since passed away.
Some ranged far from any shore. Others moved in waters where light still reached, leaving patterns in the currents that endured. Their passing altered the flow of the deep and shaped the bed of the sea in ways later generations could still trace.
It was while Brenin Fawr watched the rising of these great forms that the first inward change began. Until that moment he had served the pattern as a trust. In seeing the reach of the sea-creatures, he saw also the strength of his own craft, and his thoughts began to extend beyond what had been asked of him.
Brenin Fawr Turns to the Land
The traditions say that, still within the fifth day, Brenin Fawr turned from the waters to the land that had been raised earlier. The earth lay ready. It bore green growth and waited for its fuller filling. The command of the day had been spoken to the seas, yet the architect now looked upon the ground with new intention.
Drawing on the pattern he had learned and on what he had witnessed in the deep, he began to shape bodies for the land that the command had not named. He sought to match the sea-creatures’ strength upon the earth. The life-force given for the waters entered the forms he made. They lived and moved, yet they belonged neither to the proper order of the sea nor to the later order of the land that God would bring forth.
These were the first of the great land beasts. Their bones were thick as pillars of stone. Their necks carried lengths that would take a steady man a long while to walk. Some bore heavy plates along their backs. Others carried jaws set for the rending of flesh. They passed through valleys with a weight that marked the ground long after they moved on.
The early teachers wrote of herds that could strip a wide stretch of growth before continuing onward. They recorded hunts in which a single meat-eater brought down creatures many times its own size. Through such movements the earth began to strain. The land had received forms that did not follow the measure God intended for it.
Cadarn is said to have spoken quietly to those near him, warning that the earth would feel such weight. Whether Brenin Fawr received these words is unrecorded.
Creatures Between Water and Earth
While the giants were shaped, other forms arose that moved between water and land. The older writings speak of bodies with broad limbs suited to riverbanks and of shapes that lay in shallows with only their eyes above the surface. Some grazed on low growth. Others lay in wait, then struck with sudden force.
These forms stood between the command to the waters and the later order given to the land. In themselves they did not break the world’s balance. It was the giants, in their number and reach, that brought strain to the newly formed earth.
The Fowl of the Air
Scripture records the second word of the day: “And fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”
The life-force was again given, and the craftsmen shaped the bodies needed to receive it. The dragons fashioned the first wings broad enough to bear weight. The Titans strengthened the long bones within them. The Jötnar tested these shapes on high ridges where wind and thin air would prove any flaw.
Older writers described flocks of small birds moving among the earliest trees and larger fliers whose wings cast shifting shadows upon the slopes. Some glided over long distances. Others turned swiftly above coastal rocks and lakes. All received their spark from God. Their forms bore the workmanship of the ancient servants.
These creatures took their places without unsettling the earth.
The Falling Stone
Scripture concludes the fifth day with God’s blessing upon the creatures of water and air. The blessing stands and must be held as true. Yet the older teachers record that the age of the giants did not continue into the later order of the world.
They wrote of a time, still within the span symbolised by the fifth day, when fire was seen in the sky and a great stone fell from the heights. Where it struck, the land broke, mountains heaved and seas rose in tall waves. Dust and ash dimmed the light for a long season. Creatures that depended on warmth and abundant growth perished in great numbers. Those able to endure scarcity survived.
The giants shaped by Brenin Fawr did not bear such hardship. The land could no longer support their hunger. Many fell where they stood. Others dwindled and vanished as the seasons shifted. Smaller creatures of humbler frame rose in their place.
The cause of the falling stone is not recorded. Older teachers differed. Some held that it arose from the pride of the chief craftsman. Others believed it grew from strains within the order of the great beings. A few wrote that God restored balance to a world that had been pushed beyond its measure. The truth of the matter rests beyond what has been preserved.
Final Entry
The giants of this day belonged to an age that touches ours only through faint traces. Travellers of the Cwmni’r Llwybrau spoke of ridges in ancient rock and of bones turned to stone, greater in size than any creature known to our time. The steadiness with which these accounts agree across distant generations has persuaded me to record them. Without such witness I would hesitate to set down creatures of such scale.
Scripture gives what is needed for faith and life. It tells of the waters filled with living things, the sky bearing fowl, and the blessing that rests upon them. The writings preserved in this Annex show how part of that early abundance took a form that could not remain, shaped by a servant whose craft moved ahead of obedience. The fifth day closed with the seas and skies in their places and with the land marked by a labour that would soon pass away.
The sixth day begins upon a world where the giants have fallen. A new order of land creatures will rise, and a different pattern will be set in motion, one that leads toward mankind and toward the trials that followed.
