Earthstory: Why Our World Is Shaped Like A Ball

Introduction

This is for the Vocal Mythmaker Challenge that you can read about here

The Prompt

Write a myth to explain the fabled origin story of why something exists.

The music is "The Sun and The Moon" by The Corrs

Earthstory

The Gods decided to create a world for their game. This was to see if they could make creatures that would learn and become useful to the Gods. They had to create an environment for their creatures which they called Hu Man, and they gave them a home.

This was a big roundish board thing with land and islands in a sea which flowed off the edge and dripped to Dis, the Gods, bottomless waste basket.

They called the new home for the Hu Mans "Arthe".

Each God had his own tribe of Hu Mans and gave them an Oracle to ask for guidance.

Before long the Hu Mans had discovered woodworking, iron and weapons. The Gods liked this pitting their tribes against each other, spreading tales of untold riches if they subjugated other tribes.

This resulted in much bloodshed and anger especially when the riches were not forthcoming.

Then one God suggested his tribe built a boat. Once the other tribes saw it they built their own and began to explore Arthe. Each tribe built bigger and better boats with huge carved prows and went further and further in their explorations.

Arthe and Hu Man were the toys of the Gods so the Gods took little notice except when they wanted some distractions. Then one day they noticed that their tribes were getting smaller in numbers when they should be getting larger. They had given Hu Man mates and there were new Hu Mans being born but the tribes were getting smaller.

All the Gods gathered around Arthe and saw the problem. The boats were sailing into the mist at the edge of Arthe and sailing straight off the edge and into Dis. This was why the tribes were getting smaller.

"We need to stop this or else we'll have nothing left to play with. I know we can make more but we are losing the ones who have developed the most"

"What can we do?"

The Gods sat and thought, they also drank wine and mead, and then they sat and thought some more

"What if we took Arthe and folded the edges up so they couldn't sail of the edge"

"I don't think they would like that, they would get bored, and regress. Also doing that to Arthe might cause a lot of damage and stress the Hu Mans too much"

"I have the answer"

"What?"

"This is my idea. We put the Hu Mans to sleep for a few days and contort Arthe into a ball, then we wake them. They will still think that Arthe is flattish, but they will just sail around the Arthe ball and think they are discovering new lands until eventually, they come home"

"That would work, let's do it"

So the Gods put the Hu Mans to sleep and stood round the ARthe board and bent it into the shape of a ball. The water clung to the ball and when the Hu Mans woke they thought some things had changed but they weren't sure what.

They came outside and decided that they needed to build more boats to find out what had happened to the previous explorers. So many had lost their mates in this way, at least in the wars they could see the bodies, but when explorers just didn't come back, that was a special type of hurt. Little did they know that thanks to the machinations of the gods that was unlikely to happen. Anther thing was that they called themselves Humans who lived on Earth because that is what the Oracles told them.

And that is why our world is shaped like a ball.