Creation.

It was created from the earth of the forest. The Gods scooped clay from the earth and molded it, shaping first the body, then the legs and finally a face, with two indentions for eyes. The Gods stepped back to admire their creation, but frowned instead.

Something was missing.

For three days, they left the mud-creature in the rain, to wash away the impurities of the soil. The Gods were thinking. Silently, the little clay deer withstood the test of rain as the pure water washed over it. At the end of the three days, still the little creature stood, lifeless, unthinking and unknowing. It simply was.

Still, the creature seemed to be missing something. The Gods found two black stones, round and shiny, glittering with little flecks of gold. Into the indentions these small rocks were placed. Yet, they no longer seemed to glitter brightly; in the mud, they had become lifeless rocks once more. The Gods were puzzled and left to think once more.

For three more days, they left the mud-creature in the sun, to bake away the dampness of the clay. Still, they thought and thought. The clay creature stoically withstood the test of sun, its clay body baking in the heat. On the evening of the final day, the Gods returned. Still, their creature had no life. It was simply a piece of clay.

The Red Goddess broke off two sticks, equal in length and sharp at many different points, from the very tip top of the Great Oak. The Yellow God created two small holes in the top of their little clay creature's head and the Goddess placed the sticks in the holes. However, the magic of the Great Oak was lost. The sticks became nothing more than lifeless sticks.

Once again, the Gods left to ponder this mystery for three more days. The little mud-creature weathered first the twilight rapidly followed by nighttime for three days, kept in the darkness to cool the heated and cracked clay. Still, it stood, untouched and unknowing, silent and pure. When the gods returned at the break of dawn on the final day of darkness, they found their creature waiting as patiently as ever.

The Gods had pondered for nine long days. Finally, both had come to the conclusion that all their little clay creature was missing was one thing: life. The Yellow God harnessed the wind from the treetops and guided it in to the little deer's mouth. Now their creature had breath, but it still lacked a soul. Together, Red Goddess and Yellow God broke off a piece of themselves, a small kernel of the love and patience that had gone into the creation of the small mud-deer. They fashioned it into a heart and placed it in the clay-creature's chest.

Suddenly, their little clay deer came alive, looking up at the Gods with wonder. The Red Goddess gently crafted a sunbeam into a vibrant, glowing pictogram, placed above its head. With a start, the deer ran off into the forest, proudly carrying its new name.

In time, many such creatures would be created in the same way. From the berries and grasses of the forest, the Gods would create designs for their children to wear, antlers from the tree branches and masks from the wood of the Mother Oak. Each deer would be handmade, beloved by the Gods as a new creation.

{-}

The first deer were born with language. They spoke the words the pictograms signified, speaking beautiful, flowing words like mountain streams and spring flowers. They created beautiful flower patches, lovely green grasses, even the flowing stream that feeds the pond. In giving the deer pieces of themselves, the Gods had also given them the ability to speak their names.

Yet, they had also given them the power to speak much more than their names. They had given them unrestricted power of language. Beautiful words began to turn ugly.

Slowly, language began to corrupt the pure forest that the Gods had made. The beautiful words were used to harm. The deer began to turn on each other. More than that, they began to turn on the forest itself. The words infected the very fabric of the forest and began to topple the insubstantial trees, upturn the soil, boil the pond. In those days, words were very powerful, the ones created by the Gods even more so. They had the power to create and destroy.

The deer began to spread rumors, quietly at first, then much louder. The Gods were tyrants. The forest was a prison. Paradise was outside this trap. To overthrow the Gods would be to gain their freedom. Their words began to create strange, strange shapes: a church, a bridge and more. The Gods, being able to see many different worlds aside from their own, realized that their creatures were coming to resemble the humans that their faces looked so like.

The deer began to form an army against the Gods, an army of words. They would fight, they said. They would earn their freedom. The Gods were troubled and began to think once more. Slowly, they came to a decision: to take away the powerful words from the deer and restore them to their peaceful bliss by erasing the memories of this terrible time. The traitorous deer's memories were wiped clean, the forest righted once more.

In memory of the power of words, the Gods left the memorials that the power of their words and the deer's words had built. So too, they left the pictograms hovering above the deer's heads, a memory of the beauty of the language that would be forever lost.

{I stole this from a creation myth somewhere, but I'm not sure which one. I was also inspired by Laruna's deer, I believe. >_>
This is how Aletheia was created and also why she's mute. c:}