"Long long ago, so long ago that the forest outside was just a bunch of little sproutlings, no higher than the grass that tickles your bellies when you play outside." The large suva's tail snuck around and tickled one or two of them, and she waited for the giggles to subside before continuing. "So long ago, I was just as small as you are," she paused to smile at the widening eyes of the hatchlings before her, as though they'd never actually imagined that the Oracle had ever been anything other than what she was then. "The world was fresh and new, and our kind lived in huge mountainside caverns. They stretched on for hundreds of miles, underground, from one sea to the mountains. Some even went beneath the sea, connecting the two great lands. Those underground passages let all sorts of people and creatures travel to places they had never seen before." Oracle paused, raising her head to the large, domed ceiling and half-carved pillars. "This is the last surviving cave from that time."      The hatchlings followed her gaze, ooh-ing with wonder. One hatchling spoke up, her inquisitive voice and speech more advanced than that of her playmates. Probably because she spent so much time with the language teachers that came up every once in a while. "Why didn' people jus' fly?" she asked.      Oracle nuzzled her gently and answered. "Because our people, way back then, were different from how we are now. They didn't trust many people, and the long trip across the oceans would be an awfully long flight with someone you didn't trust, don't you think?"      Not satisfied yet, the hatchling persued her train of thought. "Weren' there any boa's back then?"      Oracle shook her head, smiling. "No, hon, I'm afraid there weren't many boats at all. The humans had only just arrived, and there weren't many of them. What boats they did have were tiny fishing vessels, not much use for crossing such a big ocean."      "What about the portals?" the hatchling asked, and Oracle knew then what Calling she would choose to pursue as she grew. Guide.      "The portals weren't nearly so wide-spread or accessible back then, either." At the little hatchling's look of confusion at the word 'accessible' Oracle smiled gently. "People couldn't find or use them."      The others were getting restless now, so Oracle continued her story. "The land was plentiful, and everyone who lived in it was blessed with all they could have ever desired. Everyone was happy, and yet, they didn't know what happy was. They grew fat and spoiled and lazy, expecting things to go their way, because that's how things went. And they began to want more. So they began to look for things that would make them happy, not knowing that they were already. There wasn't much of anything out there in the wilderness, except for some creatures that lived there... and the evil." Her voice dropped in pitch and volume with those last three words, and the hatchlings crouded closer together.      Again, one spoke up, his voice filled with awe "Is the same evil as now?" he asked, almost too quiet for Oracle to hear.      "Yes, and no." she said. "It was the same essence, but it had no form. No one knew what it was back then. They didn't even know it was there. When it passed through a place, it left behind nothing but dead trees and a feeling of unhappiness. Nothing would live there, for a long time."      The hatchlings were gazing up at her with wide eyes, completely caught up in her story. oracle continued. "our people thougt it was some dark race come to take our world, and they panicked. Some of them fought eachother for the power to decide what to do, and some simply hid themselves, hoping that the danger would go away. This was before our Niaryalii gave us the gift to resist that evil, so many of our number fell prey to it." She paused there, remembering the days back when the world was new.      "No one knew what it was, because no one had ever seen it. No one realized that, in order to know peace and plenty, you had to have war and famine. You wouldn't know what light was if you hadn't spent your first days within the warm darkness of your shells." She told them, and thought that maybe they understood.      She'd been working up to this lesson, gently teaching them the difference between right and wrong, and how to tell the difference. She laid the foundation, so that when they moved out, these little hatchlings would have something sturdy to build their lives on, so that they wouldn't be shaken by some great evil, or small suggestion that doesn't seem evil. She had been doing just that for generations. Suva could live indefinitely, if they had no bondmate or their bonds were immortal, but she had seen far too many of them fall. They worked with danger at every side. Sentinels and Protectors would give their lives for their charges, and even the gentlest Joybringer or Healer faced opposition on every side. The hatchlings would use all the head start they could get, early on in life.      "Even I didn't know, at that time, what the evil was, until it was too late," the aged Oracle continued. "And even if I had known, I wouldn't have believed it. No one would connect the displays of death and destruction with the deity of life and creation."      The eyes of her audience, if it was even possible, widened still furter. One tiny little girl breated out their unanimous incredulity; the single yaiyashusaji word for their creator. "Niaryalii?"      Oracle nodded solemnly. "There must be balance," she said. "Even as there is night follows day, death must follow birth. Creation without distruction is empty, and soon the entire planet would feel that emptyness within their own lives."