Once, long ago, before the world became round and full of rocks, Noman and Nowoman were sitting around talking.

“Why don’t we have any myths?” said Noman.

“What’s a myth?”

“I don’t know, but it seems like we ought to have at least one, if not more.”

Nowoman pondered this for a long moment, or what would have been a long moment if moments had been invented.

“Well,” she finally replied, “let’s say you’re right. How do we go about getting one or two if we don’t know what that is?”

“We’ll go and look for it. When we find it, we’ll know.” said Noman. Nowoman looked at him like he was crazy but held her tongue.

And so they set off in all directions at once, since there was no time to define things like that. But as they walked, Earth formed beneath them, and in their footsteps, water and all the mysterious things that live in water, and green sprouted all around them. And all that they gazed upon in wonder became stars, and their love of these things the sun, so terrible in its warmth and light that a moon was needed to share the day with.

“I don’t know,” said Noman. “This stuff is so good, maybe we don’t need a myth.”

But Nowoman shook her head. “Now that we’ve started we have to go on.”

And so they did. The earth shook and trembled, and water fell from nowhere, which was called the sky, with clouds so soft they could kill for no reason. All at once they noticed they were not alone. Small things, large things, fuzzy things and hard pointed things, all moving along with them. Some they loved and some they hated, some they fed and some they ate. And from their bodies came the bodies of the wild and the tame alike.

Finally, after a time so long there could be no one to remember it, they got tired for the first time ever. They sat down at the rim of the world and shed sweat and tears into the vastness, and this was the ocean.

Noman was discouraged. “I thought we could find a myth, but we haven’t.”

But Nowoman said, “We have a sea to sail, and a story to tell.”

They looked at each other in surprise, and suddenly knew they had their myth. They laughed so long and hard, that all the birds joned them, and they still sing the myth of beginning.

“Well, that was fun,” said Noman. “Now what?”

“Love?”

“What’s love?”

And Nowoman smiled the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.