As the sun is just beginning to rise, three taepagar (animal-herders) of varying ages are already preparing to fill in for their counterparts whose shifts have just ended. Among the three, a boy of ten winters looks dutifully prepared for his day's work, a young man of seventeen looks less than enthusiastic, and a man of more than thirty watches the young man more carefully than he does either the boy or the flock of sheep in the valley below.

"Dzertei, come! We have to--"

"Yes, Manggak, I know. I'm coming." Dzertei's tone made the Kyamahae, the older man, roll his eyes.

"Dzertei," the older man chided, "let's see a little more spring in your step, yes? This job doesn't demand much of us, but it does demand alertness. Get moving, now."

Dzertei sighed dramatically. "Yes, Kyama."

It was not typical of taepagar to include a person of more than twenty winters among their number, their work being mundane as it was, but then again, it was not typical of any herder to doze off and risk losing track of a dozen sheep--and that is exactly what Dzertei had managed to do during the previous moon. So Kyamahae was there in attendance, watching the young man with raptor's eyes, ready to swoop down should Dzertei commit another such error.

After several hours of watching sheep do the only things that sheep do, even the once-vigilant Manggak grows bored.

Dzertei looks down at the boy and and smirks. "You too, young man? Maybe our master here should consider giving us a break," he says half-amused, half-annoyed tone as he looks over his shoulder and flashes Kyamahae.

"Perhaps you should remember why you're here in the first place--and why I'm here," Kyamahae retorts. "You may not take much interest in our sheep, which I suppose is better than being the sort who takes too much interest in them, but rest assured you'll spend quite a lot more time thinking of them if you let them run off and everyone back at camp asks you where the food and wool have gone."

The boy grins as he watches Dzertei, several years his senior, be scolded once again. "Yeah, Dzertei, that was a close call last time. Maybe you'd be better-suited to watching crops grow than keeping track of sheep."

Kyamahae let out a surprised laugh at the boy's jab. Dzertei just gaped.

After a few moments of silence, Kyamahae spoke up again. "You know what? That reminds me. Maybe you two do need a reminder of why we're doing this. Perhaps it's too late to reform you, Dzertei, but young Manggak here could benefit from learning early."

Kyamahae motions for the others to follow him to a hilltop. They had already brought the herd to the day's pasture, so once they reach the top, they set down rugs and sit facing in the general direction of the herd, the two younger herders sitting at either side of Kyamahae.

"You might as well hear it--Dzertei again, and Manggak for perhaps the first time? I think once in a while, we could all use a good reminder as to why we're not down in the river valley watching grass grow." The others chuckled.

Tsabann-slae, tsabann-slae parmataesotun. Many days, many days have passed.

In the first days, Tsengguo was warm and nurturing, while Hwanggae above was stern, a harsh teacher. Both shaped their Creation and its creatures. Tsengguo's coddled the grazing beasts, feeding them with her substance alone but making them wholly dependent on her in doing so. Hwanggae, meanwhile, valued most the eagles, whom he gave wings so that they might soar above the lesser beasts both in height and grandeur.

Humankind, however, was not merely of one nature. Many preferred Tsengguo's ways, reaping her generous annual bounty but at the expense of their initiative and ability to wander. There were still some people like us, however, who knew that the winds called and challenged them--and we answered. Knowing that it is Hwanggae who wants his sons and daughters to constantly mature and ascend, we guard our traditions, this lifestyle of ours, and we build funerary pyres for our dead so that they can rise up to our Father above.

While those with ambition chose to live this open-ended if difficult life, however, many of our brothers and sisters were content to languish in Tsengguo's graciousness. Rather than constantly aspiring toward something greater, they insisted on investing the bulk of their labor into growing their own fodder, digging shelters hardly more comfortable than their ancestors' tents, and counting their grains and beans. Hwanggae's natural order, which placed humankind above all save for the winged creatures, was no object to them as long as they could fill their stomachs.

Of course, you have probably eaten a meal of grains--acquired in bulk for something of real substance, perhaps--only to find said meal less than filling. Such is common knowledge to the hungry herder, who soon finds himself longing for a more substantial meal of meat and cheese or aerag, but the farmers hardly knew better.

Still, Hwanggae made certain that humankind would be distinguished by ambition, if nothing else, even if an individual's ambitions might be narrowed by a limited experience. Even the farmers, for their rote toil and rote meals, were constantly hungry, constantly wondering what remained of their food stores. Their response was simple as they were: they decided they simply needed more farmlands.

First, they exploited the rivers. Yes, they had been watering their farms from these waters for some time, but they began to farm such vast stretches of the banks that even the greatest rivers began to shrivel, their waters redirected the farmers' own purposes. When the rivers shrank to a fraction of their former size, and fish began to die where they had once thrived. When the waters began to recede, and the farmers reaped ever-greater bounties of grain, they only responded to their new abundance of food as simple animals do: by multiplying.

As waters ran low and the farmers' collective hunger was no closer to being sated, they expanded outward, farming dry land where they hoped for enough rain or invading new waterways. Where these waterways were already flanked by forests, this was no object to the farmers, who burned and cut the woods, driving out animals and watching felled trunks float downstream as they imagined the endless farmlands that would soon grow in their stead.

Years passed, and virtually all of the world known to our people was choked with fields and farmsteads. Hardly a grazing animal was in sight, never mind the game that once inhabited the woods and the birds that perched in the trees. No respect was there for Hwanggae's intended order, nor for his and Tsengguo's vision for Creation; all was shaped to the agrarians' own simple, selfish, and limited purposes.

One day, Hwanggae saw fit to test the agrarians' character and priorities. He was displeased with their designs, to say the least, and even he could not read their intentions or discern why they were so determined to live this way. Hwanggae called forth one of his beloved golden eagles, the noblest of all creatures in the sky, and instructed it to seek roost or shelter in the lands of these farmers. The eagle took flight, but when it reached the sprawling agrarian realm, it could find little other than shabby houses and wide fields, not even a tree young or old on which to rest. After it had flown at great length, the mighty eagle decided that it needed to rest somewhere, anywhere at all, and chose a rooftop to land on. Just as it landed, however, it had to move suddenly to dodge a rock thrown at it by a shouting peasant. The man, dressed in sack-like clothes of hemp fiber, failed to appreciate the eagle's majestic appearance or even its ability to hunt for pests in the fields, only thinking of it as a nuisance. The eagle flew in search of another place to perch, only to be chased off by a farmer who was trying to figure out how to build his house upward to accommodate his growing family.

The eagle persisted in this, but to no avail. Being obsessed with their farms and their claims of land, the farmers appreciated nothing else; even as the eagle grew fatigued, flapping its wings more laboriously, most of the farmers never looked up, preoccupied with inspecting their crops or moving dirt around with their crude tools. Those who did notice the creature shooed it away as they would any bird that might try to steal fallen grains.

The eagle flew day and night, but there was no friendly place to rest in the entirety of the vast realm. The following morning, the eagle fell as the sun rose, succumbing to exhaustion--and not a single one the farmers noticed. When Hwanggae looked down from above, he was shocked and appalled, wondering what had happened to these people whose ancestors were curious and alert. He continued to watch, expecting that someone would at least pay proper respect to the fallen creature--but alas, when a farmer found the fallen eagle in his path, he merely brushed it off to the side with his hoe and kept walking.

That pushed Hwanggae over the edge--the farmers had failed his test to an astounding degree. His shock transitioned into rage. Disgusted with these people who hardly acted human anymore, their faces ever turned toward the ground as if they were grazing animals, he saw fit to finally give them cause to look up. If they would wantonly reject his order, Hwanggae would reject theirs.

Lightning. That would get their attention.

Hwanggae spoke curses through the air, inviting ruin upon the community. A great rumbling noise was a prelude to what was to come. The tallest farmstead was the first to fall. Many of the villagers gaped in shock, only moving to action as flames engulfed the lodge and they realized that the fire might spread to their own crops. As they eventually rushed to stifle the flames, however, Hwanggae breathed life into them, carrying them on the winds and engulfing more houses and the surrounding fields. With fields and farmsteads packed so tightly together, all was tinder for the flames. The fire turned into a great conflagration, greater than any the villagers had ever seen. As Hwanggae's anger manifested as billowing smoke and rolling thunder, the villagers cowered under the noise, choked in the smoke, and suffered before the flames. Others fled far, far away from Hwanggae's fury, many to little avail. Those few who survived had to start new lives for themselves, often forced to hunt or herd as their ancestors once did. Even today, when one wheezes and has fits of coughing, it is his anger resurfacing, having never fully abated since that day.

And that is why we 'wanderers,' aimless as we may seem, persist in our ways. It is not good for men to seek mindless security; men are meant to aspire toward something greater and seek opportunities wherever they may be found.