Notes

This story is clearly inspired by Egyptian mythology.

(Except for the part about traps in a temple. Movies popularized that, but the reality was different. At most there was a secret passage, a double wall, something like that. But no intricate mechanisms that shoot arrows or roll boulders, sorry.)

But it goes further than that. Floria is an area of limestone that, in this era, suddenly appeared. That really happened.

Egypt didn’t exist for a long time. But through accumulation of soil, through convergence of the right conditions (for a long time), it rose up from the sea.

In my saga, only the moment when that happened is wrong. The area of Egypt appeared long before complex creatures roamed the earth, while it happens halfway my Saga of Life.

The Pearl Pyramid represents the temple of Osiris. The skeleton lying there is of the saber-toothed tiger (and god) Ardex.

The real story

This is a rather incomplete and incorrect summary of the story surrounding Isis and Osiris.

The whole world is water, one egg drifts around (and only one egg). Ra emerges from it, doesn’t want to have to swim anymore, sits in the air and becomes the sun.
The sun dries up the water, and land appears.
Ra’s grandson, Osiris, was very popular and was given the title First Pharaoh of Egypt.
He took Isis as his wife and they loved each other very much.
Set murdered him out of anger and jealousy, cutting him into pieces.
Anubis was able to repair Osiris, but could no longer bring him back to life.
Horus then murdered his uncle Set as revenge.
Osiris received an even greater honor: god of the underworld.
Every year, when the Nile floods, Isis weeps for her lost husband.

Characters

Jaco (jackal): outcast because of crimes. (His direct reason for banishment—supposedly abducting Anniwe—is not. But everything after that is true.) Though he wants to better his life, especially since he is indirectly guilty of wiping out the royal family.
Gidi (dune gazelle): the only surviving member of that royal family. Keeps mixing up the items in Jaco’s bag. Not necessarily the smartest, but has a good heart and works well together. Often starts sentences with “oh”.
Halek (desert fox; fennec; Shadowshifter): not necessarily a good or bad creature. Shadowshifters started because food was so hard to find in the Floria desert, but it slowly became a cruel group of monsters in which he was stuck. Secretly has a lot of appreciation/respect for Jaco. (The reason for fennics being banished to Floria is also mentioned—the supposed poisoning of someone important—and will be revealed in a later story.)

Other

In this first cycle of the Saga of Life, we mainly see animals that are herbivores, scavengers or omnivores. I didn’t want to start with stories where characters literally devour each other. Those will surely come later, because the vast majority of nature consists of carnivores.

That is simply an important reality: nature is beautiful, but also very cruel.

When I wrote this story, I was a little kid in middle school. Since then, it has been extensively updated: what you read now is the fourth version.

For example, I picked the term Shadowshifters because it just sounded cool. In the original story, though, they had no powers and there was absolutely no reason why they should be called that.

Only when I reread the story, did I realize they needed to be given a unique power: manipulating shadows. This simple change (around 10-20 sentences throughout the story) made it MUCH better.

You can tell this is an older story because there is so much dialogue (often with quick remarks or jokes). I used to find that a bit too fun.

The sailor’s poem at the beginning (chapter 2) is a poem I wrote in my notebook when I was sitting in a waiting room somewhere, originally in Dutch. It’s also the only thing I ever wrote in that notebook. I mean this somewhat positively, because since then I haven’t sat in many more waiting rooms. The whole poem was finished long ago. There will be a story about it someday.