In a Polynesian creation myth, God created a man, a woman, a dog, a pig and a chicken and put them in a boat in the great primevil ocean. In a similar manner, a dwarf creation myth may involve God creating a Dwarf and his mate and placing them in the primevil mithril mine.
In the "Weight of Glory" C. S. Lewis writes why he believes man first started telling stories about elves:
"We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods."
I have sometimes thought about what it would be like to fly, or swim like a dolphin, or be part of a race that is the most comfortable swimming in the lava of an active volcano. I ask myself how I would look at the world differently.
