Yonat Eshchar

“They navigated the green sea by the stars and by the shore, and when the shore was only a memory and the night sky was overcast and dark they navigated by faith, and they called on the all-father to bring them safely to land once more. A bad journey they had of it, their fingers numb and with a shiver in their bones that not even wine could burn off. They would wake in the morning to see that the rime had frosted their beards, and, until the sun warmed them, they looked like old men, white-bearded before their time. Teeth were loosening and eyes were deep-sunken in their sockets when they made landfall on the green land to the West. The men said, “We are far, far from our homes and our hearths, far from the seas we know and the lands we love. Here on the edge of the world we will be forgotten by our gods.” Their leader clambered to the top of a great rock, and he mocked them for their lack of faith. “The all-father made the world,” he shouted. “He built it with his hands from the shattered bones and the flesh of Ymir, his grandfather. He placed Ymir’s brains in the sky as clouds, and his salt blood became the seas we crossed. If he made the world, do you not realize that he created this land as well? And if we die here as men, shall we not be received into his hall?”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“The engineers of those people changed”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race

“themselves and their environment, melding Earth and native stock to insert themselves into the planetary ecosystem, so that what you have now, your crops, your beasts, some are natives and some are tweaked Earth creatures and others are hybrids of the two, so that there is precious little left that resembles the original alien ecosystem.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race

“You must journey,” said Nunyunnini. “You must travel to sun-ward. Where the sun rises, there you will find a new land, where you will be safe. It will be a long journey: the moon will swell and empty, die and live, twice, and there will be slavers and beasts, but I shall guide you and keep you safe, if you travel toward the sunrise.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods