In the beginning...

...Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) created the Store.

At least, that was the belief of thousands of nomes who for many generations* had lived under the floorboards of Arnold Bros. (est. 1905), an old and respected department store in the middle of the city.

*[Nome generations, that is. Nomes live ten times faster than humans. To them, ten years is a long lifetime.]

The Store had become their world. A world with a roof and walls. Wind and Rain were ancient legends. So were Day and Night. Now there were sprinkler systems and air conditioners, and the nomes' small, crowded lives ticked to the clock of Opening Time and Closing Time. The seasons of their year were January Sales, Spring into Spring Fashions, Summer Bargains, and Christmas Fayre. Led by the Abbot and priesthood of the Stationer!, they worshipped in a polite, easygoing sort of way, so as not to upset him. Arnold Bros. (est. 1905), who they believed had created everything, i.e., the Store and all the contents therein. Some families of nomes had grown rich and powerful and took the names-more or less-of the Store departments they lived under ... the Del Icatessen, the Ironmongri, the Haberdasheri. And into the Store, on the back of a truck, came the last nomes to live Outside. They knew what wind and rain were, all right. That's why they tried to leave them behind. Among them was Masklin, rat hunter, and Granny Morkie, and Grimma, although they were women and didn't really count. And, of course, the Thing. No one quite understood the Thing. Masklin's people had handed it down for centuries; it was very important, that was all they knew. When it came near the electricity in the Store it was able to talk. It said it was a thinking machine from a ship which, thousands of years before, had brought the nomes from a far Store, or possibly star. It also said it could hear electricity talk, and one of the things the electricity was saying was that the Store would be demolished in three weeks. It was Masklin who suggested that the nomes leave the Store on a truck.