Untitled 2

The Universe is still dark, the ground on which you sit is nothing more than a vast, empty stretch of pale sand. The two of you are waiting. At least, you are waiting. The little one beside you is more interested in cupping the sand in its small palms, sifting the grains through its fingers and letting them fall, returning them to themselves. Each grain is identical to the other, and though a handful is as light as the nothingness surrounding them they couldn't be blown away. There is no air.

The little one playing in the sand is still almost entirely formless. Naked and colorless, but no longer transparent. You can pick out a few key features that would define its function, its self. The wide, clear orbs it uses to know the world around it, the long limbs it would use to cling and hold on until it destroyed what was trapped in its embrace. But for the most part it is still misshapen, unformed. It is still innocent.

You look down at your hands, and lift them, slowly, to the upper shell of the still-hollow world. Your hands are pale like the sand, and the new sky is cold to your touch. You look at your hands again, running a finger down the palm, around your wrists, up to your bare sides and legs. The naked flesh is unblemished and smooth. You tentatively trace the features of your face, the delicate implements you have still to use to know the world around you, the soft growth at the top of your head. So far the only senses you have are sight and touch. But for now, they suffice. You trace around the delicate spheres at the top of your face, wondering what you look like.

A slight disturbance close by jolts you from your self-inspection and the little one from the sand. As you turn your head (gingerly, you know not the limits of your new form and do not want to be careless when testing them.) towards it, you see that the whatever-it-is seems to be followed by a strange lightening around the desert's expanse.

You are not afraid. There is yet nothing to be afraid of. Along with the lightening comes a strange new feeling of awareness. A thrumming feeling in your chest starts, and air rushes in your nose, your mouth, your insides. You double up on your knees, gasping the new substance in, whirling and spinning inside you. You are suddenly aware of new sensation: blood beating in your pulse, your lungs expanding and contracting, your ears filling with sound. Your skin is covered with a strange substance coming from your pores, and as you wipe it away with shaking hands, you see that it is clear and liquid. Your eyes dart to the little one, trying to see if it is hurt. But far from it, it is kneeling down, staring at you intently. Its colorless eyes are taking you in, your nakedness, your vulnerability, your fear. The beginnings of color have seeped into its gray skin, its features becoming more and more defined with each passing second. Its eyes have a hectic glimmer. With a shock, you see in their depths what must be your reflection. It is far from what you expected; You thought you would be as formless as it was.

You are still curled up within yourself, not moving, your eyes locked with the little one's. Then, you feel the strange presence behind you, its hands pulling you up, brushing your hair from your face. You tear your eyes away from the staring, colorless eyes, and turn towards the newcomer. It is something that looks much like you, but its features are harsher, sharper. Its body is covered with a thin material the color of its hair, which you somehow know is the exact shade of the liquid you feel under your skin, and that it is what keeps you warm, alive. Your eyes follow the lines and edges of its face until they reach its – his – eyes.

In his brilliant eyes you can see what is to become of this universe, and your part in it. The ravages and harvests brought on by every passing season, the dance of hope and despair, love and hate, jubilation and grief, happiness and greed, peace and war, life and death will lead. A chaotic maelstrom of sight, sound, smell,  taste, and touch. Colors emerging from blank light and plunging into darkness. All the sick horrors of the universe, with all its wonder. All that there is to come is reflected in his eyes, burning like new stars.

It is too much for you, for now. It is too much for you to know what you must endure as a silent witness. You cover your eyes with both of your hands. And you feel dampness. Salty like sweat, but from the tools you use to see. Fate is cradling you, Memory watching. A sudden peal of what must be sound startles you from your tears, and you tear your hands away, your eyelids peeled back with shock. Memory is laughing, bright and amazed as it – she - absorbs the fresh past of a waking world. She is no longer a faceless creature, but a young force of will with the vulnerable but powerful form of a child. Around her, the lightening has spread, until the sand is blazing gold, and the empty firmament is filled with the storm and dust of newborn stars, ferocious and chaotic, colliding into one another to form more nebulae and new worlds.

"She will drive us to become what we will be," Fate's soft, deep voice will resonate within your heart and mind and memory for millennia to come.

"I contain the future, the end of all roads. But she will always be much more than my equal. But you, Time, will always destroy her. Little by little until she is born anew."

You do not hear him, or pretend not to. Your eyes are on the skies, and you are watching the chaos of birth for the first and holiest time. With the first explosion of life came the first vestiges of meaning in your existence, and now your heart beats, now you are alive.

And suddenly, as quickly as it began, it is over. Silence descends once again.

You look around you. The same vast expanse of sand greets you, the grains powder fine beneath your toes. Memory is gone. Somewhere, she sleeps, waiting to inhabit the minds of the living and aware. But Fate remains. And far beyond the desert, festooned in the dark blue sky and glowing with their intense newness, are the blue-white stars,

You lift your hands up, longing to touch the familiar coolness, longing to touch the burning points of light, longing to cradle them close to you. But the sky is farther than it used to, and your hands snatch at empty air. A strange roaring fills your ears, and you look behind you. The desert has changed. Eating away at its edges is endless, roiling –

"Water." Fate's voice, slow and deep and languorous, curls around your ears. "Saltwater. It will cover this world, and life shall awaken."

Cautiously, you approach it. It is vast and great and dark, but as you steal a cupful in your palms it becomes clear and pure. You take a hesitant sip, and immediately spit it out. The liquid is salt-bitter, like tears, like sweat. It disgusts you, but not just because of its taste.

"You say life shall awaken in this dense prison…" Your voice is soft, quiet, but gains strength little by little. "But why did you take away the sky?"

Fate draws you closer, and you do not resist, do not flinch, even when he trails warm fingers on your face, tracing the features, the delicate implements. His thumbs stroke your bottom eyelids, following the dried traces of your tears.

"Hope," he whispers into your ear. "is not for us who must know. It is you who will destroy us."
And he is gone.

You are alone. It is still dark, the first night of the waken universe. But soon, you know, light shall bleed into the new sky, so much farther away than the one you used to know.
With the first beats of your existence, your duty had begun.

Water is lapping at your ankles. The empty sand has been replaced by water. No less empty, but with so much more potential in its starlike drops.

You lift your hands above your head, reaching for a sky that you will never be able to touch again. Above you the stars are fading. Angry, fierce red is bleeding into the horizon, staining the world orange, pink, and gold. You close your eyes to it. In your dry husk, you search for a grain of self. And when you find it, you smile. It is small, it is more than a little bitter, but it is a smile nonetheless. You bind the Universe with your existence. Life unfurling and crumbling; the birth and the decay. Drops of Oblivion, hope for the future. For Fate to be kind, or at least, not so cruel.

Spreading yourself in the fiercely burning core of the Universe, you start your existence.