Once upon a time…

…in an endless universe,
in phantasmagoric eternity…

…a Goddess created a world.

 . . .

In the white realm of Heaven where the sky was gold and blue, and the grass grew gold and green, the Gods looked out across an empty eternity. They began, together in their youth, to fill it with dust and with colors and with the things their minds could think of.

They created.

They made light and sound and shining stars. They forged skies, and moons, and comets. They sculpted earth and water, played games with rock and ice, metal and magma. They put pigment to the empty, set vast strokes across a cosmic canvas. And with gleeful curiosity at the limits of their strength, they gave meaning to a realm newly born.

And the universe was good.

Yet in all the Gods created, in all that their magic wove, the almighty could find nothing that they truly, deeply loved. Nothing born from their hands seemed to fascinate, nothing crafted yet charmed or compelled; naught surprised them; naught excited them. Not in all of eternity. Not in unbound distances of glittering galaxies could they point to some small sparkle that mesmerized: that tugged at their heart strings with promise—with potential. Something unfathomed. Something unknown. Something that one day might be more than they imagined, more than they intended. More than they hoped for. More than they dreamed.

Naught existed that the Creators thought to be earnestly, magnificently, profound.

Until the Gods, in their Heaven, found a world.

‘Found’ because none knew it. None could say from whence it came. None among them claimed to have made it, and none before had ever seen it. It appeared one day, quite all of the sudden, in the shimmering sky of their home…

..as a magnificent, glittering gem.

It sparkled in a chorus of colors: a marble of marvels untold. Azure soaked the earth in lake and sea and emerald brushed wild forests. Amber twined with burning crimson bubbling beneath the land. White clouds soared on seaside winds. Purple dove deep into cavern and crag. Red mornings gave way to warm yellow afternoons, turning fast into flaming orange dusks. Then came pink sunsets, grey twilights, and faded midnight blues.

The colors of life swirled within this place.

Yet that proved not the half of it. The world teemed with life unbound. It filled with vines and leaves and lizards and creatures out of dreams. Monsters soared on feathered wings; titans swam through cavernous depths. Giants stepped unknowing over serpents and rodents and deer, walked slow beneath jungle canopies and slept in hidden fens.

Not even the world itself stood static. It lived and it breathed and grew. New earth erupted from molten veins, spit out in flurries of fire. Gold coastlines drowned in thunderstorms beneath torrential rain. Land quaked and shivered, shifted and crumbled, born from and devoured by a vast and endless sea.

What a sight to behold…

The Gods, oh so quickly, fell in love.

They sought it with great fervor. A thousand times they left to chase it. A thousand times they mourned their failure, for it was never found. The vastness of the universe stretched too great to find one lost, shining bead.

So they became content to merely watch it from their sky. When time permitted and duties were done, they would gather and stare as it spun. They looked and laughed, imagined and wondered, and remarked on what they hoped might next change. They spoke often on how they might better it, if only they knew where it lay. But without such a power they were satisfied with simply watching, and they found that enjoyable still. They adored and named the creatures, and became overjoyed when those survived the cycles of time. They fell to dreary melancholy when things they loved met their end. But always they wondered, when they saw that spinning jewel, how it might have come to be—and how they might make it theirs.

They wondered and puzzled and questioned, and eons dragged on.

Then, one day, they found their answer.

One day, at a time not at all significant, dictated not at all by fate but instead a simple error in judgment, a falling star crashed upon the earth.

At a time when no one should have been watching, when the world sank low on the horizon—at a point where it flickered so faintly at Heaven’s edge that no one should have seen—in a single shimmer, a brief instant of light, that star caught the wonder of those it had meant to sneak by.

The Gods clamored in their Heaven. They watched the small star soar. They saw it split the midnight sky and crash upon the soil. It splashed on the grass like a golden raindrop, and a figure appeared.

A goddess walked the earth, smiling and vibrant: their own sister, their kin. She began with her magic to shape and change the land. She widened valleys and nurtured trees, she grew fruits and flowers, and vines. She let snow drape soft over mountain tops and let frost fall over plains. She shifted forests, carved rivers, brightened deserts and darkened caves. She made, with her thin hands, all that the Gods adored. She did all the things to that wondrous world that the Gods wished they could instead.

Jealousy brewed in Heaven.

But then…

Quite unannounced, and very much to their surprise, alone on the world as the morning dawned…

…the goddess began to sing.

She sang.

She sang, and her voice dispelled their jealousy. She sang, and her words melted their hearts. She sang, and from her song new creatures then took form—the earth and wind and rain together melded into clay. She sang and bled her fingertips. She sang and showed her soul. She sang, and suddenly the dawning world began to glow. It flashed phantasmal colors, every subtle shade and hue. A hundred thousand rainbows flickered fast through gleaming sky.

And then there were forms.

Long and slender, strong and curved, these creatures stood up from the earth. Not in pairs they came but in hundreds, in thousands, all at once in cradles she had made for them. Beautiful faces, graceful hair, slender legs and limbs: the humans born of Earth and Heaven’s flesh now walked the soil.

Thus did the race of Man come to be.

And the Gods loved them. Oh, how they loved them…

In heaven, still and silent, the Creators understood: the world had not been found, but made. Carefully, lovingly, by this their wayward sister.

Oh, how they praised her upon her return, that goddess of colors and light! They accepted her world with graceful chagrin, and not to love it for what they might like it to be, but for what it was, simply and truly.

And they offered only a few suggestions…