From nothing to everything

Hush now. Draw close to the coals and let your shadows lean in, for this is an old telling.

In the first days, before counting and before names, there were planes upon planes and worlds braided tight, slipping through one another like scarves in a river current. Beings came and went, lived and died, and stepped from one reality to the next as easily as we step through a doorway.

Then two great contrary planes met and struck. The blow was so vast it unhooked the braid, flung all the worlds apart, and sent them tumbling in the dark between. The power of that sundering had nowhere to rest. It drifted, it cooled, it thickened. Ages upon ages passed, and when the power had grown dense enough to remember itself, a spark woke within it.

From that spark rose the Creator, not flesh, not form, but will and light. At first, like any newborn, the Creator only felt, a tremor here, a whisper there. Curiosity taught seeing, and seeing taught moving. The Creator wandered the scattered planes, watching life kindle, bloom, and fade, so many stories, so many endings.

At last a thought took root. Let there be a world that is mine to tend. The Creator took a sliver of Their own power and shaped it. A new plane unfolded. Our plane.

At the start it was empty, but it belonged to Them. The Creator shook motes of brightness into the dark, stars to keep the night company. Then They pressed a globe from the deep, blue with waters, brown with stone, ridged with peaks and furrowed with trenches. A breath fell over it and it went green. So lovely it would have drawn tears, if the Maker had known tears.

Yet beauty without motion is only a painting. The world hung like a jewel, perfect and still. That felt wrong. So the Creator made animals. The first were grand and clumsy, all power and little grace. The Maker learnt as Makers do, and the creatures grew smaller, subtler, and many.

One day the work of Their hands stood up and looked back with knowing eyes. Thus were the Dragons first among the wise. It was a golden quiet for them. No hunger that could not be idly answered, no peril to sharpen claw or mind. Ease dulled them. They dozed on peaks and in forests and caves, letting their food come to them. The world ticked like a clock, beautiful, yes, but predictable. That would not do, thought the Maker.

So the Creator shaped the Giants, less keen than Dragons but strong and many. Friction found them, and soon the first wars mapped their long strides across the lands. Still the Maker was not content. More peoples followed, clever and quick, patient and shy, each with a different glint in the eye.

So intent was the Creator on craft that They did not heed a watching gaze. A wandering world of fire and brimstone drifted near. It had no Maker, but it had gods, hungry ones. The strongest of these, fattened on treachery and theft, looked across the dark and saw our young plane, undefended. It tore a hole and came through.

It fell upon Giants and Dragons alike, sniffing out the Maker’s scent in them and rending wherever it found it. Had that ruin run its course, we would speak no stories at all. The Creator watched, curious at first, until the moment before unmaking. Then the Maker reached in, pinched the invader between two thoughts, and plucked it from our sky. Not knowing whence it came, the Creator broke it down and drank the pieces.

Order was needed. The Creator set gods of Their own to ward the world, great spirits for beast and bird, for river and root, for the small and for the mighty, Dragons included. Peace returned, and the Maker turned again to craft. Elves, reclusive and keen. Gnomes, nimble and sly. Many more besides.

But gods, left to themselves, grow loud. Being deathless, they could not end one another, only clash and clamour. Their quarrels rattled the Maker’s hand. So the Creator bound them, fixed to this world and able to answer only those who call. That quietened the heavens, but it thinned the walls. To brace them, the Maker forged Guardians, gods among gods, each bearing a strength distilled from all that had been learnt.

In the forging of one, the fire leapt. That Guardian took shape with a will that would not bend. Fierce for the world and fierce against the council, the Defiant turned away, dove into the deep places, and walked the stone until it flowed, leaving veins of red heat behind. There in the earth’s heart the Defiant made a hall and listened to our pulses. The Maker watched and let them be. A Guardian who will not bow can still keep the door.

Only then did the Creator finish the smallest among the wise, pixies and the fair folk and others whose names flit like moths at dusk. The Maker looked upon the whole and would have smiled, had They known how.

Yet hear this and remember. In much that lives the Creator left a coal of black fire. Anger, greed, and malice, the shadow that gives edge to light. Long did that flaw go unseen. When the Maker at last perceived it, it was woven through the world. To tear it out would tear the tapestry. Without darkness, goodness grows dull. Without contrast, joy becomes pale. So the Creator taught the Guardians. Blame no creature for the spark it did not choose. Correct, teach, and turn the erring hand. Punish only the choosing of harm once a better path is known, and only enough to change the path. No more, no less.

Thus the world went on. Bright times and dim, risings and fallings, empires kindled and spent, songs learnt and forgotten and learnt again. The Creator, emptied by giving, curled Themself about our plane like a great cat around a hearth, wakeful and restful, eyes that do not close keeping a long, gentle watch.

This is why the stars are our embers, why mountains sometimes smoke with a Guardian’s breath, and why we carry both kindness and fire in the same small chest. The Maker slumbers, not absent but quiet. We are the waking of Their work.

Now bank the coals, little ones. Carry the warmth carefully. The night is wide, and the story is yours.