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The primordial starchild has witnessed the unfortunate end of many worlds.
Aether has seen it all. Wars. Chaos. Indefinite discord being sought upon thousands of worlds. He has witnessed the downfall that world inhabitants bring upon themselves, usually a product of their own doing.
On one particular day out of the million he’s lived, he found himself sitting atop a great tree. The tree was called Eastrirpacia. It was a tall, winding structure made of thick vines and feathery roots that reached the skies. It was alive, its ‘trunk’ pulsated with minerals underneath its bark each time Aether touched it. The surface of the tree was covered in thick, jagged bumps, which were poisonous to the touch. And yet to the immortal child of the Universe, it had felt like nothing but a gentle caress.
This was how he explored: with complete confidence and assurance that nothing could ever harm him.
He was sitting on one of its crooked branches, the tree’s lethal sap dripping out of the crevices beside him. It could sting the eyes of any creature that lurked nearby, yet Aether was completely unaffected. He was gazing over a bustling new eco-system birthed by the collective biological community of the living planet he currently inhabited, where flora and fauna thrived. He looks beneath the tree branch and sees the loud and boisterous creatures below, scurrying from place to place.
This world’s inhabitants. Aether had seen many worlds at this point in his travels, and he noticed the class system among all the worlds he witnessed. Out of all of them - there was one thing they had in common: there was always a hierarchy.
The weak became nourishment for the strong.
The strong continue to reproduce, and birth offspring that would become either predator or prey, and depending on the offspring’s chosen fate– that would be the course of its life.
The starchild had thought to himself, how awful. To measure one’s own worthiness of life through something as shallow as strength – how ridiculous was that? Do they not realize how precious the very concept of their existence is?
Though perhaps, these inhabitants simply had no concept nor understanding about the Universe yet. Such knowledge is sacred, something unattainable for a common inhabitant, even incomprehensible to most. Aether could not trust that their sanity would not break after knowing of such a thing. Perhaps that is why they did not value their own existence. Perhaps that is why there is such a thing as predator and prey. Perhaps why nothing has chosen to go against this natural order of life and death, and why prey will always be prey – meant to be devoured.
The inhabitants of this world were small, helpless things. They were the prey in this vast, open world filled with monsters and leviathans. These inhabitants were many, and they were scattered across the plains meant to serve as food to the creatures that ruled this world.
What did it mean to be a mortal?
To have an assured end towards your own life, forever burdened by the knowledge that one day, the world will reject your existence?
It must be terrible, Aether thought. How do they not live their lives hopelessly?
How do they continue to go on, knowing that they will eventually cease to exist?
Do they even care that they will die someday?
Are they aware of it, or do they continue to live blindly without knowing?
Does the ability to care for one’s own demise depend on one’s cognitive function?
The ability to form conscious thought?
What defines consciousness?
If consciousness is being aware of one’s own sensation, emotion, volition and thought, then what gives a conscious being its free will?
What is the similarity between all the inhabitants I have witnessed?
How do I differ from them?
I cannot die. Therefore, I must have no end.
It was all he ever knew, and all he’d ever be. Traveling the vast expanse of the Universe, becoming each world’s witness. A living, breathing record of events that have happened since the very first hour of his conception. Mortality was a fragile, fickle thing. He has seen the strongest of creatures die gruesome deaths from something much smaller than they were.
He had never questioned his own immortality before. He had long accepted that he was favored by the Universe, and thus, exempted from the cold and cruel hands of death. Though he never knew why. He never questioned it. This, he realized, is what he was created for. To roam, to explore, to witness.
At first he thought this exemption from death made him unique. He thought that his existence had a special reason, that his design and his making was meant specifically for this purpose. He was meant to last forever, to stand the test of time.
So he stuck to that purpose. He continued to travel worlds, witnessing calamity after calamity, entire planets being born and destroyed.
Until one day, he had gotten tired of being forced to watch.
This was the day the starchild had shunned the favor that the Universe gave him.
This was the moment he had stopped seeing himself as a miracle, and instead, viewed his pathetic existence as a curse.
What was the purpose that he was given?
To keep a record? To remember?
Why could he not be a part of the Universe’s natural order? Why was he not allowed the glory of a natural conception, and the comfort of a short life that was well lived and meaningful? He sees it all the time in the lives of the inhabitants he has witnessed – they all live lives with complications, ups and downs. Many of them hit rock bottom only to rise back to the top. They have their families, the ones they love, and most importantly: they were blessed with the comfort that this wouldn’t last forever. That they would have an assured end.
Who was there to listen to his endless questions in the emptiness of the etherspace?
Why was he given this life, this horribly long, painfully unending life without such a comfort? Why, even after billions of years of devouring stars to remain sated, was he still hungry? Was there no end to that as well? Would he forever remain endless? Pitifully lonely? Eternally starved? Forever clawing at his stomach, curling in on himself in the vast emptiness of space, trying to feed this horrible ache within him that would never be relieved no matter how hard he tried?
Was the Universe laughing at him?
Did the Universe find his torment amusing?
What was he really here for, if not to serve as an odium for the Universe’s amusement?
Why was he given the gift of consciousness if there was no means to end it?
Why were these mortals – small and pathetic as they were, compared to him – allowed to die peaceful deaths, while he could not?
Why was he given the curse of hunger that forced him to travel, to devour stars, to keep the pain of his existence at bay?
Sometimes, he found himself feeling skinless. Raw, like he lacked a face, or a body.
How could he outline his own existence if there was no end to it?
Each line that is drawn, each world that is created by the Universe, they all have an end. There is an inevitable day of demise in which the Universe consumes its own creation. It was the inevitable end, the conclusion to a point. Having no end was a curse.
None of this was fair.
He didn’t want to be alone for the rest of his life.
He didn’t want to spend the rest of his meaningless existence like this, endlessly traveling with no destination.
He didn’t want this to be his fate.
He was born with his own will. There was no higher power for him to follow.
Who was to say if the Universe truly cared about him?
If it would not give him an end, then he would put an end to those that it created.
He could destroy these planets with a lift of his finger.
He would wage vengeance upon the Universe for bringing him into a cursed existence.
Thus began an age of decay.
The starchild grew violent. Sick with anger and bitterness at his own existence, he began destroying everything in his path. He’d forgotten everything that he once admired about the world around him, the childish wonder that he’d experienced when he was first born. He stepped upon planet after planet with the full intent of killing everything that he saw had life, eliminating creation after creation.
Everything fell prey to his hands, the Universe’s cursed offspring, as he turned back on everything that he once believed in.
The starchild’s heart grew rotten. His hair grew past his feet, flowing behind him like a cape of iridescent, burning sunrays. He brandished a sharp sword upon his hand, stained with the blood and ichor of the worlds that laid waste to his anger. And his eyes – which were once filled with childlike glee and excitement about even the littlest of things, now looked frozen over and lifeless.
He had carved out all the love within his heart, and threw it all away for the sake of his anger.
He had been revering a false higher power.
There was nothing that governed him but himself.
And yet the Universe still had a grip on him, and it was something he could not pry off.
No matter how many worlds he destroyed, how many gods he killed, how many lives he’d stolen, this would not grant him what he truly wished for.
A chance to live - not for himself, but for something he truly loved.
Aether steps across the surface of a burnt planet. The soles of his feet step upon scorched soil, crackling and boiling with heat, and yet his expression remains stone faced. Perhaps he could feel pain, perhaps he could not, perhaps he simply did not care.
His long, blonde hair drags behind his feet, across burnt coal.
The sky was blood red.
Aether’s head tilts up, and he no longer saw the stars.
He sits down on the burning soil.
Lying down upon the heat, he looks up towards the burning sky.
You will never hear me.
No matter how many gods I slaughter.
Or how many hearts I bring to you, as an offering.
You will never hear me.
I stole the lives that you give.
I killed your creations before they could even take their first breath.
Yet you do not bat an eye.
You do not punish me.
You do not even acknowledge me.
What will it take for you to hear my call?
You treat all your creations the same. I have seen them thrive, and grow.
I have been your servant.
I have traveled within you, just as you have commanded me to.
And yet, only I have felt such cruelty from you.
So, I have chosen to no longer exist.
I will revoke the gift you have given me.
Even if I cannot die, I will no longer serve you.
This is the divine purpose I have bestowed upon myself.
Unless you give me a reason to live, then I shall carve my own end.
Aether closes his eyes.
He could remain still, lying down on this dead planet for the rest of eternity if he wanted to.
He was tired.
And so, for the next million years, the starchild does not move.
The planet began to grow around him, the earth cracking around his skin, turning it red from the heat. His eyes remain blank, dead staring above the skies, the Universe passing by him. Even if his hunger tore him apart, wracked him with pain that nearly destroyed him from the inside, he committed to his will.
This was the fate of the Universe’s prodigal son.
He was born to become a parable of love, trust, resentment, betrayal and anger.
Aether had wished for a purpose.
One day, that purpose comes to him in the form of a whisper – a call from afar.
There were no words that were spoken to him. It was a voice, a quiet invitation, beckoning him to move. To leave this desolate planet and venture out into the vast Universe again, to explore and seek out its call.
The call prompts his limbs to move again, for the first time in centuries. The hardened soil cracks beneath his skin as he moves. Although his hair had grown past his feet, and it became stuck to the ground.
So he manifests his blade into his hand – and he slashes his hair apart. Cutting him free from the planet, releasing him of its hold. His hair falls in asymmetrical locks by his waist.
This was the fate of the Universe’s first born.
He journeyed far and wide to find that star, and when he did – his new purpose now exists before him in the form of Lumine, his sister.
( Had the Universe answered his call to keep him from abandoning its will? )
( Was she created solely for him? )
( Was that why he never sees another starchild again? )
He may never know the answer.
But as Aether holds his little sister in his arms, newly born and conscious, he could only pray that her fate is much kinder to her than his own. He holds her close, brushing her hair back and kissing the top of her head – tender, protective, full of love and devotion. He makes a vow to protect her, show her the wonder and beauty of the Universe like he has always known. For her gaze to remain gleaming with love, and affection for the Universe that created them.
Eventually as she grows older, she begins to learn how to ask her own questions.
“Brother, what am I?”
“You are a starchild. Beloved by the Universe, just like me.”
“...Is the Universe a friend?”
A friend. Aether had told her that a friend is somebody worth caring for, someone who would care for you in return, and would never hurt you. She had pointed at him, and called him a friend, and he’d laughed and corrected her – ‘Well… you’re not wrong, but I am your brother. Your family. I am the one you can trust the most.’
Among the many vows that Aether had made on behalf of his sibling, one of them was to protect her from the blood and ichor of his past. She must never know about the worlds he had slaughtered, the lives he had selfishly taken, the violence he’d sought. He wanted to shield her from his mistakes, for her to grow without a tarnished view of him.
He wanted to keep that smile on her face, no matter what happened.
This would be the lie of omission he’d keep up for millions of years.
All he wanted was for her to view him as the example that he wished he had, back when he was first born.
So, Aether kindly smiles. He ruffles her pale blonde hair, pulling her close.
“...Of course. It always has been.”