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Her first memories are hazy, of course. Not because of their age, though those days are long, long distant. She does not, could never, struggle with distance.
They are hazy, as first memories must be, because new minds look at the world hazily - unaware of what they are looking at, or even of the fact that they are looking. All minds start this way, whether they be base animals or Dread Powers.
In those memories she is fear, nameless, undifferentiated fear. She flits from mind to mind among the little crawling things, existing more as instinct than as thought. At every moment a thousand thousand crawling things are falling under the claw of some larger thing, or fleeing a raging forest fire, or cowering helplessly as their own blood and organs betray them. She is there with each of them, she feels all of it, and she gluts on it.
Eventually the little crawling things change. Their minds grow larger, and sitting in them feels different. The crawling things invent “ideas”, ideas like “kinds” and “names”. For the first time, fear knows itself.
Her first clear memory is of a hunter, far from home. He spent a long day following his quarry through field and forest, and paid no mind to the sinking sun until after it was below the horizon. He shifted his grip on his spear, and fear was there with him.
He looked out into the woods, with weaker eyes than the things with claws, and thought, “Anything could be out there.” Then he looked up at the night sky, and thought, “Everything could be out there.” Then the fear in his mind was twofold, and Vast knew her sister Dark, and she knew herself.
She has other sisters. Some are old, and had been with her in the beginning. Some are younger, born of the things with new minds. She comes to know them all. They are all together, in a way, even as they spread to every corner of the world, every recess of these minds.
Some minds, filled with fear, reach out to it instead of shrinking away. They thrive. They begin to want the same things fear wants. Through them, fear learns to act.
A woman ventures into a cave. Deep, deeper than the chambers her people sometimes use for shelter. Looking for a new cellar to chill food in, or a new gallery to paint in. Or perhaps simply driven by curiosity.
The tunnels grow smaller. She stoops. Then she crawls. She realizes she can go no further, and decides to return.
She realizes she does not know how.
The woman regrets ever entering the tunnel. Unknown to her, she could never have saved herself. Fear reached into the earth and twisted it, looped the cave around to trap her. But of course she does not know this (though if she did it would not matter), and her regret, her confusion and despair season her fear beautifully. As she weeps and rages against the (closer, somehow closer, too close) walls, that fear grows and grows, like a beacon.
And the Vast sees it.
She slips into the crawling thing’s mind, as it thinks of the lengths of tunnel between it and the sky, and the unthinkable weight of earth suspended just above it. She works herself into the deepest corners of its terror, and there she meets her sister Forever Deep Below Creation.
She knows what it is for one fear to meet another in the mind of some panicking thing. This is different. Never has she been so close to another, felt their flavor of fear as if it were her own - and at the same time, felt their differences so clearly. In that moment she glimpses parts of her sister she knows she will never reach. She is beautiful.
It feels good. Better than feeding, if a Dread Power could conceive such a thing. It feels new. And she wants more.
But in the same moment that she meets her sister, her sister meets her. She reacts to defend her prey, pressing the rough walls tighter around its shoulders. Visceral horror overcomes the thing that would crawl if it could move, and there is no room in its mind for the Vast. It hurts, to be forced into the shape of the wrong kind of terror, and she retreats, leaves her sister to finish her meal down there in the depths. But she remembers the feeling.
Fear feeds, and grows, and the minds of animal things feed and grow and invent new worlds for themselves, new technologies and ideas, new concerns and new fears. Vast’s servants are at every new frontier. Wherever she goes, she looks for the Buried. Sometimes they meet in caves, but that is her sister's place, not hers. The crawling things reach for the sky, and then higher, into the black distances that began her. Her servants revel in the sky and the void, and she revels with them, but she takes a special pleasure in the ocean, where Vast and Deep fit together so comfortably in the mind of a drowning animal.
And, too, she loves the ocean because there her sister came to her. The Vast had long played in the minds of little things on little boats on the big sea, nothing but blue all around and nothing but blue above. Then the crawling things built boats that went below the surface. Boats that sailed in the Deep.
A frightened boy crouches in a narrow chamber, trying to mend a machine with fumbling fingers. They'd taken a shot; the boat had listed. He tries to focus on his task, but all he can think of is how far he is from land.
Vast dances through the little thing’s mind. Suddenly, there is the Buried, reminding it how small the room is, how close the creature is to the hull. How close it is to the water.
Eagerly, the Vast joins her. All that water, she adds. This boat is nothing to it.
All that pressure, says Buried in delicious harmony. A little noise from the hull, and the cowering thing flinches.
When it crushes this vessel, it will be like swatting a fly, the Vast tells it.
The hull creaks again. She feels the Buried hum along with it, then reach out of the thing's mind to touch the walls, beginning to shape the little room into a nightmare. Vast reaches out as well, feels the Buried beside her. She longs to touch her more deeply, to twine together with her, like in that first moment they met. They are connected, here. Together they could do new things, wonderful things. Does the Buried feel it too?
She takes hold of the nightmare her sister is making, and this time she is not pushed away.
As the little thing looks on in horror, a leak forms in the wall beside it. Here comes the ocean.
It's not going to stop.
Think of the weight behind it.
All those miles and miles of water-
-pressing down-
-look how fast it's coming in-
-won't take long to fill this room-
-to fill the boat-
-door’s jammed-
-where would you go-
-almost at your knees-
They torment the thing together, dancing around it and around each other in a rushing breathless whirl of fear. Finally the water is up to its chin, then higher. It presses its face to the ceiling, and the Buried exults. The leak keeps flowing, faster than ever. But the water does not rise. Nor does it fall. The Vast is not finished yet.
There is another leak. A leak out, flowing at the same rate as the one coming in - or perhaps a little slower? Flowing where? Another compartment? It can't have delayed the thing’s death by long. But as it stands there gasping in the inch of air left, the time stretches out further and further, and the water keeps flowing, and flowing, and flowing. Somehow, impossibly, the thing understands. The leak will never stop until it has drained the whole, deep, endless ocean.
They keep the thing like that for months, wrestling over what remains of its mind before letting it join its shipmates on the seafloor. As before, the Buried takes the last bite. But neither will forget what it feels like to touch the other.
They meet again, and again, in passing, but they do not dance. More often Vast touches the mind of some little thing besieged by endless rain, only to be once again crushed, contorted, severed from herself by the walls of the dream. Or the Buried sees a traveler in a wide desert and thinks to choke it with wind and sand - but finds herself pinned by the pitiless sun, splayed out on the sands, feeling the edges of herself dissipate into the Vast empty sky. Dread Powers are solitary and jealous by nature. The nature of Vast and Buried is such that they cannot help but hurt each other. Yet neither can they keep from reaching out to touch the other, again and again.
One of her servants, the little thing Fairchild, calls to her, and she listens. He has found a victim for her. The doomed creature dives off a boat at Fairchild's command, willingly swimming further and further into the deep, with only the thinnest layer of feeble protection between its body and the crushing dark.
Even as she reaches into the little mind and the black water, she hopes (if she can be said to hope) to meet her sister here.
She makes the water deeper, darker, colder. The little thing's apprehension grows. As it roams the rotting, worthless hulk Fairchild sent it to find, the Vast turns all her power to the idea of pressure. She remembers the little leak, how the weight of the ocean forced water fast and unstoppable into that room. How the boat crumpled in the ocean’s embrace. The crushing, abyssal fear. If she can recreate it here, now, then perhaps-
And there is her sister. The invitation is answered. Gently, almost hesitantly, the Buried touches the little thing's mind. Vast welcomes her, and together they guide the thing out of the sunken ship and into the hell they are building for it.
The thing reaches open water, and instantly the Buried adds to the pressure. Doubles it, triples it, far beyond what little crawling things should be able to survive.
Oh, but this is wonderful! The little thing is trapped, paralyzed utterly by the weight of water. Vast tastes its fear, savors the new and unfamiliar flavor. The creature is so vulnerable, so exposed to the sheer scale of her majesty - yet she could not play this particular game, drink of this particular fear, by herself. Deep below the sea, Vast and Buried meet once more, and take hold of each other, and dance.
Vast shows the little thing a bottomless trench, laid out before it as though waiting for the creature to fall in. How deep does it go? the Buried whispers to it. You could dive in. Feel the pressure grow and grow as you sink. Feel it crush you.
Yes, says the Vast. All that water above you. Millions and millions of tons. She guides the thing’s attention upward. Look how much is above you even now. So dark. How far away is the sun?
The thing’s panic mounts, and the Buried shudders in pleasure. So dark, she repeats. So cold. So far from the air. From the sky.
Never has the Vast hidden the sky from a victim. This fear feels strange to her, almost painful - but she accepts the pain, because it is the Buried who offers it. She glories in the newfound connection to her sister. This is what she has wanted since their first meeting in the cave: to see the parts of her that she hides away deep, close within herself.
She knows she must return the gift, must offer the Buried something in thanks for joining this dance. She brings to bear the furthest corners of herself, and offers something the Buried has never seen, could never imagine.
The Titan moves her hand.
Just a little bit, no more than a few miles. A twitch. Enough to catch the eye of the trapped little thing, whose mind reels at the sight of the Vast creature in the distance. It tries to turn its tiny head, inch by agonizing inch, to see the Titan better. Crushing pain mingles with uncomprehending horror. Buried and Vast weave together in the little mind, feeling all the places where they fit together, relishing the friction where they clash. Together they sing to the little creature.
So big, how could anything be so big?
Filling your vision, can't tell how close it is.
It moved, it's alive. Is it coming closer? Does it see you?
Can't turn and flee. Can't even look away.
Couldn't outswim it anyway
Could crush you with its little finger
Or just swim over you
Keep you trapped
Die before it finished passing
Die down here in the dark
Swallowed up by the sea
The crushing sea
Cold
Dark
Unfeeling
Heavy
Endless
Pressure
Always
Crushing
Always
Heavier
Too much
Can't move
Can't think
Can't-
The dance builds and builds to a crescendo. A final burst of formless, overwhelming, delicious emotion as pain wakes the little creature from its nightmare and it flees.
Vast and Buried barely notice it go. As the thing swims for the surface, they swirl around each other in the water, blending together in the shared glow of fear and passion.