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You do not know where you came from.
You were only a seed, back then. Small and shallow, still taking your first steps as the world.
He was not.
Just born, He was already older than you. He came tumbling through you, your grass, your sand, your dirt, your rock, breathing life wherever He went.
You were His, and He was yours.
You watch Him, wary at first. You are new to this, to this whole… existence. He is not. You don’t know how to describe how you know that, only that you do. He is older than you will ever be.
You feel His feet on your ground, His body in your waters. There is nothing else like it, not here, not anywhere. He is the center of everything, He is the center of you. Where He goes, you are. Where He goes, you follow.
You come to know Him, you think. How He moves, how He feels. You feel your rain dripping down His face as He turns it towards your clouds. He does not see you, you don’t think. But you see Him.
You see His hair, the same sand of the shore He washed up on. You see His eyes, your own clearest skies contained, twinkling with the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes. You see His hands, soft, supple, working in a way their newness contradicts. You see His legs, His feet, strong, powerful, always moving. He does not like to stay still, you learn this quickly.
You do not see His name. You do not see His thoughts. You try, but they are in a language you do not know, grating against everything you are.
He digs into you. Cold iron cracks your grassy skin, chips away rocky bones. You protest, at first. It is violating, you are fearful. You do not know what is inside, and you do not think you want to, either.
You shatter His tools, splintering wooden handles and dulling sharp points. It does not stop Him. He only returns, digging for your viscera.
Inevitably, you give it to Him. Inevitably, He finds it. You cannot stop Him, not truly. He is yours and you are His, and you open up for Him. You invite Him in, beckon Him, call Him in the only way you know how.
You are still new to this.
He still is not.
He brings light to your innermost places, He brings life. From your own recesses spring forwards creatures, attracted to Him as moth is to flame. He holds that very flame aloft, it dances off your walls, paints you in warm hues, and, ever the moth, you reach for it.
He has made something new. Out of pieces of you, He begins to shape them. You watch Him. You feel Him.
He moulds you in His hands, no longer so soft, so supple. They are callused, deft, scarred in so many places. They are warm. He is warm. Warm in a way you are not, warm in a way you cannot be. Warm in a way you yearn for.
He brings you warmth, and you lap it greedily from His palms. You want to return that warmth. It too burns bright, struck from your heavens in an arcing flash, nurtured by your care. You extend it to Him, your warmth. You hold it out in the only way you can, devouring yourself for Him. Burning yourself for Him.
But He does not know that. Your flame is doused, and you weep for it. You weep for Him. Rain soaks your soil.
This is your mind, you think. You do not know. He steps into it with caution, and you yawn out wide chasms for Him, press heat to His skin and fill lakes with your touch. He is wary of it. He does not accept it.
He fights you here. He fights you and you fight back. You fight because you cannot do anything but, here in your mind. You fight with the same desire as you always have offered Him, a passion that broils the very air itself.
Stop, you ask of Him. Let me have you as you have me.
He carves through your skull, shatters some unbreakable part of you.
You refuse to follow Him there. He will come back to you. He must.
You know He must.
He still creates. He still presses His hands to you, His feet. He still walks your earth, swims your seas, stares towards your skies.
Something… happens, then. To you. Fundamentally.
It echoes across all that you are, ringing into places you did not know you had. He is looking into you, further than He ever has before. Bones, blood, guts, He has already seen it all, deep in your caverns.
You think this is your soul.
You did not know you had a soul.
You stare with Him, into a glittering abyss. He reaches for it, and, terrified, you follow Him. Light ripples across your soul, waves of greens and blues and lilacs. It stems from His fingers, from those hands that shape you and warm you and are reaching inside of your very soul and very being, playing your existence like the sweetest song, a universe singing in every movement He takes.
You swallow Him whole.
He is in you now. He has always been in you, but this is different. He is in you.
You are bare, here. Bare and barren and breaking. But He is here, and you are here, and you have a soul. He is your soul.
You want to keep Him. To have Him, you are His and He is yours and you want that, you want Him.
And you try, you really do. You beckon Him downwards, embracing Him, enveloping Him. You breathe your longing at His feet and you feel it course through His bloodstream, His beating heart slowing, His bones creaking and cracking and His flesh warm against your pale rock.
You beckon Him. Join you, you ask, you beg, as your pleas crumble to shining dust, flaking into nothingness, glinting hues of colours you have never seen before. Your desperation is left ringing across the barren recesses of yourself, and reverberating through your being.
And yet, He still stands.
And yet, so do you.
You are given a chance, you think, to see Him. Truly see Him. As He has reached into you, so you reach into Him, tendrils of questions and answers and yearnings, things you think might be called words. You do not understand them. You press them into Him regardless, hasty and desperate, and you crave that He does.
You think there was supposed to be a change, after that. Your words in His bosom, but there is none. You cannot find those words again. You cannot find any words again, only those which are His and those which you do not know. They grate at you once more.
That window to your soul is still open. It still ripples whenever He is near, whenever He dips into it.
But He is not there now. He is in your skies, you cradle Him with your clouds. You could not have Him, not before. He would not let you. He does not know of you. You want Him to know of you.
You saw how He turned His face skywards. How He rubbed His shoulders, the puckered lines etched into his skin below His blades, how He breathed in your winds. You ask Him to trust you. You give Him what you think He wants.
And He took it. He takes it. Again and again you give it and again and again He takes it, fixing shining carapace and chitin to His back, spreading wings you crafted with the last desperate cries of your longing.
They shine. He shines. You know these colours now. Pale ice, soft blossoms, sun-kissed wheat. Delicate and gentle to view, these colours you have collected from the world. He has shown you them all, and you reflect them in your sunlight, your gift to Him.
There are ghosts in your soul.
Echoes.
You still do not know where you came from.
Your soul… it is… full. It has been full for a very long time, longer than you have known Him.
It is full of ghosts.
You probe at the bones, seated on their throne, learning their shapes. You know these bones. You remember them. They laughed once, a cackle. They reached for what was not his, took it into their dark arms, clothed with flesh and skin. Eyes looked upon you, purple in the nothingness of your soul.
They glowed. They shined luminous and other-worldly. They hungered. You remember his hunger, how it tore through you in that intrinsic way.
The ghost, the king, the memory, you shiver at the recollection of his grasping. He twisted you, twisted your being. Shot you through with himself, bleed you dry and desperate and permeated through every last line of your existence. He took it for himself.
You remember screaming.
You do not remember how it ended.
But now he sits, and He stands, and only one of them is warm. Only one of them was ever warm.
The ghost of the bones coils in your memories, and it has always been there. And it feels younger than anything else you know.
There are ghosts in your mind.
He has been there before, many times. You have joined Him, in that space above your skull, that space you dared not venture.
He led you there.
But there are ghosts in your mind, now.
You remember screaming.
You remember that glow, purple and pulsing, cracking through you. You remember it carving a piece of your mind, trying to take it all. You remember a fire that quashed it.
She is still here, silent and still and surveying. She is older than you. You are younger than her. She is the youngest yet.
She is made of warmth, of heat, and she does not press at you. She does not press into you.
She cauterises your wounds, staunches what spread there. She cannot replace what was taken, cleaved from you both. But she sustains what is left.
Her warmth is different to His. You do not know why. She is older than He, He is older than she. She is His echo, harsher, colder, hotter, sharper.
You remember her.
Does she remember you?
You feel it spread. That cold burning, that ripping, that frigid, void-like seeping.
It happens all of a sudden. It happened so gradually, you had almost forgotten. It was so violent you could not help but cry out, arcing your pain through the sky and screaming your fear into thunder.
It was so slow, you had not realised what was happening until too late.
They, all of them, they did this. So long ago that it is brand new, so much life bursting from His touch.
There is a tear through what you are. It is not a window, not one you have willingly opened. No, it was cut into you, precise but not enough, your layers peeled back until flesh gives way to bone gives way to soul.
You remember screaming. You remember it ending.
You remember the damage could not be undone, the cost could not be repaid. You were broken, before you ever existed.
He who had been slumbering congratulated she who coloured your makings. The damage was done, and it was over, and it had never happened in the first place.
And He sits, overlooking it all. And you want to ask Him why, ask Him what, and you do, lapping your waves at His skin.
And He does not even glance at you.
Slowly, she is waking. Slowly, she woke. The ghost of your body, the one who made such. The one who covers over the damage, fills it with life.
Is it life?
He creates life, yet she is ancient, yet so is He.
You remember how it felt as she coaxed you into shape, spread rivers through your banks and pulled trees from your earth, set jewels in your rock and flowers in your grasses. You feel it every time she moves, newness under her steps.
Yet you know what that feels like already. You always did. And this is different.
It is… careful. Considered. It is not you. He is you and you are His and she is different.
She is…
New.
Are they all new?
He is not. You know this for certain. He has always been older than comprehension, ever present.
Everywhere you look, He was there. He is there. His hand, His warmth, His life. From you He has pulled everything, from nothing He has pulled you.
You have watched Him for as long as you have watched, you have felt Him for as long as you have felt. You have been His for as long as you have been.
Every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every thing you have ever done, has been His. Has been Him.
He is your creator. You know that now. You are His but He is not yours, not truly. When you end, He will not. When He ends, you will.
Without Him, you are nothing. Without Him, you are not.
And so you pray to Him. You pray in your rain, in your storms. You pray in your life, sprung from His touch and His alone. You plead, you beg, you offer Him your innermost self to do with what He wishes, and you cry out again and again and again to let Him have you, let you have Him, to become one and the same.
He is the breath in your lungs and the blood in your arteries and the life in your being and He has built you, sculpted you, woven you from threads so fine you had not ever known you were made, not until now. You are His, you cry silently, giving yourself over to him in the only way you know how. Now and then and always, you are His.
There is nothing you can do to change Him. There is everything He can do to change you. He has raised gods from your gore and time from your tendons, He has crafted civilisations from your cartilage and a home from your bloodied, beating heart.
He holds you in His hands, and finally, you hear His name.
God Of All Gods.
The Creator.