dying but not dead, redder than blood, older than old and aged beyond years. He slept, and he waited.
He had come, long before, when the sun was small and young and bright, when Pluto was warm and Venus was beautiful. He had come with a void in his heart and life clenched in his mouth, tight and precious. He had coiled and wreathed and travelled across the stars for years uncountable until he reached the Cradle, and then he slept, and waited, as the galaxy buried him in dust and earth and gas, and life was born and teemed and died upon his back. They left nothing but ashes.
It lay, coiled and quiet, unimaginably vast, until the Cradle gave birth and the green planet's heart beat, boiling with the life that its brothers and sisters had never held. He watched, and waited.
With eyes the size of nations, it watched. It watched as the children of the Cradle bred and spread and finally left their manger, testing their wings of steel to the Cradles-that-never-were, and leaving upon them a sign of their passing. It waited as men built cities along his jawline, raised mountains on his spine, and cultivated forests over his eyes. It watched as they grew and grew and grew.
He watched as the children imitated themselves, building iron toys to play with, which laboured and served unthinkingly for millennia. He watched as the children grew complacent, spoiled and weak; he watched as the toys stood up and fought back and war blossomed across the stars.
He watched as the eye across the stars opened, and glared at him from a thousand thousand years away, full of fear and hate and malevolence. He saw the eye, and for the second time he felt fear inside the void that was his heart; blind, stinking fear.
But he was strong, and he was patient. Even as the eye's birth sent storms tumbling across the world, interrupting the war that he so enjoyed, he slept in coiled hibernation, hidden beneath his earthen shell. As the children bawled in loneliness and the toys wound down with no-one to wind them up again, he waited.
He waited as the children stranded on his scales fled for the deepest caverns, far from the sun's light and that terrible eye's gaze, and he waited as they dug down and down and down, retreating in instinctual fear. He watched as their respect for their machines grew; as it became first fear, then faith, then reverence. He waited until they dug so deep they cracked his shell and glimpsed His scaly form, and as the men-who-were-machines gazed in awe at their discovery, he spoke.
He told them secrets. With earthquakes and storms, he told them the secret of their birth. With rumblings and tremors, he told them the secret of their death. With boiling lava and molten metal, he told them the secret that was he, and he tasted their fear and revelled in it.
He watched as the smartest and most cunning of the men-who-were-not-men killed those who were not, for the secret, in order to keep the secret. And he told them many more, left messages in rock formations and patterns in cloud movements. He carved script onto the earth of the shell, and watched with amusement as they sent their machines to the surface to read them, then huddled beneath the ground in fear. He gave them gifts, saved them from death. He told them how to work the children's machines and how to command their iron toys. He was amused as they chanted prayers to him from their red crypts.
And then, the eye in the stars blinked, and the storm calmed. War broke out, a new kind of storm; a children's crusade set foot on his skin and proclaimed that it would rule the galaxy.
He saw the Child; the nascent beacon that, he realised, had been born and had lived hidden in the Cradle since the green first touched its surface. He watched as it grew, and grew, and grew, and for the first time he felt anger in the void that was his heart.
He watched as the Cradle's child met with the men-who-were-not-men, as it talked and talked and made a deal, made a peace and a potent alliance. War comes in many shapes; sometimes, it comes in the shape of peace.
He watched as, one more, life spread wings of metal and sailed on tides of fear, as it spread to every corner of the galaxy – but now, different, driven by the light of the star that he feared and hated as much as the eye. It was life driven by the faith of a child.
He slept.
The men-who-were-not-men said the war was over, but war is never over. It began again, with treachery. Brother killed brother. Father murdered son, and son father. The child died. Fire grew and spread and when it reached the Cradle, the green became black and he felt sadness, sadness for the life that he had born so carefully across the stars.
He watched as the sun grew bloated and overripe, as the Cradle became the Grave, and as time passed, unceasing. He told the men-who-were-not-men yet more secrets, and they begged for more. Fuelled by the ancient hungry curiosity, famous killer of cats, they begged.
He envied them.
And now, Pluto is cold and Venus is hideous. The Cradle's child lies still and unbreathing. The Green is Black, and the eye stares at him unblinking.
As time passes, as the war goes on and on and on and on…
…Mars sleeps, and Mars waits.
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