Title: The Creation
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own the Sandman, or any of the characters associated with it. I love it too much to steal it.
"Come down here Dream, I would like to speak with you."
The stairwell receded into darkness as the kindly voice, like that of an angel, floated up to him and seemed to linger before his eyes in the shape of a face before being lost above.
And so he walked. It seemed days he wandered deeper into the darkness. He no longer heard the voice but if days it took, days he would go.
At last he came to the bottom of the world, leagues under all the seas and lands. It was vast, like the universe, and shining before him and in the distance was a light, no more than a pin prick, but he could feel its beckoning. He stepped from the platform where he stood and felt no floor, still walking on a force much stronger force than gravity.
She was shining whiter than the most pure of white, brighter than the largest sun in all the cosmos. Then it dimmed, and failed until She was no more than a girl.
A woman really, dressed in a ruffled white skirt and bare feet. A white corset-like top and long sleeves hid her arms. She blew bubbles idly watching them float up into the darkness with a smile. Then She turned to him with Her freckled and slightly tanned face. She reminded Dream of Death, except of course for the white.
"Hello Dream," an angel's heavenly voice filled the air as he lingered upon her shoulder, small like a tiny white fairy.
"You are the creator of the angels."
"That I am," She smiled, an expression overflowing with understanding and tenderness. "You, however, may call me Jo." The name came out sounding like 'you.'
"What have we to discuss?"
"The key to Hell of course."
"Your angels have taken it."
"Yes, Duma and Remiel," She sighed a sigh with the weight of the world and all sadness seemed to be encompassed within it. The little angel who spoke for Her fluttered momentarily. "You of course know what I said to Remiel. Heaven needs Hell Dream. They are like two sides of a coin," She flipped a large silver coin absently in her right hand.
"Why have you summoned me?"
"Lucifer, my dear Lucifer. That is why." Her face seemed troubled, "I always knew he'd leave Hell but Dream, you must know, where are his wings?"
"I cut them off at his request, with the knife of one of his demons."
"I see. So they're still in Hell? Or have you taken them? Or has he?"
"I know not of their place now but they are not with me and I do not believe he has taken them. Why is it that you seek them?"
"Oh Dream, I would give you the answer you if only you were strong enough to bear it." She lifted her head, "but I will give you this much."
She smiled again and Her arms coming up, rising to the invisible ceiling. The Metatron disappeared as the coin from her hand rose to meet a light that came from the darkness above, yet from nowhere at all. At first it was like Her own light but slowly he could see the colors within it, faucets of read and blue and green, dots of yellow and white.
"If they are in Hell as you say I show you this. The Creation, Dream. Watch it well and close, you will need it again."
With Her final echoing words the walls seemed to crumble from far above and Dream, never being truly alive nor mortal, did not die but was amazed by that voice's power laced with kindness. It seemed that these mortals had created some very great god's indeed.
Then She was no more and the Creation she left expanded. Exploding and retracting, in a rhythm like the beating of a great heart. Galaxies swirled and collided growing and shrinking. Nebulas gave birth and great supernovas shown bursts of light. Planets were born and life grew. It was silent, an awing silence as all being danced around him and even Dream had no words for it.
In it all there was something great he saw. From the smallest atom to the largest galaxy was the pulse, as of a living being resonating in cosmic silence. Even the angels cold not sing so. He could see it all at once. The grass growing on a hillside somewhere around India almost 65 billon years past while at the same time halfway across the universe two planets were destroyed as they collided.
And then as soon as it had begun it stopped and it was as silent as it had ever been but it was a hollow silence, with no purpose to it. The universe, the galaxies stood frozen around the center, a bright, unguarded light. Dream stood, a tall dark presence in the bowels of the earth and studied it.
So this was the Creation, before even him. Destiny surely would have seen it, and Death as well.
He took it all, storing it away in unremembered dreams that Lucien would keep for him. Every aspect of life and death and all things ever created from the nothing that was into the something that is.
When he had seen it all he left, turning and finding his way to the stairs that had brought him to the hollowness inside that which was no longer the earth, that which was never the earth and that which was always was the earth.
"Do you understand?"
"Almost," Dream spoke. This would be needed, and though the Creator of the Angels so often dealt with the matters of men and Hell it did not mean It had no knowledge of things beyond that. He would use this. In the greater knowledge, he would use it.