When she found it, tucked away where adults' hands were too large to reach, she knew it had to be hers. It was small, still unformed, so much more like her than Mother or Father. The girl smiled as she rolled the item between her nimble fingers, admiring the colors that swirled through the sphere. It felt warm to the touch, and when she brought it up closer to her face, she could just make out dark ridges and orange-red lava flows.
Steps came from behind her, and the girl closed her fist around the marble-world. It felt delicate and breakable, but its weight in her hand was comforting. Only once she was certain she would not be disturbed did she allow herself to look upon it again.
With the delight only a child certain she has succeeded in evading the rules and punishment that comes with breaking them could muster, she bounded up the stairs towards her bedroom. The girl tucked the sphere into the far back of her wardrobe, among the socks and underwear, where it could remain safe and unseen.
And as she grew and matured, so did her world. Every night, when the rest of the household had gone to sleep, she cupped it in the palms of her hands and watched as the volcanoes cooled and the orange-brown surface faded. And every night as the stars slipped back to their daytime hiding spots and the first rays of sunlight filtered into her room, she placed the world into the back of her wardrobe to wait until nightfall. For the girl was now old enough to understand that the world could only be hers and hers alone if no one else knew of its existence, and this beloved toy took a place in her heart to special to be shared.
While the world gave her a steady friend through those tumultuous years of childhood, she bestowed her own gifts upon it. Her salty tears became the sea, her whispered I love you the wind. But the world waited for many years before she gave it the greatest gift of all. Late one night, just before dawn, the girl, now a young woman, became a mother. And with a mother's joy she watched the new life spread across the globe, once-brown swaths of land taking on a brilliant green.
Though she loved all her children dearly, she could not deny her special fondness for one breed. While her other children merely lived in the environment she created for them, humans shaped her world for their own purposes. They replaced the grasses she had provided for him with fields of wheat, then tore them down with their scythes to build empires and achievements beyond her fondest dreams for them. There were divisions among them, and they squabbled as all siblings do, but she had little doubt that they would grow to be fine guardians of the world after death took her from them.
But though she was always gentle with her world, treating it with the same care as one does when holding a newborn, the woman was not perfect. A single stumble splintered her world, which she had treated as her greatest treasure for years, into fourteen jagged shards. She scrambled to piece them back together, but already, the sun was peeking over the horizon, and deciding that it was more important to shield her world from outside influences than finish gluing it immediately, she tucked the world back inside her dresser drawer.
All through the day, the woman worried about what would await her when she retrieved her world that night. It was all too easy to imagine her children dead or dying, their societies collapsed, the rivers running red with the blood of a billion innocents.
What she found that night surprised her. In her absence, her children had begun to reform their world. Though it was nothing similar to what she had decided for it, so many years ago, but they had chosen it for themselves. While she had wished the fourteen segments equal partners, one had taken the lead in creating a new order, one that she had no place in. It was, she supposed, what she had always dreamed of: that her children would one day care for one another without any need for her intervention. Still, her heart hurt as she studied the imbalanced world they had created for themselves, and she knew that what they had built would someday collapse under its own weight.
But to grow, children must be allowed to stumble, and so she did not attempt to change the course of fate. Rather, the woman placed her marble-world back into her dresser drawer, pushing it far to the back so she would not be tempted to interfere with it. She whispered goodbye as she shut the drawer, fighting back tears.
Someday, these dark days would end, and she would allow herself to again guide her children. Until then, she could only wait and hope that they would love each other as dearly as she loved them.