To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

- William Blake, from "Auguries of Innocence"


His gestation period was sixteen months, but he was decades in the making. His nerve cords are hundreds of times more dense than a normal human's. His heart beats twice as fast as y ours, but it is ten times stronger. He can stare at the noonday sun unblinking. He has the scent ability of a wolf and the strength of a bear. He has enough genius to bury an Einstein. Ladies, Gentlemen, I present to you, the inheritor of Earth and stars, --

On the day that I met her, the sun curled from the basin of the earth into the sky, spilling red like an upturned paint-bucket across the world. I remember I almost had a cramp in my side: too many simulator runs the past week.

Today I was to meet my command, the team I would lead. It was something of a lot-draw: individuals with the Seed Factor were rare enough to warrant leniency in areas of discipline or even competence. Chance, however, favors the prepared mind, and thus the simulator runs for me. If they were slow on the uptake it would be my responsibility to compensate.

I was fantastically nervous, but could not let it show. Bottled up it boiled up within me the entire day, leaking slowly, ten thousand nervous ticks I wearied myself to suppress.

Not that I think it would have made any sort of difference, the way that day turned out.

There was a passing wind, and the bone-white fingers of the trees shuffled their stacks of leaves. I had decided to take a walk.

Immediately I felt the sun on my back: a red presence, liquid with fire, shafts of light sharp as crystal cutting the air to my sides. The ground hummed as I stepped. Trees continued to rustle: in my mind they were a thousand brilliant points of white, swerving and colliding, branches destroying symmetry as they clacked together.

I had heard something from one of the technicians: one of the team was a Newtype, like me. It could not have been Athrun, and I was fairly certain Cagalli had not suddenly developed powers in the two years since we'd seen each other.

I straightened the stiff starched collar that cut my neck and my fingers came down, worked with my cuffs. The wind was getting stronger. Here in its sibilant howl I could taste the sea, salt and surf-pound, and fury licked through me like a flame: high one moment, then gone. This was a park, and I did not want to be reminded of the mission to come, an invasion of a coastal chokepoint.

Trees, sun, wind. Flowers in blossom, scents a deluge drowning me. A storm of light: all colors, wild, petals skipping on air. I stopped, blinking, smelled dew.

I felt another, dancing.

An early riser, but that was unimportant. I had never seen a mind so bright.

Imagine the sun at the height of its ascent, a dot of brilliance, a mass of light dense enough to blaze a hole through the eye, and you will have seen one-tenth of her, as she appeared. There is nothing in language to compare.

She was a star, and twinkled as a star, but to her a star, even the Morning Star, was sullen, a dim circle of sordid fire.

She was approaching.

My legs moved as if tugged by her gravity, forward, ignoring the commands of my mind. I suddenly felt as if something had crawled up my back, leaving frost in its wake. My stomach jerked, marionette on a string. For some reason I did not know I reached up with a hand and mussed my hair. I instantly regretted it.

I saw a flash of pink – was that her hair, or just the light? – and skin like milk. She looked at me and suddenly I felt exposed, as if there wasn't possibly anything I could hide from her.

The worst part was, it was a good feeling.