((Companion with Ch. 9, Love))
When They came into being, She had been distantly aware of The Other, but She did not concern herself with Him. There was much to do.
She delighted in bringing stars into being, pushing clouds of gas down and down until they ignited under their own weight and burst into brilliance. Big and small, She lit up the universe with pinpricks of light that chased back the darkness.
And then The Other came, and Her largest and finest stars burst and flashed and died under His touch, leaving behind His laughter and Destruction, sometimes in the form of pulsars or neutron stars, sometimes in that of black holes, which didn't even shine to light up the darkness.
And She raged, for how dare He bring His Destruction to bare on Her Creations? But raging did no good, as They could no more harm each other than could They touch.
So She set about Creating again, determined to make more than He could ever hope to Destroy. And when She gathered the remnants of Her largest and brightest stars, She paused in wonder.
Because in the Destruction of those stars, The Other had made things anew. New elements, new materials for Her to Create with.
And as She created new stars, and new smaller objects, planets and moons and so many wondrous things, She saw Her stars begin to circle, to dance around the largest of His destructive forces.
As galaxies came into being, beautiful swirls of Her stars held together by the force of His black holes, She could no longer hate Him.
It became a game, Her Creating, Him Destroying, and in the process leaving Her new and exciting things to use in Her Creations.
Her finest Creations were the worlds where She brought Life into being, green and blue planets dotted all across the universe, Her greatest treasures. And while She wanted to rage each time He brought Destruction to those worlds, mass extinction upon mass extinction, She always looked forward to what would rise above the challenge and pull through, and the new resulting life that would come about on those worlds.
For Destruction even had a place among Life.
And then, the beings on one of Her worlds bound them both.
She was small, much of Her power cut off, but not all of it. Her own panting, and that of another, The Other's, filled Her head. Exhaustion, something She had never known before, weighed Her down, but She forced Her eyes open regardless.
And with that came a name, Her name. She had never had one before, after all She knew who She was.
Tikki blinked slowly, tiredly, at the curled up form on the opposite side of the spell circle. He was as small as her, his fur as dark as the space between her stars.
And then he opened his eyes, and she couldn't help but smile, for they were the same color of her life-bearing worlds.
The same ones that wouldn't exist without him.
And delight bubbled up within her, that he was here with her, and another emotion, deeper and fiercer, hot as a quasar and soft as the fur on his cheek.
"Hello. I'm Tikki. It's nice to finally meet you like this."