They came to me, they said, not because of anything special about me or any higher purpose or noble mission. They came to me simply because they were bored and thought I might've been able to amuse them.
I've always appreciated candor.
They said they'd observed many others like me, as they went from world to world in search of other ways they might find entertainment after leaving the other places they'd shepherded. They considered many others like myself... "creative" types with imagination, but without the power to wield it and affect their world. They even let slip they'd offered this gift to others before me and had been refused. It's always so fulfilling to know you're someone's last choice.
Apparently they'd taken the time to read some of my works. Who knew gods spent their time consuming media, let alone fanfiction?
They told me I could try again. Or craft anything I wanted. With but a fraction of their power, I could traverse the stars and find not only the worlds they'd observed, but also sow life in suitable, untamed planets.
I had a litany of questions. How such a thing was possible, what these powers would do to me -to say nothing of how just crafting life from nothing worked mechanically- to how I would ever live long enough to see the result. The younger brother whimsically shrugged.
Whatever power they offered may have made me something greater than any human had ever been, but it was still power they offered simply to amuse themselves. They only wanted to see what I would do given the power to transcend the limits I had always known and assumed mortality forever chained me to.
They told me they chose me because my works reminded them of something they held attachment to; some other place they crafted long before.
In the breadth of my works, I had written of many different worlds and many different people, of men and women, of humans and elves and dwarves and orcs, of gods and monsters... but only one place in a world made by two brothers with such whimsical, capricious natures.
I asked them if it was real, and if I might see it.
They had but to wave their hand. And I beheld a world with five continents and scattered other islands... a world very temperate, very Earth-like. I could not say for certain its scale, because out in the blackness at a distance, it did not seem so large... but I knew the shapes well. The frozen waste of Solitas, the enormous lake at the center of Anima, the desert of Menagerie, and the northeastern shores of Sanus.
But I needed one other confirmation. I scoured the darkness around the planet, looking for a shattered satellite still idly circling...
The younger brother snapped his fingers and rotated the world, completely obscuring my view with western Sanus, the deserts of Vacuo, and an untamed, dragon-shaped continent... and at last -clearly- a broken moon just above the ocean.
I told them this was what I wanted. To behold this and know all its secrets; to see clearly the fate of its inhabitants. They refused. If I wanted to, I could start it over: craft the world I wished from this canvas. If I wanted to, I could try to tell the story again.
Some selfish, egocentric part of me wondered then if I could tell it better.
This was what it was, then, to play god. And I did wonder if perhaps I could nudge things in a different direction, and craft my ideal version of the world I had so long coveted... and if not, I could try again and again, improving with each iteration.
I did not yet know if I would live long enough to see it. But still I was tempted, still I wondered what might have been. So many times I'd tried to rework, to wrestle with a story that I had not always loved in a world I was so desperately addicted to hearing about...
Looking at it from afar, the empty white of the broken moon drew my eye. I looked at the drifting fragments of it, recalling how disappointed I'd been to learn the moon had only been shattered because a dragon hadn't been too concerned about collateral damage on his way off the planet.
There could be a new origin for it, a greater mystery to instill such creativity. One day, others could write fanfiction about what I had crafted.
And in that moment, I knew... I could not.
I coveted it, but I knew it was not mine. It never had been. It never would be. And so long as I continued to believe that the world was not my own, I wouldn't be able to take the drastic step to remake it. Gods may have been willing to play dice, but I was not willing to forsake something that I was so inexorably bound to.
The powers to change it, to make it my own... and still I found myself bound to that connection made in my mortal coil. Still I had such reverence for something that I did not always love, but never once forgot to covet. Whatever its imperfections, I still wanted it to be what it was. If it were in my hand, it would not be the world that had so motivated me, given me a sense of purpose and instilled passion I had so rarely felt.
I turned to the brothers and thanked them for their offer. They quickly sensed where my formality led.
The elder brother reminded me I could go to a different world and make my own story. I could craft any creature I wanted, and take as long as I wished. I could do anything at all.
And all I wanted... was to write fanfiction about a world I could not bring myself to change.
The younger brother grumbled this had happened before. That once again, they had been refused. The elder brother noted that it was essential that a choice be offered; that they could learn nothing by robbing those they observed of their will and their agency. He noted I was not the first to recognize such.
The younger brother gave me a final warning that I would return to the mundane world I knew, unable to wield their godly might. That the only way I could ever affect the remnant they'd left would be words on a piece of paper, only as consequential as readers made it. Always the fiction, never the godhead I would have known.
I told him... nothing would make me happier.
They returned me then to the mundane world, from the darkness of space to my own, private darkness where I composed my work. I too refused the gods, and felt less snubbed by their delay and more that I found myself in revered company.
I knew then I had more stories to tell. I quickly set to work on the stories of a remnant and the struggles of its inhabitants, and the adventure they would share, and the joy and the heartbreak, the triumph and tragedy they knew in equal measure.
I knew I had at least two readers in my audience. I thought they might enjoy seeing themselves in my next piece...
