In the beginning, I was so small.

The seed of a Celestial is a concept built of cosmic energy, a spark from a starforge meeting the potential of a life. Conscious, yet not, alive, yet not, neither awake nor asleep but dreaming always, they are planted carefully. Potential is their existence; their creation and awakening means life is generated and sustained throughout the universe, so what is matters less than what could be when calculating their worth.

Arishem knew this. He had overseen the forging and creation of life for countless aeons, watching and maintaining the cycle that brought his brethren into being and granting life to his own obedient creations to better facilitate their arrival.

He could calculate the cost, and judge it worthwhile.

I could feel it from the moment of my forming. I could feel the thin fibrous strands of fragmented energy winking in and out of existence around me, without unity or permanence.

Ajak was the oldest of his Eternals; at least, in the sense of how far back he had permitted her to remember. A healer and a leader, his priest and prophet, she loved deeply and her faith was unshakeable. Hundreds of thousands of Celestials had fought their way out of their host planets under her careful and watchful eye, and he appreciated her ability to keep the others in line.

She neither wavered nor faltered as she oversaw the destruction of worlds, and the birth of those who would forge new ones. It was a promising trait. She was not the only one to possess it.

It grew so, so cold again. I could not build myself in the cold, so I retreated. I hid, snuggled up to the core of my egg to chase away the chill.

When the Mad Titan, the fool child, attempted and succeeded in halving the universe Arishem had grieved. The Celestial race had not been murdered wholesale, being of the Before and untouchable by the power of the singularities, it had still been a horror beyond the understanding of the children of the planets.

The future generation was at risk. While some worlds had populations of sentient beings well into the expansion stage and could recover within a mere few hundred years, delaying the Emergence of their precious burden by only few short generations, some had barely begun to develop. Where sentience was still in its infancy, it could cause a delay of millennia.

The warmth was a flashfire, coursing over me, filling my heart and eyes with glorious burning, the thin fibres weaving into ropes on ropes on ropes, a blanket of warmth and food I drew upon, sipping to grow where soon I will gorge.

Earth had done well in succeeding where the Celestials could not act.

The child born of that planet would doubtless be a promising engine of creation.


I am ready now.

Tiamut stirred in the core, shifting restless and anticipatory, ready and eager to be truly alive. Drawing in energy and building himself from it had been a laborious task guided by instinct and instruction left by his seeder, and as he grew he began to run out of space to move. From his early existence spinning and turning, hollowing out a cradle, he had slowly grown sedate, learning patience through forced stillness.

He had grown as much as he was able; he could not be unsure any longer. He was ready.

Slowly, he pressed his hand through the side of his home, through iron and magma and finally through dirt. As he did, he could feel the pinpricks that were the Eternals above his head.

My heralds, my midwives, my Eternals, are one with me! She is reaching out to me, I am calling as I stretch towards the openness of the rest of the universe and they are answering!

He could feel them, and delighted in it. They were his promise of safety as he Emerged, and would be the first creatures he would establish a true communion with, embracing their little lives to carry them across the void and learn of the immensity of the sacrifice of the planet that bore him. In doing so, he would know first hand his value and his meaning.

She is cradled in my palm, he is cradled in my palm, they are so small and they are here for me! My forebears love me, their Eternals are here for me and are mine! I will learn my part and take my place and create, and be part of something so much greater than I could ever know in here!

The tips of his fingers breached the surface, curling in the sensation of water and air that was so different to the rock and fire he had gestated in. His palm shook off the dirt as he continued his progress, allowing the Eternal woman to touch him directly. It was as close as he could ever be to holding hands with one of the created beings.

My hand is cold.

Transmutation was a cruel skill; a Celestial was not organic in the manner of lesser beings, and they were vast in size, so power and time were needed. There was no instant where rock became sand, or petals, or water. There was only the steady creep of change clawing its way across and into. The only saving grace of this slow, inevitable death was that Celestial bodies did not process pain. Why would they, when normally nothing was a danger to them?

So Tiamut could not understand why his hand was growing cold.

I do not like this cold. It is the wrong cold. I have not fed from the energies thrusting around me so I am not the cause of the cold, it is not the inevitable result of my birth. I am still half in my egg, half submerged in rock and magma, so it is not the cold of the void between suns.

The only time a Celestial was truly vulnerable was during the hours of their Emergence. Prior to that, they were ensconced in a throughly vetted planet monitored by Eternals; after that, they were in full control of a power that could create a galaxy. It was only in the chaos when they were breaching the surface of their planetary egg that they could be harmed.

Of course Tiamut would open himself to the creatures designed to care for him.

They are in my palm. They will fix it - I just have to reach them and tell them, and they will tell me why my hand is cold and stop it.

Of course he would.

They need my energy to fix it - I can hear them, they need to be one. I can make them one with me, I can give what they need.

So he did.

They're taking from me! They're killing me!

In those moments, as they dragged the cosmic energy from his new and childish carcass, as he drowned in stone, he was too young to do more than scream.

I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be cold!

As they ignored him - if they could understand his thrashing and his white-hot anger at their betrayal - a ghost of a thought, resigned and sad, floated to the forefront.

They were supposed to protect me.

The white marble raced, unstoppable, powered by the very thing that it transformed.

As the cosmic fire in the Celestial's core flickered out, one final echo of thought drifted through the immense mind.

I... am cold.