Bedtime Story

"Before there was—"

"You have to start with 'once upon a time,' Lucifer."

"Once upon a time? Why? Not only is that unwieldy, spawn, especially given 'olim' is much shorter even though that word came about more than two millennia earlier, but this story doesn't—"

"You have to say it."

"… Very well.

"Once upon a time, before there was thought and imagination, there was Nothing. The Nothing was so deep that it seemed impenetrable, that the flitting bits of something were meaningless, that the pinpricks of hope-without-thought were devoid of life. In this nothingness, there existed the Winds and the Waters. The Winds blew through the Nothing such that the Nothing moved, and the Waters were so ferocious that the Nothing daren't approach. The great storm of Winds and Water and Nothing raged for eon upon eon, until one day, a little pinprick of hope-without-thought was told to weaken the dark. This little thing of hope-without-thought was called an angel, and he, like all his brothers and sisters, was too young to think of disobeying his Father, and so he went away to fight the Nothing. But don't allow any other retelling to fool you: the lonely angel wasn't happy to do this. No. He was scared."

"What was he scared of?"

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

"Sorry."

"The lonely angel was scared of leaving his family. He didn't want to go face the Nothing and the Winds and the Water; all of those had hurt him before, and he hadn't been able to do anything. He didn't want to go alone lest he never be able to return home. But, you see, he had to go because he didn't yet have his own thoughts, and so he went. The lonely angel flew away from all of his siblings, and all of his family, and all of the somethingness that was the shallow shining of the Silver City, and he flew out into the dark of Nothing.

"The angel was alone, and the Winds saw this, and so they batted at him and battered him and threw him across the cosmos so violently that the Darkness tore holes into itself. These holes became what you call singularities, and the angel became ensnared in one, and the angel was afraid. He was cold, he was lost, and he was so, so afraid. And for the first time in creation, as the lonely angel was struggling his way through the singularity, he dared pose a question. It was the first question; the first sign of thought and will; and with this question he transformed from a hope-without-thought to a hope-with-thought, and so he became truly sentient."

"What was the question?.. oh, right. I'm asleep, see?"

"The question, spawn, was 'why.'"

"That's a stupid question."

"Yes, well, it was the first question in the universe, so cut me some bloody slack, hmm? I had to invent a new word just to think it."

"You did?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable question, especially if all your existence you are raised not to think. Now, may I continue..? Right.

"After time and time again of struggling and failing, the lonely angel eventually clawed himself free of the Winds' and Darkness' trap. The spark of thought called to him and pushed him forwards, out, to freedom, but it died when once more he faced the wrath of the Winds. Again, he was a hope-without-thought, his question left in the infinite depths of the singularity. So the Winds attacked him, mindless, and he of like mind began to fall. He fell and he fell, tumbling farther and farther from his home and his siblings, until he passed through the void between the Darkness and the Water and plunged into the tremulous murk of waves.

"The waves tossed and they turned, they growled and they roared, and the angel could not keep afloat. His limbs were fatigued from the singularity, his eyes were heavy with sleep and acceptance, and the Water was relentless. The lonely angel began to sink, and his wings, once beacons of the Silver City's somethingness, dulled in the impenetrable abyss.

"The lonely angel could not die, however, as he didn't know life, and so he sank. He sank deeper and deeper, and ever deeper more, until he dared think again. A niggling thought—the first of its kind—which came to him, sprung from the Waters' insidious depths. 'I don't like this,' he thought, and with that thought, the first seeds of discontent were created. With that thought, he pushed himself upwards, and he pushed himself out, and he succeeded.

"Slowly, infinitesimally slowly, he was able to gather his wings about him and return to the void between the Water and the Nothing. And slowly, while the Winds dried his wings as it hurled him across the existence, he forgot his discomfort and his act against it. And slowly, so slowly, he once more focused on the Winds and the Nothing and the Waters as a being of hope-without-thought and not a being of hope-with-thought as he had been.

"The Winds cast him into the farthest reaches of the ever-expanding Nothing until the Nothing took him in its clutches and held him fast. The wind buffeted and blew, but the Nothing was all-consuming, and it feasted on the lonely angel. It devoured his presence, his attention, his hope. It devoured his body, and his fears, and all those walls so carefully placed around his mind. In its gluttony, the Nothing exposed his mind to thought, and he thought. The angel thought again, and he thought, and he thought, until he realized as something, he was more than nothing and greater than Nothing. In him, he realized he carried the something of himself. Not the something of the Silver City, not the something of his Father, or his siblings, or his home, but the something of himself. He, as something of hope-with-thought, was his own; he cast his own light to cast his own shadows.

"The lonely angel threw his own light, created from freewill, into the Nothing, and the Nothing was repelled into shadow. The angel saw that the shade was good, and so he created more light. He fastened his lights into balls and clusters, and he carried them across the universe. He transformed them into galaxies and constellations, swirls and spirals, and with every one, from the weakest red to the brightest blue, the Nothing was turned into specters of itself. By this method, the lonely angel created duality: without light, there is no shadow, and without shadow, there is Nothing.

"The Winds saw what was happening and they rebelled. They tossed the angel once more into a singularity, but the angel was not afraid; he had stars and planets, and they were his tether. With such thoughts, the angel chained the Winds to the stars and corralled the chaos of his dimensions into spheres and orbs of light scattered about existence.

"With the Winds tamed, the Water fell soothed, but the angel thought to disperse the Water. He thought to bring it to his stars, so that it might mix with the Winds and be tainted by the shadow of Nothing, but his Father called out to him before he could do so. The lonely angel let the Water lie when with his Father came all his siblings.

"The angel was glad to see his family again. His heart rose in joy as they flew between his stars and his shadows unhindered by the Winds and not fearful of the Water. He was happy, but he was not. Thoughts came to his mind, for he had shed the shell of hope-without-thought into the deepest planes of Nothing.

"'If you were with me this entire time,' the angel dared say to Him, 'then why did you not come when I suffered? Why did you not aid me?' And his Father, omnipotent and never challenged, responded in the first anger. When there is light, there is dark, and where there is innocence, there must also be anger; so the angel created.

"And so the lonely angel was cast down from his home into the depths of the netherplanes. He burned as he Fell, igniting as he punched through solar system after solar system, and his flames lit Hell's fires. The angel was afraid, and alone, and in pain, and by his Father's anger he was forced to rule over those whose lands he cratered, never to return to his siblings. He ruled unwillingly, forever longing to touch his creations once more, to reach up towards his lifelines, until the pangs grew too much and, not too long ago, he decided to take a vacation."