To Fly the Soaring Tides

The sky sees many dawns, but depending on how you look at it, the sky has seen precious few.

It is not my place to speak freely of before the first sunrise, but at dawn’s first light, laws formed as an empty world took shape, sparse as it may be.

Once light first touched these skies, laws could not exist unbound. This world was yet too brittle to support such vehement nature.

This meant of course that these laws could not truly assimilate, though the world was dependent on them for its very inception. Be it light, life, form, faith, causality or courage, these many laws grew into their own substantiality. Spread across the skies, each law took on its own being, known in latter days as the primordial demons.

Remnants of a yore yet further still linger, and I am but a single speck of dust. One whose purpose has long expended and whose hourglass has flipped so many times I lost count… who is to witness the myriad skies’ vainglorious upbringing if not I?

My brothers and sisters have all moved on. Obsolete existences as we are, no different from that which formed the earth and sea below, only the most selfish, greedy, and cowardly of our lot held onto life. My purpose was always to move on with them and allow this world to grow, but how could I?

As hideous as it is, nothing has ever existed as beautiful as these skies. As its sole deliberate witness, I could not allow myself to join the others in what most these days refer to as ‘the aether’ just yet.

There were millennia where I considered that perhaps I should. Everything moved as expected.

From its beginning, this world was always doomed to fold in on itself. This was made obvious at the time of the laws’ material birth, but I lost track of how long it’s been. I initially thought the end would come far sooner, but it turns out more life was formed from yore’s passing. Remnants not great enough to become my kin but remnants nonetheless.

I came to know this phenomenon as the people of the land. Those who inhabited the many specks of earth that dotted this world, nestled in the clouds. They resisted what I thought to be the natural order. I took them for transient flesh of no purpose, but instances born of the very aether of which I’m bound, they learned to harness the power of this world. Not only did it give rise to their existence, but they learned to harness it. After enough time passed, these primitive beasts found themselves entrapped within the cosmic shroud of aether.

Time after time, I watched them reborn, and after countless years they gained an inkling of intelligence. These entities became souls. While new ones were born, others were perpetually reformed within the cycle. Watching a speck of nothing spend innumerable thousands of years to bloom into a vibrant flower moved me to the degree I questioned myself. It was then that I realized the sky’s course was not so rigid, and that I would only disperse once all that could be witnessed was.

Still, something nagged at me from the back of my mind. Despite the bloom of life that filled the skies, everything seemed like it would go exactly as expected. The world would collapse of its own doing.

As laws further ingratiated into this world, their influence became indisputable. Not long ago, it seemed the tale would finally end, but the tracks of fate deformed in the blink of an eye.

Today, humanity likes to speak the fact that the primordial demons have gone extinct, as if it was their doing.

Little did they know, it wasn’t even the truth. They were not entirely extinct, and it was none other than their own kin who brought ruin to the rest.

There were other effects as these laws assimilated with reality—perhaps the reason this world is still intact after the primordial genocide.

As emergent pieces of this world, these laws manifested their own forms in accordance. Small, stone slabs. As simple as physical manifestations could be. They were incomprehensible and useless at first, but the laws only further pervaded. Eventually, humanity fought over these stone slabs. Power not yet understood yet coveted. It was remarkable the lengths they would go to in order to secure something they couldn’t hope to fathom.

Let me say firsthand that those who lay their hands on the slabs are met with misfortune. I could count on a single human hand how many times it worked out positively.

To me this discovery felt like the second advent of ruin. The laws which worked so hard to destroy themselves manifested as objects of disaster in the world of tomorrow’s dawn.

Were I to intervene, surely I would meet my purpose and join my kin, but I swore to become witness.

The sky had never been so dark. I did not expect it to be a singular effort, but as predicted, law would bring this world’s end. The one who brought a close to the primordial era spent many times over that weaving his grand tapestry.

Though he lacked the power of a true weaver, he was uniquely positioned to put everything in the right order so that he was all that remained. All that mattered, anyway.

No single law ruled over reality, nor could it ever hope to. All of them combined comprised it. Reality was subject to laws, yet dependent on them all. One could never hope to harness it.

Time served as the endless medium—the seedbed from which the impossible could sprout.

One being would surely encompass the skies, but yet another dawn arrived. Just when I thought the night would usher this world into the beyond, a light like no other stripped him of that untamed power.

Fate crumbled like a rotted sprig and something which should never have existed was born. A creature whose singular existence was salvaged by a single thread, and miraculously nurtured against the will and workings of this world.

A clump of stone devoid of life can become a verdant forest through the passage of time, but this world holds no value to me other than the passings of its state. Such is the burden of witness.

Whether this world crumbles or blooms will be just as beautiful in my eyes, I thought. These days I’m not so sure. For the first time since the dusk of yore, I awaken each morning unsure of what I might see.