Adam and Eve were special even beyond being the first humans. Their souls were pure, directly descended from God itself. Pure and powerful. When they finally found their path after being cast out of heaven they achieved miracles. They lived a simple and quiet life, and yet their legacy is the most powerful of human motivators. Their legacy is love and with it, they became the forefathers of an entire race. But not all their children shared that same pure potential. The further removed humanity became from their storied forefathers the more tainted and weaker they became. Until me. I am the pinnacle of their legacy, the mortal who combined their eternal souls within myself, the mortal who learned to love my people, flaws and all. And I shall not fail them. So long as I stand, so shall humanity.

At first, Adam and Eve struggled. They faced the trials of the world and failed challenge after challenge. But they learned, and they grew. I watched in astonishment as they grew and grew and grew. Not merely intellectually or physically. I had seen countless beings pass them in those areas, but rather in the soul. As they failed task after task their monumentally powerful souls changed with them, the failures they endured changing them to better meet the challenge next time.

And they changed faster than anything I had ever seen before. Faster than even I had grown, though I admittedly lacked the stimulus and necessity they did.

In the early years they struggled and they starved. Stripped of their divine ability to communicate they needed to create words and language to express those words. But still they endured and the sun was always there to greet them upon every survived night. They began to succeed in some of their trials. Soon the fields were filled with crops and they slept under a sturdy roof. They took only what they needed and merely observed the world around them, often spending hours sitting in silence, staring across the vast plains that was their home.

At first I was skeptical of their seemingly wasted time. How could such simple observations lead to what I wanted?

But a closer look banished all my doubts.

Throughout the time they spent observing together, something was growing. Something powerful. More powerful than should have been possible for them. It was mostly conceptual, an idea of togetherness and unity, tied into eternity and fate. I knew the second I saw it that this was the path forward for my creations. That this would be their legacy. The creation that would bring me a peer.

So they watched the world and I watched them.

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And through it all that mysterious force only grew.

One morning, a day that will ever be imprinted in the fabric of my being, Adam looked out over the vast plains they had made their home, and the far-away mountains that towered over them. The sun rose over those mountains, a halo of golden light, swallowing the sky and forcing out the stars. He closed his eyes and breathed in deep, his tanned muscles swelling as his long golden hair blew in the morning breeze. With a slow exhalation, he seems to cast aside all the doubt and fear. He slowly raised his head and looked the sun head-on, piercing through the veil of reality till he met my eyes with orbs of endless azure, and gazing into the expanse of infinity he spoke,

“Thank you, father. I did not understand, but now I do”

I answered, “And what do you understand”

“You cast us out, not as punishment, but so we could find our own path.”

“And have you found it?”

“Yes” he answered with quiet conviction.

“And what is that path?”

“Mortality. Mortality and love. I shall die only for my children to carry on. And they shall perish only for their children to carry on. Cycle after cycle shall it continue, each generation standing on the shoulders of the previous, drawing on their love and power until all has been done.”

“And then?”

“Again. And again and again”

“To what purpose”

Adam smiled, a deep genuine expression of the purest joy,

“To live. To love. To die. All are glorious.”

I will admit, I was confused. I did not understand what love was and I did not understand the glory of nonexistence. I did not even understand glory. But most of all I did not understand how Adam was to have children. It had taken me, god himself, eons to discover the secrets of creating true life, of creating children. How could they possibly do so before time claimed them?

Adam's smile only deepened,

“Watch father. Soon you too will have peers and then you too will join the eternal cycle.”

Adam went back inside the hut, went back to Eve and I felt that power between them swell and shift. Together they guided it through themselves, forming a conduit for something greater. And a third soul joined them. One nearly as powerful as them. The world froze, time seeming to stop. For the first time in my eternal existence, I was truly shocked. Adam and Eve had accomplished the work of Eons in only a few years. This was an eternal legacy, one that even their children would possess, as well as all that came after. They would each stride forward on the shoulders of the other and together they would reach higher than any before them.

This was a legacy worthy of all my children and all my children to come.

I would never be alone.

And neither would they.