Ten thousand, or four billion years ago (depending on who you ask)

Eluviadel, Lady of Green Places, smiled as she looked upon the young world before her. Lush greenery sprouted in some places, great plains dominated others, and everywhere, there was peace. Every wandering insect, every swooping bird, every blade of grass, all of it sang a single, beautiful symphony.

Only one thread of discontent wound through her soul, and the Lady felt her forehead, the skin like young bark, crease. Her work was perfect, but the work was not yet done. Soon, he would come, and her perfect harmony would be disrupted.

There was nothing she could do about the impending blighting of her artistry, but, in a flash of spite, she resolved to push against the injustice. The dark thoughts became mana, the barest trickle of her vast power, and ran down her arm. She couldn’t do much, and he would be within his rights to counter her if he noticed, but a small seed could escape his attention for long enough to, perhaps, reap a reward. She let her magic coalesce in her palm, patterning the shape after one of her many creations, and started at a sound from behind.

She turned, already knowing that it would be him. He took the form of a man with dark skin, black eyes shining with the promise of hidden knowledge. Garandiel, Lord of Dreams.

“Beautiful work, Eluviadel. I am continually impressed with the manner in which such perfection can spring from the chaos of nature.” His voice was quiet, almost a whisper, though her ears could hear everything regardless.

“Not beautiful enough to escape your touch.” The barest hint of anger touched her words, and she stopped herself from showing embarrassment. He would likely know how she felt, regardless of how she tried to hide her rage--which was part of why she hated the calm, respectful smile he always gave her whenever they met.

“Ah, but without minds to appreciate the majesty of Your creation, can it truly be said to be beautiful? Without dreams, without meaning, there is no beauty. No truth, no goodness--”

“--no evil.” she muttered, glaring. With a minor effort of will, she worked the object in her hand, insignificant on the scale of gods and thus unlikely to attract his notice. To her disgust, it would contain power similar to his own, but there was little that her domain could do against Garandiel’s creations. Dreams and meaning were only defeated by their own kin, while they in turn could be deadly to the simple order of nature. It was unbalanced, but everything Garandiel touched was so.

“A point.” He nodded graciously, making her seem, once again, the ass. She’d thought of him when designing that particular beast. “But regardless, it is the way of things. You have had your turn, and now it is mine.”

“What do you know of the way of things?” She hissed, but then calmed herself. She was all of the feral anger of the wild, but also the radiance of flowers and the steady, unending growth of the forest. She was inexorable, and Garandiel would learn as much, one day. “Very well.”

She moved to go, the act more symbolic than physical, as her power called her back to her own plane of existence. At the same time, she cast her working into the world, a miniscule object that would bury itself in the ground and wait to be used. WIth the limited time she’d had, it took a humble form: a pea that shimmered and pulsed with her power. Simple, but beautiful, as all her creations were.

As she faded out of existence, however, her eyes widened. Following the tiny streak of magic was a matching spell, so small she barely caught it: Garandiel’s power. He gave her another of those infuriating smiles even as her vision faded.

She let out a scream of rage as she entered her home plane, and the entire world screamed with her.

*****************

Four billion years later

Nom.

It was a day like any other, except that the ground was muddy upon the forest floor. The riverbank had flooded the night before, worse than it had in decades, and the rushing water had ripped up all manner of plant life as it poured out, disturbing the earth. The forest would recover. It always had.

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There was one more unusual thing about the day, although it would take an astute observer to notice it. Or, perhaps, just the right kind of observer. To the hawk flying above the river, its eyes searching for prey, the scene was impossible to miss.

Upon the mud of the riverbank, at the edge of the trees that would have blocked the bird’s vision, was a glimmer of light. It flashed green and purple, and with the hawk’s sharp eyes, it could see quite easily the two creatures next to the light. Both were a talon’s length at most, one green and fuzzy, the other a more plain gray. A caterpillar and a worm, though the bird thought of them more as “breakfast” and “lunch.” Usually its prey didn’t do it the courtesy of lighting itself up, but it appreciated the help.

Even as the hawk angled over to collect its meal, however, it could see the glimmering lights vanish. There was the casing of a pea pod on the ground before the bugs, and, miraculously, a moment of understanding flashed through the bird’s brain as it swooped. One or both of the creatures had eaten whatever was glowing, and that meant they could have tainted themselves. The bird slowed its descent slightly, considering, then reached the ground and snatched the gray worm up in its beak anyway. It left the caterpillar, instinctually wary of the brighter color that could mean the bug was poisonous. Poisonous was the correct word there, not venomous, the bird reminded itself, as it swallowed the worm whole. It then wondered how it knew that fact, blissfully unaware that it had once been a rather obnoxious wizard who drank a faulty Potion of Transfiguration. As the worm slid down its gullet, it ceased all wondering and returned to its careful hunt for more food along the riverbank.

**********************

Approximately fifteen seconds ago

The caterpillar… was.

It hadn’t been, a moment ago, while it was chewing through the fibrous casing of the thing it found at the base of a tree, glorying in the satiation of its constant hunger--but when it broke through to the object within, ready to devour it with its mouth parts, there was a moment of… something. The caterpillar thought--which was a new experience for it--and settled on a word. Inspiration. It hadn’t known that it knew such a word, but it felt like the right one to use. Like taking in a breath, and waking up from a long sleep. Except… perhaps it was more like being born anew. After all, moments ago it had been a caterpillar, and now it was, irrefutably, the caterpillar. Did that mean it had died? What made the caterpillar itself, if its self could change so drastically in moments?

Along with vocabulary and the beginnings of existential dread, the caterpillar gained a new appreciation for its surroundings. It had been aware, in a vague sense, of the creature eating beside it, also working its way through the fibrous casing of what the caterpillar recognized as a pea pod. To its weak sight, the creature had seemed a splotch of darkness blocking some of the light filling its vision; but now, the caterpillar knew it was a worm, not unlike the caterpillar itself in general form. The caterpillar realized that it knew what it looked like, now, and then realized that it could look.

The world was beautiful. The caterpillar’s eyes ringed its head, giving it a view of the radiant blue sky, the deep, textured brown of the mud beneath it, the towering structures that were shrubs and weeds, and the all-encompassing behemoth that was the tree before it. If the caterpillar could cry it would, for even its fellow pea-eater was a marvel to its new sight. True, the worm was rather skinny, its color somewhat dull in comparison to the caterpillar’s own emerald hue, and its lack of fuzz was unfortunate, but in that moment, the caterpillar saw only a fellow denizen of a wondrous world.

It noticed, too, that the worm had also made its way into the pod, and that the green light that had been emanating from that half of the meal had vanished. The caterpillar recalled, as though dredging memories from a dream, that its own half of the pod had been glowing purple. Purple. What an incredible color, purple was. And, of course, green too. The caterpillar wiggled slightly as it turned to the worm, ready to remark upon the virtues of green as a method of breaking the ice. After all, if the caterpillar was, now, then surely the worm also was, and that made them… peers? No, the caterpillar decided, more than that. Family. Siblings, in a sense. One could even argue they were peas in a--

--something flashed in the caterpillar’s three-hundred and sixty degree vision, and it wiggled in sudden distress as a gust of air buffeted its many hairs. A monster, so huge it boggled the caterpillar’s newborn mind, appeared out of nowhere, a storm of massive feathers and intense noise. And in as much time as it took for the caterpillar to process the newcomer’s arrival, it was gone. As was the worm.

Within seconds of experiencing experience for the first time, the caterpillar felt something painful enough to make it regret its new faculties: grief. So soon after gaining companionship in this new world, the caterpillar had lost it. Was fate truly so cruel, or had the pea cursed it to be alone with its extensive knowledge of esoteric words?

The caterpillar let out a miniscule puff of air from the twin holes at its sides that it used to breathe, and despondently crawled around the tree, moving for the cover of the forest. There was only one thing that could fill the new void in the caterpillar’s wounded soul, the same thing that had gotten it into this predicament in the first place.

It was time to eat.