Time slowed to a crawl for me as I watched the approach of my doom.

I had found a spot to sit atop a mountain and it’s from here that I watched some of the last of my visitors leave.

I didn’t blame them.

Death was a frightening thing and there was no shame in running.

But still… I felt a little sad.

This confused me.

I didn’t know any of them or even why they were on my surface.

What happened to their original world and what did they need the white crystals for?

I didn’t know anything so why did it matter to me what happened to them?

The answer was simple.

It didn’t.

Just as surely as they begin, all things are bound to end and like that of some new-borns, mine was made to come prematurely.

Whether or not I would be reborn again as part of some great cosmic cycle remained to be seen but a part of me knew that this was it.

This was the end.

I suppose I couldn’t complain all that much.

I had been reborn as a world and bore witness to the cosmos as it further unfolded.

A privilege, I assumed, not many had and so I sat in waiting with flickering thoughts of gratitude.

But...

Nothing could be done about the fear I felt.

As the other planet grew closer, I felt my gravitational fields interacting with its own.

Its rocky, icy surface, shined brightly as it was bathed in the light of our sun.

Our impact would most likely shatter us both but even though I understood this, I couldn’t help but falter as dread consumed me.

What could I possibly do in this situation?

I stood up as my skies trembled and raised my hands in some pitiful, stupid attempt to do something.

I begged that the planet stop but the moment eventually came and I cried silently for mercy as the other planet struck me, creating an explosion that sent my small wispy self flying backwards.

Pure darkness followed.

.

..

I awoke to an awful feeling in my left arm.

I looked around and saw that I was at the bottom of a valley, lying atop an endless expanse of ash.

The skies were almost entirely black and my winds roared fiercely.

I sat up and glanced at my arm to find that it was far dimmer than the rest of my body.

I also felt a strange sway tugging me ever so slightly from side to side and so I switched my perspective to a planetary one and it was here that I saw that the smaller planet was slowly orbiting me, although a large chunk of its side was missing.

I also had a ring of ice and dust around me.

I glanced at my surface and saw that it was blanketed with smog and my leftmost side had a dent.

But, even as I was, battered and bruised, I let out a sigh since I was still alive.

I turned to what had become my moon and tried calling out to it but I had no voice.

I wondered if that other world was like me.

I wondered if it had a soul.

Maybe I was cursed to be alone but...

Soul or no soul, I was alive and I had a companion and so I watched keenly as it orbited me.

With its every trip around, it collected dust from our collision and eventually gained a rounder surface.

The same happened to me.

I watched as rain fell onto my surface and I gasped upon seeing that the Mega Crystal still stood.

I assumed a limited perspective and arrived at the building next to the crystal and saw that only its upper towers were still visible.

The rest of it had been covered in ash.

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I made my way into the building via the open roof of one of the towers and made my way to the bottommost chamber where the countless stone tablets from before now lay scattered messily about.

I made my way to one of them and tried picking it up but failed since I didn’t have a physical presence.

This hammered down the fact that I had indeed died on earth and I felt myself tremble as dread consumed my thoughts.

I tightly clutched my arms as memories from my earthly life returned to me.

Every decision I had made, good or bad, struck me heavily and I came to realise that I had been wasting this precious second chance I had been given.

I needed to survive but I was a planet and couldn’t do much on my own so I needed to find some other means to protect myself.

I could move my ethereal presence around but I wondered to what degree and so shifted my perspective to a planetary one and tried moving away from my surface but, as I partly expected, I couldn’t.

I turned my attention to the Mega Crystal and assumed a limited perspective before cautiously placing my hand on its glowing surface and it’s here, just as I made contact with it, that I beheld something that nearly tore my sense of self into shreds.

I fearfully backed away from the crystal all while images of the unfathomable filled my thoughts.

I had seen a glimpse of the birth of light, matter and all else but even that... Was but a fraction of the whole truth.

I took great lengths to calm myself down while trying to focus on a particular aspect of the vision I beheld.

I had seen the birth of the crystals, born alongside reality itself in a great flash and it’s here that I realised that they were fragments of the same power that birthed everything.

But what are these fragments capable of? I wondered.

My otherworldly visitors were capable of interstellar travel, and gravitational manipulation of some kind and were made of seemingly inanimate matter.

Were the crystals responsible for all that?

I took an imaginary deep breath and reached out to the crystal again.

I touched it and again, beheld a great flash that spat everything into existence including the crystals.

I then watched as one, in particular, flew across the infinite and I watched as it crashed into me.

This was the Mega Crystal trying to tell me its origins... I think.

But I still didn’t know what it could do.

I pursed my lips and looked around while thinking of a possible way to test the power of the crystal.

I then assumed a wider perspective and looked down into my ash-covered surface.

Mmm...

With my right hand still firmly on the crystal’s surface, I reached out to my surface with my left and imagined a rhythmic pulsing of my gravitational lines and just as the thought came to mind, the ash around the temple began to sway and swirl as though it was water.

I strengthened the pulses and watched as great ash waves rose, revealing more of the Temple beneath.

I made it so that the waves of ash washed over away from the Temple so that I could see the entrances at its foot.

As I did all this, my ethereal body turned a deep shade of purple and I could see countless purple sparks dancing across my being.

I then let go of the crystal and watched as my body returned to its usual pure white state.

This was good.

No- this was great!

If I, like my visitors, could manipulate gravity, then I could finally stop other celestial bodies from hitting me!

I triumphantly raised my fist while doing a little jump.

However...

I wondered why my visitors hadn’t done the same.

Why did they make no attempts at stopping the collision?

I mean, sure, I was the essence of an entire planet so maybe our ability to use the crystals was significantly different but still...

I let out a sigh before turning back to the crystal and I saw something curious.

The spot I had touched when clearing the ash was gone.

What remained was the Imprint of a hand that went several meters deep into the crystal.

Ah...

I realized that the crystals weren’t an infinite resource and I’d probably need to be careful.

I tapped my chin and slowly made my way back to the central chamber.

I closely inspected the tablets within although I obviously couldn’t read what was written on them.

That said, I was determined to try and so I stared at them for an unknown amount of time.

I memorized over a thousand unique characters, which were variations of squiggly lines and dots but even after all that... I didn’t know how to read the language of my visitors.

This made sense since I had no point of reference.

On earth, a person was taught other languages by direct translation to their mother tongue, the one they learn from birth.

And if direct translations failed, there was always historical and cultural and archaeological context.

I had none of that.

The best option I had was to have one of my visitors teach me but they were all dead.

Or were they?

I assumed a planetary perspective and scanned my surface in search of one of the crystal-harvesting vehicles.

I had acquired a thick layer of ash and so any that remained had probably been buried.

That’s what I thought until I found one desperately crawling across a relatively flat plane of ash that was a few kilometres south of my equator.

It was also a few kilometres away from the valley I woke up in after the collision.

I made my way towards it and watched as it crawled.

This one vaguely resembled a praying mantis and had sustained significant amounts of damage from the collision since only two of its six legs worked but, regardless, it crawled.

It looked like it was making its way to the Mega Crystal but that was hundreds of kilometres away.

I made my way to the vehicle’s head and the thing just moved past me as though I wasn’t there.

I wanted to talk to the being inside and have it teach me its language but I didn’t have a body and so I rushed back to the Mega Crystal where I placed my hand on its surface from with the Chamber of Tablets.

This crystal only bore knowledge of what it experienced.

Did that mean other crystals would be able to teach me other things?

Also, could I create matter using it?

I reached out to the spot in front of me and imagined my old body.

I thought back to how it felt to be alive.

Every breath I ever took and every drop of blood that split from me.

A moment passed in the silence of the chamber.

Then another.

Nothing happened.

I let out a disappointed sigh and allowed my shoulders to droop.

I accepted that I couldn’t create something from nothing but couldn’t the crystal just use itself to...

Ah...

I imagined the transference of about seventy kilograms of the crystal into a form that resembled my current one and I watched the chamber suddenly filled with sparkling dust.

The dust gathered in front of me and eventually formed a pale grey feminine humanoid figure.

I still didn’t know how to feel about my new form but it was better than being dead so I inspected myself.

I was short, had a petite frame and had no facial features.

I did, however, have short curly grey hair.

I also noticed that I didn’t have genitals.

I... didn’t know how to feel about this either.

I was crystalline but I could see threads and structures that resembled muscles and bones.

So, I had created something that was a mixture of my old and new forms. I had also taken some influence from the Visitors.

I gave the doll version of myself two eyes which had grey irises, a nose, two ears and a mouth.

I wondered how I would puppet it and so I tried moving myself perspective into it.

Something strange then happened.

I suddenly felt heavy and so fell but I let out a gasp upon seeing that my glass-like hands were touching the stone tablets beneath me.

I had done it!

Now I could interact with the physical plane!