Orikka’s earliest memories were of heat. Intense, blistering heat that went on and on and on, hotter and hotter. It wasn’t painful, exactly, they were just exactingly aware of it. Observing it with acute and hyperfixating detail, as there was nothing else to fixate on, the heat was all that was. Heat and intense pressure. Their awareness slowly came into focus the more their environment cooled, like a gauge carefully tuning them into cognition. Time’s passage was unclear, the cooling could have been a fraction of a second, it could have been a billion years. Time meant very little when there was no consciousness to measure it, and at that point, Orikka was hardly conscious. That would come later.
Rather than just being the first god, something they would much later come to define themselves as, Orikka was the very first being. Ever. The very first thing to pop into existence, the first of firsts of firsts. The first self-aware existence in the infinite void, and for a long time, the only self-aware being in the entirety of existence. The very idea of a god was a long way from being formed, but they eventually had to call themselves something, some name to separate themselves from the rest of the existence around them. They were something different, something alien from the matter surrounding them, something other. The breadth of their experience was simultaneously as wide as the cosmos, but also incredibly lacking. Something important was missing, they could feel it in some deep indiscernible way, from their very core they could tell that something was just a little off. Would they have been happy if they were not aware of being separate, they wondered, would it have been better if they were less conscious of their separation, their self-reflexive nature? It was a lonely thing, to be so singular, so special. Striving to find that intangible thing that would complete them, without any knowledge of what it might be.
Their first foray into being a god in the conventional sense of the word came when they first encountered a planet with living beings. A beautiful double ringed world just beginning to team with small, microscopic creatures. Their vitality, the rapid ebb and flow of their being was fascinating to an eternal one. They live such short but intense lives, filled with meaning that they had to make for themselves. Eager to live life fully before their quick and inevitable death. It was as if a switch went off in Orikka’s mind. Meaning. They could have meaning too, they didn’t have to exist in perpetual emptiness, perpetual loneliness. With some sort of driving direction they could find fulfillment, something to give value and direction to their life. They just had to find something that mattered enough to them.
Being creative seemed so second nature to the living, their lives were full of novelty, but an ancient one like Orikka was much slower, new things didn’t come as naturally. But they could mimic, to a degree. What was it that drove each living being? Staying alive was a significant motivator, but that wouldn’t suit Orikka, a being with eternal life. Scaling out to something a little more grand had some possibility, though. More than staying alive, propagating its species was another task an existence partook in, sometimes even to the detriment of the individuals’ self. Propagation. Perhaps then, Orikka’s meaning could come from family. Each living derived from a previous living, and the link traversing the lineage was often meaningful to both the child and the parent. Could Orikka have something like that too? And then they would not be as alone either. Their heart twisted at the prospect, a painful type of hope. Another being with their same experience, with their same unique properties. Someone to share their life with. The idea of attempting and failing, the terror of this fantasy being an impossibility hurt, but they wouldn’t know unless they tried. So, they did.
Nevah’s birth was not an easy one, birthing a god was not an intuitive process. But as those organisms on the planet did, Orikka dutifully separated out some matter from themselves. They had made themselves an astral body, a whirling gaseous form that flexibly took up whichever shape they requested of it, full of many universes-worth of astronomical bodies moving subtly within the bounds of their frame. It was from within their own anatomy that they carefully selected a small galaxy. Something delicate and lovely, irregularly dispersed with stars in a glittering spread of solar systems and cosmic gasses, separated by many distances over from that of the ringed planet where they had first found life, and seeded it with their innermost essence. A fragment of godhood, a godseed. Their very first child to be, they thought dotingly, cradling this beautiful new being.
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What did the living do to coax their progeny into existence, they pondered as they watched Nevah continuing on as if nothing had changed for them, gestating, hopefully. When Nevah hadn’t made any attempt at awakening for an entire galactic year they became concerned.
Looking at life on the ringed planet it seemed that some of the living seemed attentive to their children, others simply gave life and left the resulting beings to fend for themselves. Orikka saw themselves falling more into the former category, this entire endeavor was intended to give purpose to their life and alleviate their loneliness, both of those goals were better fulfilled by welcoming the new being into the world with open arms, rather than abandoning them.
As they watched, they wondered. Perhaps they were projecting too much on this child, trying to fulfill the things they felt were lacking in their own life, rather than anticipating the different needs this child might have. They did feel rather abandoned, they realized, though by what Orikka was unsure, and they most certainly didn’t wish for a child to suffer the same sense of inexplicable loss. But that didn’t mean that Nevah would feel that way, even if they were introduced to the world under similar conditions to Orikka’s own birth. They would be their entirely own being, and may have a very different view on the world. There was simply no way to tell. That was good, Orikka decided, it was a good thing they would be an entirely different being, they had no desire to simply clone themselves, and if that meant they wouldn’t entirely understand their child, that was alright too. They were suddenly much more excited to meet this new being.
When they looked closely they could see that something was different in its composition, something arcane had taken root, but still Nevah didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge their transformation in any way. Were they displeased with being brought into consciousness? Had Orikka made a mistake in calling them into existence? Their view on existence could be even more despairing than Orikka’s, had they caused harm to another being by giving it life? Insecurities churned within Orikka, should they perhaps just give up? There was no way to ask a being if they wanted to be born before the fact, perhaps this was as good as an answer and the lack of response on Nevah’s part was indicating that they were never intended to have children, Orikka spiraled.
Nevah fluttered, a rapid fire flickering of stars within their form, the first murmuring of life. ‘What, what is this?’ they roused themselves, groggy from their pre-birth slumber. ‘Child!’ Orikka joyously greeted, ‘my perfect child you have awakened!’ Nevah looked at them, their starlight form blinking confusedly. ‘I am, your child?’ they asked, orienting themselves to the newfound knowledge that Orikka’s godseed consciousness had gifted them. ‘Then you are my parent? We are family?’ Orikka couldn’t have been more pleased, only a few moments into parenthood and it was already more than they could have hoped for.
Nevah was a strange, beguiling being. After their first acknowledgement of Orikka as their parent they no longer referred to the relationship, referring to Orikka by their name and refusing to speak about their origins as Orikka’s descendent. Such a proud child, Orikka thought fondly. The information they had inherited from Orikka was an interesting blend of knowledge of the material world, and Orikka’s miscellaneous thoughts and emotion, a hodgepodge that Orikka had no control over when bequeathing in the godseed. They frequently found themselves in disagreement, ‘I suppose it’s impressive, but their evolution is hardly something to celebrate, they’re just peons laboring in the dirt and we are of the cosmos far above, what do we really have to do with them? Is there anything of theirs worth knowing?’ Was that something that Nevah had inherited, Orikka wondered, or had they somehow come up with a new idea. If it was their own opinion, they thought dubiously, they had come up with it rather quickly, Orikka didn’t recall having any strong opinions of their own for a very long time.
Perhaps there was something about coming into life that prompted strong opinions. Life for those beings on the ringed planet had a strange property of evoking emotions, both good and bad, as they struggled to survive, to either be eradicated or to flourish. Life had inspired Nevah’s birth, after all, and perhaps that was the source of Nevah’s derision, their dislike of being inspired by the earth that they perceived as beneath themselves. Orikka suspected that Nevah didn’t care for the power imbalance in their relationship, after all, Nevah was a demi-god child, and Orikka was mighty beyond comprehension.