Before time and space...

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Once, there was nothing. It was a nothing so thick it could not be breathed, if there had been any living thing to draw breath. It was so dark, no light could escape it, if there had been anything like a sun nearby. It stretched always just a bit beyond the distance that could possibly be walked, flown, or swum through. It felt nothing, it thought nothing, it wanted nothing.

Even so, the nothing was studied from the outside. With delight. With anticipation. With expectancy.

Once, there was a note.

That first piercing note of music, commanding and bold and great, shivered the nothing for a second, for days, and for millions of years all at once. Clay and molten stone, carbon and gasses swirled into the nothing, filling it with substance, sound, and explosive being. Suddenly it was no longer only nothing.

This was more than a little surprising to nothing, but far from unwelcome.

The elements within careened madly about, and as they did, the note changed pitch, weaving up and down in a softer rhythm. The frenzied rush slowed as bar after bar sculpted laws into the nature of the elements, drawing them together into clusters. Somethings beyond count, beyond observation, emerged. Nothing was filled with so many things that it was, itself, becoming crowded and was glad of it. So glad, that it wakened to desire and want.

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More! It sang back, eagerly, delighted to find it had a voice. More?

And the note answered, swelling round and full, vibrating through every something that hung in the middle of nothing. Massive, round bodies began to rotate, lurching and stumbling onto great, invisible tracks laid out before them. Eons passed as they found their rhythm, leaning into the great music, the dance growing ever more graceful and complex.

Overjoyed, the nothing cried out again, More! and it found its voice sliding into a complementary slot in the melody, as if the note had always been waiting for someone to ask, for the chance to collaborate.

Here. There. Under the crust of the orb at the most distant edge. On the surface of the one just off center. Things began to happen on just a few of these spinning, leaping spheres. Dances within dances erupted with wild abandon, whirling off joy-filled reels as the song poured itself into minute, freshly made forms and bound them to physical structure and life. With a triumphant flourish, it unleashed them to compose a fragile, ethereal choir that beautifully underscored the note's growing symphony.

More! Oh, please, more! This is good! And as the nothing wove its own duet within the symphony, it realized that it had changed again.

It knew more than just desire and want. It had a voice, but also more than that. It knew it was really no longer nothing, though it still encompassed all that the great music had brought to be. It had a heart. It had a mind. It was a great and mighty being, filled with and connected to every glimmering orb weaving countless tracks within itself.

Ah! It sang, breathless with delight. Great! Mighty! Majestic!

But the voice split in two, for the heart sang this of the music that was beyond itself while the mind sang of itself.