Star Harbor Nights

In the interest of privacy, let us now turn our attention away from the two heroes whom we have been following thus far.  Instead, let us cast our attention far, far back through the innumerable ages to the time before time, in the place before places.

In the beginning... as I have said... there was the Primordium. It was everything. It was nothing. It was male, and it was female. It was creation and destruction. It was at once completely at balance and in utter conflict with itself.

How to picture it? Visualize perfect gray... an equal mixture of black and white. Now, make it move in places, like a violently swirling fog. Then tinge it slightly purple, because that's a bit more interesting to look at, and throw in some glittering, sparkly bits to suggest majesty and power.

Do this, and you still won't have anything remotely approaching an image of the Primordium, but you'll at least have an interesting backdrop against which to set our tale. Put a table in the middle of this swirling mist... a round, low stone table of almost palpable antiquity. That's not quite what it is, but it should convey the sense of it. This table is both work space and playing field for the largest entities that comprise the Primordium, or, to look at it from another direction, the entities which are created through the simplest division of it: the force of Creation on one side, and Destruction (or more accurately, Un-Creation) on the other.

From time outside of time, the two forces, which we shall--partially due to an understandable prejudice on our part for the cause of Creation--label as the Light and the Darkness, had fought a ceaseless and fruitless battle against each other. What one made, the other unmade just as quickly. The Light could bring forth a whole string of worlds as easily it could shape a single pebble, and it did both, again and again, only to watch as they were obliterated and cast down into the Darkness. It mattered not whether the subject was animate or not, physical or intangible, hypothetical or real... all Creations were annihilated without fail and without delay.

If pleasure means anything to such vast and incomprehensible entities, you can well imagine neither was quite pleased with the arrangements, though the Darkness had a better time of it. The Light was forced to watch all its works fall away into nothingness, and the Darkness was forced to sit back and act only in response to the actions of the Light. The Light craved the chance to not just create, but to create meaningful, lasting works... and the Darkness longed for a chance to destroy what it would, not just what the Light deigned to make.

The two sides could not interact with each other directly in any meaningful way, as they were too big and vast, and too wholly inimical to each other's mode of existence to make them understand each other. Instead, they used messengers, formed on the boundary between the Light and the Darkness, and formed of the stuff of both.

The Messenger of Light was, naturally, composed principally of the stuff of light, the stuff of creation... but he had some of the Darkness within him... in particular, in his eyes, for he was born facing the Darkness and so his sight was filled up with it.

The Messenger of Darkness was likewise made up of the lack of substance of his own native environment, and yet he possessed some Light... mostly concentrated in his mouth, for from the first he fed on the Light and on the things it wrought.

These two Messengers met each other at the stone table, standing opposite each other. Their conversations were much like a microcosm of the game their Father entities played, at least in their likelihood of producing lasting results.

"We have been at this forever, and will be forever more," the Light Messenger declared angrily. "What we create, you unmake instantly, without a trace... we create it again, and again the Darkness claims it. It never ends."

"Yes, it is a good system," the Dark Messenger said, as if in agreement. "We both fulfill our functions admirably."

"Your function, the function of Un-Creation, may be fulfilled," the Light Messenger retorted. "But the function of Creation... how can it be fulfilled, when there is nothing of Creation left?"

"It is given to your Father to create, not to sustain," the Dark Messenger countered. Its mouth seemed to widen, the corners curling upwards into a smile. It was the first smile, and it was not reassuring. "If there could be any other arrangement... if we could destroy first, and then you could create... well, I should be only to happy to accommodate you, but it simply wouldn't work. There must be something present to be obliterated."

"I do not believe it for an instant."

"But it is only the truth, brother... or cousin, I should say, as you are the son of my Father's brother," the Dark Messenger said, and though it might not seem so, this was a decidedly dirty blow. This very concept of kinship had been part of a previous attempt to bring forth a race of people wholly formed upon a fully functional world that had sprung full-blown from the Light... a world which of course had been swallowed instantly, like all the others. "In truth, I would be happy to switch with you, to take the initiative for once and let your side do the following. I would relish it!"

"That I can well believe," the Messenger of Light said. "However, it does not change the fact..."

He stopped and cocked his head, as if listening to another voice... and in a way, he was. That part of him that was more Darkness than Light was voicing its thoughts. It had an idea... perhaps the first truly original one.

"And nothing will change it, I'm afraid," the Dark Messenger interjected, pressing his perceived advantage. "The best thing to do is just accept it. How long has it been since anything's been brought forth from the Light? One aeon? Two?"

"Very well," the Messenger of Light said, having made up its mind. "The Light shall resume its function at once... we shall create something, and you may do as you will do."

"I will," his opposite said simply. "Do you return now to that which made you?"

"No need," the Light Messenger said. "I am imbued with the power of my Father, and I now exercise that power."

He gestured to the table, and on it, something came into being. The Dark Messenger reflexively reached out with the power that was his Father's... only to find himself rebuffed. He stood, staring incredulously at what lay upon the table... no, what was now etched into it. It was a rule. It was in fact, The Rule... the first one, the one which defined everything that was to follow.

This is what it said:

"Nothing may be created or destroyed, only changed in form."

Thus, the Law of Conservation and the stalemate were invented, all in the same instant.

Though momentous, the full consequences of this act would not be felt until later... nor widely appreciated until an even later point when a learned gentleman of Miletus sat up and took some notice of it... but none of that is particularly important to this story. For now, we'll cast our attention ahead again to a point much closer to the present, when another young, aspiring heroine's career was taking flight.

This flight, as you'll see, was of a much more literal sort.