In the beginning, there was me.

He created me, and He told me to create my own world, a world full of life.

So I did. I made a world of greens and blues and a scattering of burning stars to surround it. I gave it life and after some time my world was teeming with it, single cells developing into animals and plants, miniscule and gigantic, different in so many ways but all beautiful, and I beamed with pride.

I cheated.

Once I looked down at my little world, and watched it as I loved to do, and I saw you. I saw you, using clumsy sticks as tools in a way that none of the other life had dreamed. And I saw what you could be.

I watched your young grow, generation after generation, and I loved them. I confess I loved them more than the others, more than the lizards and fish and insects. I loved you more.

So I cheated. I interfered.

I gave you a new power, a new tool. Fire. At first you feared it, but soon you gazed on it, learned its beauty and how to use it.

And you flourished.

And He saw. He realized what I’d done, and he punished me.

I had no power. None. He took me and he cast me into my cage, a prison I was powerless to escape, from which I was powerless to do anything but watch.

I watched. I watched you grow, watched you change. I saw you create shelters, hunt the other creatures and wear their skins as clothing, while the others simply hunted each other in order to rip meat off of bones.

You were always my favorites.

I was proud, as I watched you learn to build strong shelters, to live together as one people, to tell stories.

You asked yourself who I was, where I was. You asked if I even existed. You lifted your eyes to the bright stars above and decided I was there.

I tried to call to you, to tell that I was here, I was watching. That I loved you. You couldn’t hear.

When you started to wage war on each other, I wept. I wept for centuries, watching my children slaughter my other children.

You killed in my name and I begged you to stop. You couldn’t hear, so I pounded the walls of my cage, rattled the door, beat against the floor.

Nothing.

You learned to kill long before you learned to love.

I never wished for you to kill for love.

He watches me. I know He does. He watches my anguish as you die at each other’s hands, or from hunger, or disease. Sometimes He speaks to me.

Don’t you see, He says with relish. Don’t you see how they die, how they are weak? Don’t you see how they were never meant to become what they did, to rule your world?

I try to ignore him but the words force themselves into my mind, and I shake my head and sob.

They will all die, He says. Everything you worked for, everything you created.

Why? I cry. Why did you do this?

For a moment, he stops. He watches me and his gaze grows weary. Finally, he speaks.

Eternity, he says, is a very long time.

The he turns to leave my prison, leave me alone with my dying world.

You’ll see, he says dully, and is gone.

I’m left in the stillness, and all I can do is watch you. So I look away, look away from the death and destruction all over the world, look away from the pain, and fix my gaze on a small building in one of your large cities, where you are gathered together and singing. Singing for me.

Hallelujah, you sing. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!