It writhed in pain, its body contorting and shivering in the emptiness. Nothing surrounded it, and all the pain in the nothingness gathered into it. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. It didn’t want to hurt anymore. Hurt was all it knew and all that existed—the pain, and the need to no longer feel that pain.

In the middle of nothing, during nothing, it realized—the scaly and hideous yet infinite form realized—that the act of creation alleviated its pain. That filling the emptiness filled it: less pain, less agony. It began to create more.

First, it created time. It created the idea of now, of then, of when. Next, it created happiness. It created joy, or joy blossomed from it, because it knew more joy in feeling less pain. And yet it was torn by agony.

So it created here and there. It created the endless galaxies, the small orbital planets inside, and the splattering stars that scattered where it wished; joy grew larger and larger, reaching its climax. But irritation bloomed from its creations; irritation and annoyance, helplessness and frustration, that it still hurt. So it moved from planet to planet, shaping landscapes and creatures for each landscape.

It circled on one planet, empty and devoid as the rest had been. It decided to make more of this particular empty structure. It started by shaping the empty orb, forming the creature it named Gaia, creating he, she, and they, too. Gaia lived as the earth and lived as the dirt. It stepped back to admire its handiwork and watched as, to its surprise, Gaia moved. Gaia, with the power it had given her, created another being. She created the sky--Uranus. The two of them began to create more beings, beings they named Odin, Tuuemliri, and more.

Fury burst from its creations, and soon it was furious that Gaia had deemed herself powerful enough to rule, to create, to usurp it in creating. In its maddened state, it created destruction, and it destroyed Gaia and her companions. It, however, left behind the smaller, weaker subjects Gaia had been creating for herself, an unfinished project.

As it watched, these subjects began to change. They began to morph from specks of dust into creatures with shapes. Still in pain, it accelerated their change and added to it. It created brains, eyes, noses, and mouths; it created limbs, hair, and bones, all taking form in different manifestations—some tall and standing, some hunched and crawling. It gave some of them minds, to understand and to be aware. It sighed in relief as the pain lessened with each creation.

It, then, grew bored. It grew bored of watching the creatures. It created havoc. It created pride, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, greed, and sloth. It created sickness and mortality. It created natural disasters, and it created strange unique beings: a trickster Raven who could shapeshift, a monster Leviathan who preyed on anything and everything, and a couple, Apsu and Tiamat, who caused war with their own liquid beings. It found amusement in toying with the creatures of this earth, and the more it made them suffer, the less it suffered.  

Somehow, drunk with the playthings of its creations and ignorant to its own change, it slowly began to succumb to the creations. Its once unending form slowly morphed into the body of a human, and he more and more felt the greed, wrath, and pride he had forced upon his creations. Soon, he was one and the same as the rest of his creatures, and soon he aged just as they did. He stared in shock and horror at his once omniscient and ubiquitous form, now shrunken into the size of the humans he had once twiddled around his thumb, and he gazed in shock at his wrinkled form as he withered into dust.