5:11 Lungs

When everybody else had left, I stood in the Void and felt the silence for the first time in a long time. It was…peaceful. Wonderful. Quiet enough I could think without the ever-present feeling of things moving about on me, asking the Heavens for answers, touching upon my Dao and the Daos of everyone else who lived upon my universes. I allowed myself to exist in this state for a long moment, all stresses of what was, what could be, what had been, all fall away in this rare moment of there being nothing immediately pressing I had to do.

There was a lot still to do, of course, and there was a lot happening as well. I was not saying otherwise. But the things pressing upon me were, for the moment, quiet, as if it was all taking a breath after a rather chaotic period of time.

I relaxed a little more, letting out a long, slow breath, knowing there was no pressure to move one way over another. No immediate disaster waiting to fall upon me. No meetings to wait for. No systems to build and people to overly manage. Everything could finally, finally move at my own pace.

It was just me, the Void, and the project at hand. Not the pure silence of the Void, but something better, something…expectant.

I hadn't felt quiet like this since the Four Realms had just been made, and my children were crafting their own Realms. In fact, the parallel was not lost on me, and made me chuckle. They were crafting their universes, their Realms, focusing on making them as great as they could be. And I was filling in the gaps in between, just as I had before.

Today, I focused on one of those gaps.

Sehuyun's old universe I couldn't touch yet, for one reason or another, even as it still slowly poured into the center of the One World. That was Bashikhan and Boitata’s job, and I just needed to give them the proper push. However, Sehuyun's body — that ball of primordial draconic intent — I could. I set to the task like a potter approaching clay.

Randus stood beside me as I considered the shape of what I wanted, drumming my fingers on my chin and considering it from all angles.

"What do you think we should do?" I asked him, reaching out to grab a bit of the stuff and lift it up before me to examine it, all its greatness, and all its deficiencies. She was a dragon, all right, but an incomplete one. All of that anger and rage and possessiveness had pushed her too far down the path that led toward dragons becoming instruments of rage — not the beings I preferred, like Alexander.

"Well, the question is; are you going to leave or keep the draconic intent in there?" Randus asked, folding his hands together as he squinted at the stuff. "Her vitality is still impressive, and will inevitably color whatever it is turned into. Even dead, I can sense the dreams that exist within. All pride and surety and fierceness. Lacking the subtlety of Alexander, and filling the gaps with rage."

"Well, of course I’m going to keep it, even if I have to change it some." I told him. "That dragon-ness is what makes her unique. What makes the potential of this universe what it is.. For it to be just the lungs and not draconic lungs — well, that would take away the point. I might as well make it something else. So yes, I'm going to keep the draconic nature.” It felt like finding a strangely colored clay, I had decided. You didn't try and reshape it to become like every other clay. You let it exist like that because it was wonderful and different.

Randus hummed, still considering. "Are you going to leave it like the Four Realms? Where you left a path to immortality open."

I genuinely chewed my lip on that one, sinking deep into thought. It would be easier to build a xianxia world again, as I knew what that was and how to craft it. However, it felt like I would be needlessly limiting myself. I had a chance to create something new here. Different. I wanted to take it.

I said as much to Randus, and he nodded again.

"If you want something different, then I presume you are not going to mirror the One World, either," he asked, and again I shook my head, sensing where he was leading me with these lines of questions.

"No. I'm not sure I will. I could, but at this point I am already managing that, solidifying it further, rebuilding the Pantheon after it crumbled. No. No standard fantasy worlds for me until the One World is set. That does give me an idea, however." I stepped forward, laid my hands on the mass, and channeled something into that ball of chaos — that at first pushed back. It didn't want to be anything other than what it was.

So I reframed the question and my intent, and asked it again. It still would be a Dragon at the core. But even she had not been able to create a perfect dragon, and she, too, had not been a complete Dragon. Hell, younger than her though as he was, I figured Alexander was more complete than she was. So I presented the idea, and asked a relatively simple question; what if I turned it into something that would refine, and create, more Dragons? Truer dragons.

It stuttered in surprise and confusing as it considered that, and I seized the opportunity that created, sinking the intent deeper, watching it shudder and start to shift as my command took root.

"I suppose you know what you will do now, then?" Randus asked.

"Just the basics. Your hint helped me find the answer I had been circling for a while now; I don’t want to do something I’ve already done, or mimic the Big Four. But I can still copy other Origins, using their universes as basic templates.” I explained, waving my hand airily and stepping back. I was thinking this one was a combination of Shin’s Wheel Realm, where everything functioned in cycles, and Rising Wind, Crashing Wave’s Elemental Realms, where certain concepts were separated. The actual shape it would take would likely vary from those two’s, but the concepts were fundamentally similar.

Randus stepped forward, laying his own hand upon the mass of Draconic Primordial Chaos, and closed his eyes. I could feel his dreams reaching deeper, sensing what I had done, trying to make sense of it.

"You split it into three pieces with one center." He said slowly.

I nodded. "Yes."

"Which feels unbalanced," he argued, opening one eye to fix me with a confused look.

"Well, I am the Heavens. I may still be a deity of balance in many ways, but I am now much more the Heavens than that. And you know I wanted to try something new," I said with a little shrug. “Using fours again feels a little derivative.”

"I would argue against it," Randus said with a shake of his head. "As you said, you are still the Deity of Balance, even if you are, as you say, the Heavens now. Letting go of what is obsolete is in many ways good, but I do not believe Balance is obsolete yet, and you still should not forget the lessons taught to you by Balance. Is that not what you have told us so many times? To not forget the lessons of the past, even as you move forward. Even if I were to become something else, I would still remember that I was once Dreams. Just as you — while no longer the god you once were, or the mortal — will always remember what came before."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Then he bowed his head and took a little step back. I mulled over his words, clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth, setting my hands on my hips, and fixing him with a little look. Pride bloomed in my heart.

"Since when did you become capable of giving me good advice?" I teased. “It used to be all sass.”

"Always, ma'am. Especially when you refuse to build the palace, or clean your workshop. Need I remind you of the many times you left Void shards laying about when, and I quote, 'they should be kept out of the reach of the children.' Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't have kept it out of your reach," Randus accused, expression never changing. Always the perfect gentleman, despite the things that came out of his mouth.

I cackled, slapping him on the shoulder. "I am innocent of all those things. I don't know what you're talking about," I told him, laying a hand on the Primordial Chaos once more. "You speak nothing but lies and slander."

"Slander, yes. Lies, no," Randus denied.

I pushed my will back into the ball once more.

As Randus had said, I had split it into three parts. To put it in lung terms: mouth, throat, and the lungs themselves. For a moment I considered adding the diaphragm as the fourth bit, because that is what it wanted to exist as. That was the balance that it wanted to hold. Four shapes, one center.

But I changed it at the last moment, shifting it to a more philosophical outlook and feeling it click and settle into place, because it would mimic the four pieces I viewed as most important. Not yet. Not just for something like lungs, but for what Sehuyun had been missing as a Dragon. She only knew to keep. To take in and destroy.

So I balanced it. The four parts.

In. A breath. Anticipation. The pause.

Out. The release. A voice. The action.

Giving. What you breathe in, given to other things. Filling your lungs with it so it can be given away.

Receiving. Taking back what is excess so it can be expelled and discarded, no longer useful.

And at the center of it all, one system that it all revolved around. The cycle that made it work.

The budding universe shuddered.

I knew for a fact it would not take the shape of actual, genuine lungs, despite their function being that, just as the others would not quite assume that shape either. But the process was beginning, and it needed to be out of the Void, and in the safety of the One World’s center. So I turned and thrust my hand and pushed it into the One World, through that band of primordial chaos that split that singular massive world like a ring, which allowed for that endless expansion that was its very nature, and into the center where all the other systems were forming.

I could already feel what it was doing, and I stepped in after it as it popped through that band and into the false Void.

I set to work. Four pieces. A cycle. In, out. Give, receive. Four pieces of what made a Dragon a Dragon: growth, nobility, dedication, wrath. Four symbols, each with the spirit of different beasts, that represented parts of the complete whole, the interior constantly rotating between those four spots to further refine what lay within, bringing it all ever closer to the complete center. Souls that would reside within it would cycle through each of those four parts, those four compartments, refining themselves again and again and again until they became Dragons themselves.

I felt it click into place like a key in a lock, as the yet-unnamed universe settled into its spot near Alexander’s universe.

"I'll stay here for a bit. Shape this clay," I said, cracking my knuckles with a grin. "Do you need anything, Randus? Anything else? I'll be around, even if you don't."

"No, ma'am," Randus said with a slight incline of his head. "I'm glad to have been of assistance."

"You always are, my dear."

And I fell into the task with glee.

*

Randus felt it. The moment She had decided the true shape of that soon-to-be-finished universe, there was a shift in the Four Realms. As the body began to fit the soul, the soul reflected pieces of the body. As on Earth, so in Heaven, as it were. He left an incarnation by the Mistress's side as she shaped the Draconic Primordial Chaos, and let his true body descend back into the Four Realms, where he was most comfortable. Where he was a Pillar.

He stood at once on the porch of the Heaven's Palace. That place he kept as home for himself and any others who wished to live there for a time. That place where their Father and Mother kept the entire history of everything they had witnessed, at first in the Four Realms, then in all the other unvierses. Most importantly, it held a record of Their children.

He took a deep breath, relaxing as the familiar weight of the Four Realms pressed down upon his shoulders, comforting like a warm blanket, and looked out at the Realm Sun and Lunar Star circling the Four Realms themselves. Oh, how they had changed. The Heaven Realm, where once it had just been the singular Holy Mountain had grown now into a range, with the original rising high above the others. It sat on its be of clouds, above the forest of Life-Giving Trees, one looming over the rest, the forest laying between the Mountain and the Valleys and vast Ocean of Memories. The Seas and Oceans themselves blended together, while the Karmic Valleys marked individual regions of the Karmic Realm. And through it all wound the Spirit River and its tributaries, connecting and fueling it all.

Randus did not think he would ever permanently leave this place. Everything he needed was right here. And frankly, it was from here his dreams could reach everyone that needed it.

Some said dreams came from the mind — and the surface ones did. Things that didn’t matter, or that worried the mortal mind. He would concede that, as it was partly why he felt a draw toward Keilan's universe. But the truest dreams came from the soul, and perhaps that was why he felt the change, probably before even the Mistress had noticed it.

It was in the Trees, the Mountains, the Rivers, and the Valleys and was more an act of growth than anything else. For a long, long time, consciousnesses had been forming within those great symbols of the Realms. Guardians, they had once been labeled, before everything had put that growth on hold. And in the chaos that had been the past while, they had been forgotten — but always ready to explode forth.

Only, now those consciousnesses, that growth had been given the ghost of shapes. Beasts. The four symbols of the Four Realms, given shape and purpose and a life to each of them. It would be different than what was happening with the Dragon Realm, a parallel, not a mirror, and was so subtle that most gods did not notice right away.

However, people responded to it. Mortals always did have a habit of sensing the state of the Heavens before others, even if they did not understand why or what they were feeling. Gods knew, and that knowing created a minor disconnect that separated them from the blind instinct of mortal life. And the Will of the Four Realms, that consciousness that was the universe itself, separate from the Heavens, latched on to mortals and growth both with purpose, ready to begin. Salivating for it. Already dreaming up shapes.

Randus smiled and spread his arms, letting his own will and power sink into the Realms to held guide it. The Mountain, dreaming of stone. The Tree, of cycles and life. The River, of movement — of its father, and watching what flowed by. The Valley, of all that had come before, and where it led. He was looking forward to what shapes they ended up fully taking. The Four Realms had been missing some good beasts. Kei, playing as she was with Amari Ren and Morgan, Solana, watching over the Karmic Valleys, and Alexander, building his own home as he was, being the only good examples…until now. Until soon.

And interestingly enough, as he sank further in to the dreams of the Realms, he felt a child's dream. A divinity born of divinities, pinging the world in confusion as she poked her sleepy head up and looked toward the Tree, the original Tree, and wondered why it was reaching out to her. She thought of asking her dad, the stars, and mom, the hearth, but quickly succumbed to sleep once more.

Randus did nothing to either encourage or discourage that, but still smiled as the seed was planted.

It seemed even the consciousnesses were reaching out to others for ideas.