Singing…someone was singing to her. It sounded like…

Love. If love had a song. 

She frowned. What was love?

It was a word she remembered from…

Wait…

She had no memories.

Or did she?

If she had no memories, did that mean she was something new?

The Universe around her seemed to flicker and shimmer in answer. The sensation ticked and she laughed.

The Universe laughed with her and when their laughter had run its course and space grew quiet once again, the creature with no memories sighed, relaxing in her deliciously weightless, peaceful state. The Universe around her returned to its hum of a thousand whispers of impossibly distant stars being born, black holes tearing apart matter, time and space and its ever-present, gong-like sound – like a bell – left over from the moment of its creation. 

I know this sound, thought the ethereal creature floating in a world calm yet busy, noisy yet quiet, shining and pulsing with light.

Light?

Opening her senses, they brought her the equivalent of sight. And the sight before her took her breath away!

The creature was floating in a nebula populated with stars newly-born and so brilliantly lit, she wondered how she could look at them!

Because you are a Goddess.

The voice came from no one and everywhere around her.

What are you? Who are you, she asked, clearly confused. 

Who am I?

You don’t remember. You can’t remember. Not yet.

The weightless creature who now knew she was called a “Goddess” adjusted her trajectory, so enraptured by the splendor all around her it distracted her. She was losing interest in the conversation. There was far too much beauty surrounding her to pay attention to what the Universe was saying, no matter how important it was.

That sparked the fragment of a memory, tantalizingly out of reach. She let it slip away in favor of watching the sparkle and twinkle of the newborn furnaces of stars…

Furnace…

No, don’t think about it!

A horrible pain gripped her. The world went completely white, the heat of the nearest star being born searing her.

The Goddess wanted to scream, but every single etheric nerve her unique and newborn body possessed seized up, leaving her helpless.

It’s all right, the Universe tried to soothe. It’s over. You are safe here.

When she woke up, she was trembling at the very core of her being. What – what was that? she cried out, her voice like that of a star at the end of its life, caught in death throes it neither could understand nor stop.

The answer came after a long pause of contemplation in which generations of time passed on the last world she had visited – whatever, wherever and whenever that was.

An echo – of your death. You suffered it so many times, it threatened to tear you apart, my beautiful daughter. You could no longer bear to endure the agony, so you came here to die.

The word “death” confused her. Having been just born, yet now remembering she was an eternal being, she shook her head.

But I can’t die – 

Another wave of unendurable agony seized her. She screamed, her voice a twin to the far distant stars being torn apart in the massive black hole at the center of their galaxy.

And again, when she regained consciousness, she was as lost and confused as she had been when she had first awakened.

When she calmed and the beauty of the surrounding universe made it not so important again to know who and what she was, she applied her will to shift her trajectory, watching the blue-white star nursery fade far behind her. The Goddess wanted to go back, felt a longing deep in her enteric essence to return to it, to live there for eternity. Pointing a slim finger in its direction, she asked, Is that where I come from?

You are awake again. Good and yes I brought you back to life there.

Still bleary from sleep, she cocked her head, knowing if she weren’t so drowsy, she would instinctively know its name, its position, even see the beginning, middle and end of its existence. She knew she could view all of this information at the same time, such was her power. 

But she was tired from all the episodes of unendurable agony that kept hitting her. She couldn’t focus to remember, so she asked her mother the Universe. Mother, what is its designation?

From this galaxy’s center, it is *RA 17h 45m 40.04s*

She nodded. It has another name.

Name?

Yes, the Pleiades.

How do you know this, asked the Universe.

Searching space through her returning powers, she looked and looked for the answer. A movement on a blue-green world caught her attention.

A dragonfly.

There. Wait… She peered closer at the world, hearing a familiar song – like a part of her had been left there…

The pain returned and crushed her already weakened essence…

When she regained consciousness again, she had drifted further from the nebula, away from the star nursery.

What – she rasped, asking no one in particular. She hurt so much, was so tired…

I am sorry! A voice thick with sorrow sang in the background hum of radiation. I ignited your consciousness too soon. I should have moved you further from your birthplace before attempting to do so.

I – I don’t understand, the Goddess sang back to the void in a fearful, sorrowful voice.

Even torn down to your base atoms, they still carried your life essence echo – along with the experiences that shaped them.

But what am I that I am so important to you, the lost goddess asked.

I know you longed to end the pain, but you are the essence of change and I/We cannot exist without you. It was a risk borne of necessity, to bring you back, Beautiful One, the Universe went on. If you cannot master or endure the pain, I will take away the gift of consciousness and you will exist once again, yet sleep for eternity.

I don’t think I would like that, the Goddess replied sadly. I would miss all this beauty.

Wait…

If I am a Goddess of Change, she trailed off, looking around her, her eyes focusing again on the nebula of her birth…

It was something she was missing, a key to her past. If she could just…

It would not be wise to struggle so to regain your memory so soon, the Universe cautioned her. You are still new and young and tender and I need to take care of you so you can heal and once again perform your sacred duty to the cycle of Birth and Death.

Death?

By all the heart of creation, that was it! Her senses and her eyes flew wide at the memory.

No! You will harm yourself again and I cannot be certain I can keep your atomic structure together this time. The very energy your pain puts out might repel the bonds between molecules and you will never be whole again as you were.

But it was too late. Memories invaded her essence, along with the sensations. Fear. Pain. She knew she had only seconds before the agony of immolation would consume her as it consumed the matter in the star nebula of her birth, breaking apart the very bonds of atoms and rebuilding them as she had been rebuilt.

Still, up until now, she had been cognizant of the fact that there was one more thing she was still too fresh and young and new to remember. But now it came to her! She was not just a Goddess of Change, of Death, and of the Cycle of Life.

She was also a Goddess of…

Her consciousness dimmed under a force more powerful than her own. The pain receded and she let it go, being forced to submit to the heady sweetness of the relief of her incineration at the hands of a madman…

Over the next millenia, the Universe dimmed the light of the Pleiades nebula, bowing its brilliance and beauty in acknowledgment of the dimming of the consciousness of the Goddess of Death…

… and as the Goddess’s slumbering awareness of the nebula faded, it yet expanded in a brilliant burst of bluish, silver and purple light that propelled her etheric essence back towards the nebula in the fraction of an instant, complicated sigils and equations coming to life all around her!

The universe shuddered in fear at what it had done, imagining it had torn apart the eons-old cycle of the Ouroboros – the rules of Life and Death of all creation established so long ago its beginnings had been long forgotten by even the most ancient of races in the universe.

What have I done? it exclaimed to the eight Mother Stars charged with nurturing, loving and bringing to birth the new stars in its nuclear-fueled nursery.

You have given me life! whispered an ethereal, haunted voice coming from within the nebula.

A new star appeared, born not just of the forces of gravity, matter and the typical physics and circumstances that bear a star. No, this was something completely new…

The Goddess’s etheric body responded to her dreaming state. Fed by the deep peace of sleep, Whocate wove the joy of her rest into the energies necessary to kickstart the birth of Pleiades Nine by utilizing the surrounding nebula’s gravity.

I do not understand, exclaimed the Universe, watching her beloved daughter bring forth the brightest, most beautiful star in the nursery. She should have been incapable of conscious, directed movement while thusly sleeping. How could this be???

The sound of delighted laughter rang throughout the star nursery nebula. 

My dear Mother, I am, as you say, the Goddess of Death, yes?

You are, my beloved one. 

And what is death but sleep of the soul?

Yes…

Well, smiled the Goddess, it is within my nature to sleep, and to dream. And dreams are the stuff of creation, so I cannot help but be quite awake and aware – 

– as you sleep and dream, the realization hit the Universe.

Of course. 

The brilliance of Pleiades Nine shone down upon the blue-green world of the dragonflies, taking its place directly over a tiny portion of destruction and desolation, like a gravemarker to the Goddess who had once upon a time died there. A promise to bring Plainsville back to life one day…

Meanwhile, the Universe rested, smiling, watching as her daughter’s brilliant light shone down with the light of hope upon Whocate’s tiny corner of her world.

The world of the dragonflies.

Fini