Ch. 143 – A Brief History of Everything

The door to the exhibit didn’t have a handle, only a small hollow recess in the shape of a sphere. Momo didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what to do with it; gripping the Oblivion Stone tightly in her hand, she shoved it into the crevice, and waited.

“Fantastic, just fantastic. The anomaly has the key. Kyros is going to set us on holy fire for this one,” the voice named Envy said, groaning dramatically. “Let’s hope she has a very uninspiring haiku prepared. Something that won’t require too much universe mopping.”

“It’s not our fault, Envy,” the other voice said, high and shrill. “It’s Nerida’s. Some useless janitor she is. Can't even keep the waste in the waste bins. What are oceans even for, if not dumping our hot, Nether sewage into?”

“I couldn’t agree more, Wrath,” Envy tutted. “All that water, useless water. Mortals are so weak to rely on such a limited resource. Can you believe they can get dehydrated? What a sad word. What a pathetic condition.”

They both laughed.

With a long, drawn out creak, the doors eked open. Momo walked in briskly, eager as ever to get out of the hallway – and out of the earshot from the commentating freaks.

The doors snapped closed behind her. She let out a relieved breath.

“What weirdos,” she muttered, then raised her head to look around.

And promptly sneezed. Twice.

It was as if a swarm of bees had gone up her nostrils. The room was dusty as all hell – covered in a thick layer of abandonment. The space, save the dust, was mostly empty, except for a dining table and two chairs at the end of the room. Sitting on the old oak table were prop knives and prop forks, a few untoasted pieces of bread, a bottle of chardonnay, and a single, unlit wax candle.

Pinching her nose to avoid having a full blown allergic attack, Momo strolled up to the exhibit. There were two lengths of red rope in front of it, forming a fence to deter the curious guest. There was also a small, raised plaque, with a few instructions, and what looked like a stone button. Momo hovered her hand above it, curiosity getting the best of her.

Read the instructions first, she reminded herself. Don’t let your lizard brain ruin this.

BRAND NEW INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT!

Press play and see what happens.

She frowned. Thank you, sign.

She pressed the button.

A holographic message board appeared in front of her, narrated in that same, tinny Megan Fox voice that she was used to receiving via her couriers. The captions animated in like a Star Wars intro, the text floating backwards and out of sight.

A Brief History of Everything

When the Old Gods fell, everything they created remained – including an infant goddess, left to her own devices. She was forced to name herself, create herself, raise herself. A single, all-powerful soul sitting in the ruin of a lost land.

Like Adam to Eve, in your Earthly folklore, when Morgana’s boredom got too dire, she removed parts of herself to create others. Companions. Kyros was the first. Assembled from cotton balls, bone, fur, and a National Geographic magazine, he became the first undead. He never took to seeing himself that way.

For a long time, having a companion was enough for the both of them. They learned together, explored together. Experimented and laughed. But the thing about proximity is that it breeds fatigue, and fatigue breeds boredom, and boredom breeds rash decisions.

The lighting in the room promptly clicked off, bathing everything in darkness. Momo jumped, spinning her head around for possible combatants – but there was nothing. Just more dust, and more sneezing, and eventually, the flicker of a candle at the center of the dining room table.

“You call that a haiku, Kyros? It’s a lecture.”

Momo’s heart nearly stopped when she heard Morgana’s voice. The candle illuminated the face of two figures sitting at the table – one familiar, another not. Momo could recognize Morgana’s silky black hair anywhere, the light purple hue of her skin, the slightly tapered ears.

She was lazing in her chair, one foot propped up on the table. She seemed relaxed, happy even. Content. She dug her knife into her piece of toast, popping a square of it in her mouth.

Unlike Morgana, with her posture as straight as a line, her dinner partner was almost completely out of view. Obfuscated by the chair’s armrest, the creature in the other seat was no bigger than a cat. In fact, it was quite like a cat, with a spindly tail and two triangular ears. Its skin was ragged and bony. Something like a Sphynx.

Yet there were some key differences from the basic feline build – in place of a face, was a skull, wrapped around like a mask, two sinewy horns protruding from either side of the head. The tongue, too, was off-putting. When the creature opened its mouth, a small tentacle dashed out.

Momo was horrified. The thing was too cute to be terrifying, and too terrifying to be cute. The paradox boggled her mind, making her skin crawl.

No way that’s Kyros, she thought. I can’t handle that.

“Oh, don’t be rude, Morgana,” Kyros rebutted. In complete contrast to his small, unassuming body, his voice was dark and pitched down, like it had been ran through six rounds of post-processing. “You took the last fifteen eternities thinking up your last rhyme. Every skeleton we hired to be here died twice.”

“Piss off. How about this,” Morgana said, lifting an eyebrow salaciously. “Why don’t we up the stakes?”

Kyros’s ears perked, his tail twitching left and right.

“I’m interested. Are we playing a game?”

“Yes, a new game.”

Morgana picked something up off the floor. Momo immediately recognized it: a stone tablet, like the one Gunther showed her a drawing of. It was completely blank, missing any etchings.

“We’ve sat here for as long as eternity thinking of something to do with our time. I’ve taken up crocheting, you’ve made a mockery of the piano. Now this. Haikus. What’s the point? We live in a relic of the Old Gods, like orphans in a mansion, fat with food and art and resources – yet we’ve made nothing of our own. Don’t you think it’s about time we change that?”

Kyros’s tail straightened, bright red irises burning beneath his mask of bone.

“Our own?”

“Our own,” she said, tapping a manicured fingertip to the tablet. “A domain for us to rule over, to maintain, to see to as we like. As partners. No longer just playmates. How wonderful would it be, my dear pet? Millions of tiny, irrelevant excuses for life worshiping at our feet? Performing our duty? Appreciating our artistic output?”

Momo paled.

Did she just say pet?

She looked frantically between them. Everything was pointing to yes.

Morgana is in an all-consuming celestial beef with her former… cat?

Momo’s mind immediately went to Dusk. She had to be much more careful in the future to preserve their relationship. If this was one plausible, universe-ruining outcome of the relationship between a woman and her undead feline, she didn’t want to get anywhere near frenemy territory with her own.

“It sounds quite pleasant, yes,” Kyros answered after a while. “It would be nice to have a thrall or two. You haven’t played catch with me in quite some time.”

“You know I strained my throwing arm.”

“That was millenia ago, you liar,” he hissed, batting a paw.

Morgana laughed and set the tablet down on the table.

“This is a game called Creation. Whatever we write down will become real. It’s a very big game, but there are only two rules. And you have to promise not to neglect them,” she tutted, and placed a chisel next to the tablet. “The first rule is that whatever you write down must be a haiku. If it’s not a haiku, it won’t take effect.”

Kyros nodded, producing an affirmative clicking sound in his throat.

“I see that I will be winning, then,” he said.

“The other rule,” she narrowed her eyes. “Is that it is not a competition. I will write a rule, and you must write another, and so far, and so forth. They must complement each other. But every rule we write is irrevocable, and we must abide by them. Forever.”

“Forever?” Kyros said, tail pausing.

“Forever,” she said, and tapped her nails. “Any time shorter than that would be meaningless to us, and I want this game to be fun. I want us to have fun forever.”

She smiled down at him, giving him a scratch just below his neck. His tail zig-zagged back and forth as he leaned into the touch. Momo couldn’t help but smile, despite the way her stomach turned. There really seemed to be a certain affection between them. A genuine caring. A woman, alone in the universe, and the one tiny creature she could call home.

And now look at them, Momo thought, frowning. Tearing the universe apart instead of talking to each other.

“Okay, I understand. So who starts?” Kyros asked.

“Well, guests first,” Morgana said, and then she turned her head.

And looked straight at Momo.

Momo’s soul left her body. Morgana just smiled.

“Why don’t you have a try, dear?”

Morgana and Kyros froze like animatronics, assuming a stiff, unnatural appearance. The holographic billboard from before painted over the scene, presenting the Oblivion tablet to Momo like it was a worksheet during a school trip to the local museum.

PLEASE STEP FORWARD AND WRITE YOUR PIECE

YOU HAVE A TIME LIMIT OF ONE MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS

THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING, OR NOTHING

NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING