Orange Green and Blue Abstract Painting (2008)
You didn’t think I brought us all here to hang out in some void for all eternity did you, Uaine? Really. I brought us here to create a new world.
BY MEGHAN GILLARD
IMAGE BY MICHELLE STILL CREATES
“In the beginning there was nothing except a ball of white light. Pure and solitary. Perfect and precise.”
“No, no. We’ve all heard that one. Besides, that’s not how it happened.”
~
In the beginning, there were seven. Rua. Oraiste. Bui. Uaine. Gorm. Cor. And Cair. And they were far from pure and solitary.
~
“Is this going to be a long story?”
“Only if you keep interrupting.”
~
It was Rua who appeared first. Alone in the nothingness. Bright as a flame.
“Where are they?” she asked no one.
“Late as always,” she answered herself.
“Who are you talking to, Rua?” It was Oraiste. Bold and brash. The others had to be on their way, and hopefully soon. Rua did not savour the idea of spending any amount of time alone with Oraiste. His impulsiveness was a recipe for chaos and chaos was counterproductive to the plan.
Mercifully, Bui appeared, warm and gentle, before Rua had a chance to worry.
“Is this where we are supposed to be?” Bui looked into the abyss skeptically. True, it didn’t look like much, but one had to look beyond what they saw to really know the potential of it.
“This doesn’t look right,” exclaimed Uaine, who brimmed with playful mischief as they arrived behind Bui and gave her quite a fright. Though, to be fair to Uaine, Bui was easily startled.
“We are exactly where we are supposed to be,” Rua snapped. How dare they doubt her! Her calculations were perfect. The product of lifetimes of careful research and rigorous testing. Even a fraction of a milimert off the trajectory and there was no telling where one might end up.
Just then, something flickered in the distance. As it moved closer, they realized it was Gorm, cool and collected despite the slight miscalculation in location.
When Rua asked what had happened, Gorm responded, “Cor and Cair, of course. Lucky I got here at all, really. Almost ended up in Andromeda. But I heard you and Uaine bickering, as usual, and corrected course.”
Right on cue, Cor and Cair appeared, mid-argument. They nearly landed on top of Uaine and Bui.
“I was supposed to go first, Cair! Rua said!” Cor was bubbling with intensity.
“I don’t care what Rua said. You always go first!” Cair was indignant. She always went last. Nothing vexed her more.
And so The Seven had arrived, more or less without incident, right in the middle of this particular void.
~
“How can a void have a middle?”
“If you are the only thing in a void, then you must be the centre of it.”
“I don’t think that’s right.”
“And so The Seven arrived in the void with no specific orientation to it. Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you. Continue.”
“You’re too kind.”
~
Rua called for silence. Silence fell. She needed quiet to think. It was almost impossible to calculate direction in the void. (Shut up. Don’t interrupt me.) But Rua relished the impossible.
It didn’t take long before she instructed the others to line up in order of their arrival. “Cor first, then Cair.”
“But that’s not—” Cair was cut short.
“This is not a discussion. Cor. Then. Cair,” Rua commanded. Then she returned to her place at the beginning. The calculations had to be perfect. If Cor and Cair switched places, the potential for disaster was unimaginable. It wasn’t like she hadn’t explained this to the twins numerous times already. Cair was just more focused on her own personal sense of justice than she was on accuracy.
“When I tell you,” Rua explained, “we will all begin to move east to west, in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotation, with a radius of six thousand three hundred and seventy-one kiloms. Then we will complete the rotation seven times, ending where we began. Any questions?”
“Yes. Why?” It was Uaine. Of course it was. It was always Uaine asking tedious questions. And, more often than not, it was only to goad Rua. However, even Rua had to admit that Uaine’s natural curiosity was an asset, pushing boundaries Rua never knew existed. Still, she chafed at the incessant interruptions.
“You didn’t think I brought us all here to hang out in some void for all eternity did you, Uaine? Really. I brought us here to create a new world. Now that’s enough questions. It’s time.”
~
“How does time exist in a void?”
“Time exists within beings. Then beings exist in the void. You are as bad as Uaine.”
“And you are as bad as Rua.”
~
The Seven moved in a blur of colour. Faster and faster. Whipping the nothingness into a frenzy, until a something began to form in the centre, expanding and expanding to fill the circle. Once the seventh rotation was complete, Rua stopped them. The something glowed and flickered, waiting.
“Repeat after me,” she commanded. “By the light of The Seven, we call you to being.” Cor’s and Cair’s voices tripped clumsily behind the others, so Rua made them say it again, for good measure. There were to be no mistakes. Not today.
“Ok, now we say it together. Seven times.” So they did. The something sprang into a third dimension, transforming the flat circle into a robust sphere of great magnitude that somehow yielded to the gravitational field of The Seven even though it was far, far greater in mass than they were.
The liquid planet swirled and shaped itself and started to cool. As it solidified into a hard crust, the great craters began to fill with water. The oceanic plates shifted and collided with each other. Peaks of rock broke the surface of the water. The land settled into five large formations, surrounded by many smaller ones, spaced evenly across the sphere. The bursting of land formations into life seemed to be brief and brutal to The Seven, who watched in silent observation.
“What’s it called?” Bui asked, full of exuberance.
“Well, it’s brand new. It has no name yet. I supposed we can call it whatever we like. We made it, after all,” Rua responded.
“You don’t know that, Rua. Why don’t we ask it?” said Uaine, who clearly had no sense of how these things worked. Better they figure it out for themself, Rua thought.
“Go ahead and ask then, Uaine,” Rua said with a sugar sweetness that soured her words. The others knew better than to trust the appearance of congeniality. But Uaine was stubborn, and it was a good point. So Uaine decided to meet Rua’s challenge with acquiescence.
“Terribly sorry to bother you,” Uaine addressed the planet, “but might I ask your name?”
“Oh, it’s no bother at all. I am called Aerth. Or at least those who live upon my back have called me that for quite a while now. And who are you?”
Time flowed differently for The Seven, and they often forgot how quickly it moved for corporeal beings. Aerth probably considered themself ancient.
“We are The Seven,” Rua replied before anyone else had a chance. Puffed up with self-importance, Rua continued. “We are from Lighthouse. It is the first world. The world from which all life springs. Including you, Aerth.”
“Isn’t that nice,” Aerth replied, rather indifferent to their creators. “Do you plan to sit back and watch forever, or will you condescend to participate in the unfolding of life here?” Rua hadn’t much considered joining in. The goal had been to create the planet, then return to Lighthouse to gloat and generally bask in the inevitable praise. But now that Aerth mentioned it, it wasn’t a half bad idea.
It was unheard of in Lighthouse to choose any physical form. They were better than that. Above it. Except, for the fact that no one had ever tried it and the only thing Rua loved more than approval was being first.
“What do you say, six?” Rua asked the others in the usual way that so irked them. As if she stood apart somehow, an uncontested leader.
“What is life, exactly?” It was Gorm. Gorm never was much for study, so it was no surprise she would ask such a question.
“Life is possibility. It is change. Transformation. All that is and is yet to be,” Aerth answered.
“Can we even do that?” Bui chimed in. Aerth rumbled with tectonic laughter.
“Of course you can. Everything is possible. That’s the whole point.”
The Seven fell into silence, each one locked in the collective intensity of their internal debate. “It’s never been done before,” Rua said, breaking the spell. “We have to,” Oraiste, Cor, Cair, and, surprisingly, Uaine all mumbled their assent. It was Gorm and Bui who remained unsure.
“Can you show us first, maybe, what we would be?” Bui asked with trepidation.
“I can show you what you might be,” said Aerth.
Before they could ask any more questions, Aerth pulled The Seven into the expanse of their memory. Time that seemed to pass in mere moments to The Seven, from Aerth’s perspective stretched millennia, with lifetimes upon lifetimes playing out in a fantastic spiral of birth and death. Yet, all the knowledge and experience Aerth contained passed to The Seven in an instant.
As The Seven returned to the current moment, they were overwhelmed with the complexity of life, amazed to have orchestrated the creation of something so far beyond their understanding. Rua herself could not account for such results. So much about Aerth was completely new to them. The others looked to Bui and Gorm, pulsating with excitement.
“I think we should be whales,” said Gorm.
“Oh, no! Can we please be elephants?” Bui bubbled.
“Both wonderful options,” Rua said in that way she had before telling everyone else what to do. “But based on my observations, the experiment would best be served by becoming humans.” The others groaned.
“Humans?” It was Uaine. “They’re a bit of a mess, don’t you think? Besides, they don’t seem to be doing all that well and the other animals don’t like them very much. I see why you picked them, Rua.”
Before Rua could retaliate, Oraiste chimed in. “The humans aren’t all bad, Uaine. They hold hands, and sing songs, and wear such bright colours. I say we give it a try. Could be fun.”
Since the best way to prove Rua wrong was to go along with her demands and let her suffer the natural consequences of her closed mindedness, Uaine agreed.
Once they took on human form, Aerth explained, they had to live out a human life — from birth to death — before they could return to their iridescent selves.
“Humans, then?” Aerth asked.
“Humans,” The Seven confirmed.
Meg Gillard is currently completing a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing to develop a fiction manuscript under the mentorship of Waubgeshig Rice. With a focus on speculative fiction and personal mythologies, they explore the relationships between self, community, and our ecosystem through a lens of queerness and gender nonconformity.
Image: Michelle Still Creates for Pexels.com, Orange Green and Blue Abstract Painting, digital photo, 2008.
Edited for publication by Emily McDonald, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications program.
The HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by the Applied Research & Innovation.