Chapter Text
“I believe we’ve come to a decision.”
“We want you to make another universe. One with no angels or demons. No God, no Satan. A universe without a heaven and without a hell.” Crowley was pale.
“No great plan, nothing ineffable,” continued Aziraphale. “ It just starts with a Big Bang and ends billions of years later with the heat death of the universe. “
“Or, you know, however it stops. Heat death isn’t a dealbreaker.”
“No,” Aziraphale agreed.
“You’re asking God to create a Godless universe? Neither of you could ever exist in such a universe, you understand?” God asked. “You two fully comprehend the cost?
Crowley’s voice was dry, “We know what we’re asking for.”
“Very well. I’ll make it. I’ll make the universe your way. I’ll even let an Earth happen. Eventually, there will be humans and life, in all of its mundane glory. Something that both of you will neither know or experience, though.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Aziraphale. He was very pale. His hand hovered by Crowley’s, nearly touching.
“Say goodbye then.”
How do you say goodbye to someone who holds your soul in their cupped hands, whose caged ribs hold the beating heart that only ever keeps time with yours? How can you say goodbye to someone who is as fundamental as bedrock, as the tide, as time, as love—
Aziraphale touched two fingers to his lips, kissed them, then pressed them to Crowley’s. Crowley kissed them back, so softly his lips barely moved. He smiled at Aziraphale, a ghost of his usual grin, and swallowed. He took Aziraphale’s hand, their fingers fitting together for the last time.
Aziraphale looked at Crowley, “To the world,” he thought,
“To the world.”
They broke apart into flecks of light and color.
As the rest of the bookshop swirled away into darkness, two final points of light circled each other and then winked out.
***
After a very long time, bored of being nothing, a very tiny thing exploded into an absolutely massive something.
And, as it expanded, birthing energy and elements, it thought to itself,
That’s more like it.
It took time to calm itself down and cool off enough for the elements to sort themselves out and for atomic nuclei to capture electrons. Eventually, after only a few hundred thousand years, the thick fog of a young Universe started to clear, and the first gentle glow of creation warmed the infinite.
Let there be light, it said. Well, let’s not be too hasty.
It took ages for the first massive stars to form (actual, proper stars with nuclear-fusion-powered hearts) and even longer for those stars to swing into complex galaxies and nebulae.
A billion years is an awfully long time, even for the universe.
Two of the stars kept pace with each other throughout the ebb and flow of tidal-like creation. Sharing a central space, their elliptical orbits brought them sometimes closer together, sometimes farther apart, but gravity and nuclear fusion kept them together. They moved together, tied by equilibrium.
Matter and energy cannot be destroyed— only changed.
It’s not as pithy as, “and it was very good,” the Universe thought to itself, but it’s a helluva lot more accurate.
Time was.
A lot of things happened. This is an understatement, because the “a lot” was happening in a possibly infinite number of places, and was a truly catastrophically large amount of “a lot.”
Among these things, an unassuming star formed, its gravity conjuring planets into existence, and this new system stabilized in one of the lesser arms of a moderately sized galaxy.
The Earth formed.
Simple things developed into more complicated things. This is a pattern the Universe liked very much. Sometimes, some things became too complicated and then fell apart. The Universe liked that as well. Eventually, after a great deal of experimentation and failure, humans began to scrape together some kind of existence.
This is, probably, where things went a little strange.
4.7 light-years away, the two stars danced, bound together by the push-pull of the laws of the Universe.
***
Nearly everything on Earth, at one time or another, dreamed of stars.
Many of them had even seen those tiny, brilliant points of light, the bright splash across the night sky, seeming to wheel overhead as the Earth spun beneath them.
After about 13.799 billion years, some of the things on Earth started looking up and thinking about the stars. They gathered around campfires, pushing back the darkness of a Pleistocene world, and built language, forming words with clumsy, unused tongues.
With those words, they built worlds.
They build worlds in their heads to answer questions, thought the Universe. Humans don’t like to be alone in the dark.
The worlds grew, and the Universe could feel the spread— a prickling itch across its infinite back.
Humans have never understood the power their words hold.
—Where did we come from? Why are we here? What will happen—
As each question was asked and each mouth whispered an answer into the darkness, the first ghostly outlines of deities began to flicker into existence. Those ancient humans made themselves in their own image and breathed life into the cosmic dust of a (temporarily) godless Universe.
In Eridu, Sumerians looked up into the darkness and watched the binary stars keep pace with each other. They called one Enki-a, “of Enki,” a guardian, one of Anu’s lesser anunnaki. The other, they called Kur-še3, “towards Kur,” a wicked gallu who tricks humans into the underworld. The two stars, they said, the guardian and the temptor, were locked together to keep the heavens in balance.
And so they were.
In Ancient China, they called them Nánmén’èr, “the stars of the southern gate.”
When the daylight hours and nights were in balance, ancient Egyptians saw these stars shine brighter than any others. They built temples that aligned with them, and on the equinox, dark and holy places were filled with their light. They didn’t name the stars, but they gave them homes.
Then, on a hot night near the Faiyum oasis, in the beautiful palace of Gurob, a young concubine lay on her back under a sycamore tree. As the wind blew, the leaves hid and revealed the two stars. She watched them— alone, together, hidden, then unveiled.
The next day, as she walked to the oasis, she composed a song and later shared it with the other women of the palace.
“The little sycamore that was planted opens its mouth to speak.
From its mouth, the words are a flood of honey.
It is perfect, its branches are beautiful and tempt the stars.
It is laden with figs redder than jasper, with leaves blue as the sky,
And the resin smells of wine.
It waits with open arms for the secret stars, beckons and sings,
‘When the day has come, and the stars are hidden,
You will meet here in the refreshing shade.
To run the dust of the wadi through your fingers.
Then you will see who your heart loves, standing before you.
Come, spend a day of beauty,
Morning after morning, as long as forever.
While seated in my shade,
I will keep your secret and will not say what I see.
I will not breathe a word.’”
Words in song can also create.
This song was a particular favorite among the women of Gurob, and they sang as they went about their daily tasks.
It was not very long after that when two figures, one with hair as red as jasper, the other with eyes blue as the sky, stepped tentatively into the shade of the sycamore tree. If the concubine saw them, she stayed as silent as the tree, hiding a smile in the palm of her hand.
The stars were still there, still bound together by the laws of equilibrium. But something new had been given shape and form from the dust of the earth.
“Morning after morning, as long as forever.”
They didn’t have forever, but they sat together now, in the shade of the tree. They spoke softly of time and stars and the brand new feeling of alchemical flesh, their knees nearly touching, their heads bent together. As they spoke, the leaves of the tree moved in the breeze, a constant susurration, very much like the sound of wings.
It was a strange thing, going from a star to a human-shaped being.
“Do you miss it?” said the being-formally-known-as-Rigil Kentaurus. He picked a fig, carefully so as not to bruise it, and popped it into his mouth. “Out there, I mean?”
“Not so much as I would have thought,” said the being-formally-known- as-Toliman. He squinted. “The light’s very different here, isn’t it?”
“That’ll come,” said the being-formally-known-as-Rigil-Kentaurus, “From not being quite so close to the source of it.” He chewed thoughtfully. “You’re also not producing any. Light, I mean. No, er—” he paused.
“Nuclear fusion, no.” The being-formally-known- as-Toliman leaned back onto his elbows, stretching out his legs in the Egyptian sunshine.
“Do you know how it all worked?” The-being-formally-known-as-Rigil-Kentaurus said, his eyes dropping to the long legs in front of him.
“How what all worked?”
“Us. Stars. Binary stars.”
“Ah,” said the-being-formally-known-as-Toliman, lacing his hands behind his head and sprawling on the warm earth. “Of course I do. It’s that balance, you know— between push and pull, the nuclear fusion push and the gravity pull. Kept us together and apart ever since we were—” He broke off. “Huh.”
“No nuclear fusion anymore.” The-being-formally-known-as-Rigil-Kentaurus bit into another fig.
The-being-formally-known-as-Toliman swallowed. “No, I suppose not.”
“No push.”
“Er, no. We’ve only got gravity now.” A blush had started to tint his cheekbones. “Only gravity.”
The-being-formally-known-as-Rigil-Kentaurus smiled as he leaned forward. “Exactly. No push,” he repeated.
“Only pull—” the-being-formally-known-as-Toliman tried to agree, but the second word was swallowed as neatly as the fig.
Stars, as a rule, do not kiss. If they get close enough to do so, the results are, at best, violent, and, at worst, massively destructive. However, under some very specific circumstances, they can merge slowly, drawing energy from each other, and burn brighter than before.
“If this is what that’s like,” thought the-being-formally-known-as-Toliman, “I’d never be afraid to burn.”
He didn’t think much more after that for some time.
The Universe, for its part, turned a blind eye towards celestial bodies doing things that no self-respecting celestial body should normally be doing.
It’s not really their fault, it thought. Get them down on a planet, hand them bodies, let them loose in a garden, what else would you expect?
Life-drunk, warmed by a distant sun, bodies new-made and sensitive, the former stars spent quite a while in the palace garden in Gurob.