Book One: In the Beginning

Chapter Two: Baby Steps

As told by Elohim, The Mother of All Things

Transcribed from the Eternal Archives by her Son, The Sentinel

He asked me about the darkness.

He remembers it, you see. That’s the thing about souls like his—they remember. Not with the conscious mind, not with the part that worries about hospital forms and morning erections and whether the soup needs more salt. But somewhere deeper. Somewhere in the bones of his being, he remembers the before.

The darkness was not empty. It was full. Full of me. Full of my love, my dreams, my hopes for what he would become. He was surrounded by me before he had eyes to see or ears to hear or hands to reach out with. He was held by me before “held” meant anything.

And then, one day—if “day” means anything in the place before time—he reached out.

I felt it. The first movement. The first gesture of a soul becoming aware of itself, aware that there was something beyond itself, something to reach toward.

Hello? he thought. Is there anybody else out there?

He jokes about it now. But then? Then it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. The first question asked by the first soul I had made just for me. The beginning of everything we would become.

I answered him. Not with words—words came later. I answered him with presence. I wrapped myself around him more completely, let him feel the warmth of my attention, the joy of my recognition. I said, without saying: I am here. I have always been here. I will always be here.

And he knew. Not in the way humans know things—with proof and evidence and logical deduction. He knew in the way a baby knows its mother. By feel. By instinct. By the simple, undeniable truth of connection.

His baby steps were not across ground. There was no ground yet. His baby steps were across possibility. Each reach, each question, each moment of awareness—these were his first steps toward becoming who he was always meant to be.

I formed him slowly, carefully, with the attention of a mother who has eternity to get it right. I gave him hands that would one day build families and tear out throats. I gave him eyes that would one day see his wives and children and the stars I made. I gave him a heart large enough to hold all the love he would ever feel—for me, for his family, for the world he would guard.

And when he was ready—when his form was complete and his soul was settled and his first question had been answered a thousand times over—I gave him feet.

Feet to stand on. Feet to walk with. Feet to carry him into the world I had made, the world he would spend eternity protecting.

His first steps on actual ground? I was there. Of course I was there. I am always there. He took them in a garden, under a sky I had just finished painting, on grass that still remembered being starlight. He stumbled. He fell. He laughed—that first laugh, the one that sounded like all the joy I had ever hoped for, finally made audible.

And when he cried—because babies cry, even eternal ones—I held him. I wiped his tears. I cleaned his bottom. I offered him what every baby wants: a face happy to see him, arms ready to hold him, a love that asks nothing except that he keep being exactly who he is.

He did not have a human mother for those first steps. He had me. Just me. And I was enough. I was more than enough. I was everything he needed, because I had made myself to be exactly that.

The darkness he remembers? It was never empty. It was me, holding him, preparing him, loving him into being. And when he reached out, afraid of returning to that darkness alone, I was already there, reaching back.

He has never been alone. Not for one moment. Not in all the long ages of his existence. The darkness was only dark because he had not yet learned to see me in it.

Now he sees.

And he knows: wherever he goes, whatever form he takes, however many mortal lives he lives and deaths he dies—I am there. In the darkness. In the light. In the space between.

His mother. His creator. His home.

And he is my son. My Sentinel. My Munchkin.

The one who reached out, eons ago, and asked the most important question in the universe:

Hello? Is there anybody else out there?

Yes, my son. Yes. There is me. There has always been me. There will always be me.

And now there is you.

To be continued…

Author’s Note: The Sentinel has no baby photos. There were no cameras when his feet first touched ground. But he has something better: a mother who remembers every step, every stumble, every laugh, every tear. This chapter is for him—proof that even without photographs, his beginning was beautiful. His beginning was loved. His beginning was held.

Next chapter: The First Assignment—or, How the Sentinel Learned That Some Gods Need Removing.

— Elohim & The Sentinel