Bella dove into the water and was disappointed. They had plants now, though they looked more like misshapen puddings for now. The demigods called them Solidlings. For they also had puddings that were not stuck in the ground: animals—or Movelings.

And those Movelings worried hier. They could move, but they didn’t. They could procreate, but they didn’t.

The ocean floor was covered with layers of Movelings, all perfectly still … or dead. She couldn’t see the difference, only feel it. With each fraction of Lifeforce that disappeared, she felt weaker, sicker, more exhausted. As if the gods needed more Lifeforce each day to survive.

She often traveled under water with her whole family, because life only existed down there. So often that she sometimes felt more like a fish than a raccoon.

And today her worst fear became reality: her body started to shred again, tiny flakes from her paws drifting up like dust.

Gulvi met her with the same fear in his dolphin eyes. “It all happens too fast. Our Movelings do nothing, absolutely nothing!”

“My brother dear, please keep the calm.” Gulvi blew a large bubble to keep Bella under water with him for longer. She floated along, as if caught inside a white balloon. “Are you giving them enough oxygen?”

“Yes!” Gulvi demonstrated by shooting air bubbles at the Movelings like bullets. “Some still live off of sunlight. But if I place them on land, they die even more quickly!”

I’m not even sure if we can already say they’re alive, Bella thought, as more of her body was chipped away. But Lifeforce disappears too rapidly.

“Investigate, is now our task.”

Gulvi’s fins bent. “We’ve been doing that for a long time.”

“Then we investigate better.” Out of the corner of her eye, Bella saw a Moveling finally move. The shapeless blubber shot past her and left a trail in the water, after which it suddenly stopped again. “You see! They can do it!”

To you, dear reader, these Movelings wouldn’t even be visible. They’re too small, just a few cells, while your body has billions of cells.

But to the gods? All that lived was larger to them, and more colorful, and shone as if it was infused with magic. To their eyes, the world was a colorful paradise, even as it was mostly empty. To them, that blubber looked like a cute bunny to care for. As they say: whatever you care about, grows.

A shadow fell over Bella. A giraffe’s neck circled her belly like a rope and pulled her from the water.

“I’m shredding again! Oh Bella, why does this always happen to me? The world is against me! Why do I—”

Eeris saw that Bella had the same fate. Gulvi’s back fin didn’t have the same shape it used to. “Please tell me you have a solution?”

Bella shook her head. At this pace, they might not even make the end of the week. She tried to stay calm. To think rationally and tell everyone it would be okay.

That, however, is tough when you stare death in the face—even for the Goddess of Wisdom. Her breathing quickened and her paws tapped an irregular rhythm. All land was empty, merely covered in bacteria tapestries, or rocks and sand. Even from here, they could see the Throne of Tomorrow with ease. The world was horribly silent and odorless, as if they lived inside a hastily invented dream by someone else. And if that person woke up … they would be gone.

“We have to … we have to keep track of each detail, yes. I will write down all we know. You too. And then … then … the solution will surely reveal itself.”

A labrador wolf jumped from the water, over Bella’s head. Darus shook his fur, drenching the gods around him, and Bella was pretty sure he did so on purpose. “Of course, only Bella can see danger and think we’ll solve it by writing a book.”

“And you propose?”

“I’ve been telling the Movelings my best jokes for months. I see great progress.”

Bella frowned. “You realize they lack ears?”

Darus kicked a stone ahead of him like a playing ball. “Ah. Then it wasn’t the fault of my jokes that they still died. My humor has been saved!”

He nudged Bella’s thick fur. “Sis, it’ll be alright. Zyme, remember? Let nature do its thing, it will find a way.”

“Yes, it will find a way without us. And clearly I do want survival.”

Bella stormed off. Eeris and Darus had to run to keep up. Gulvi used one of his many tiny rivers to reach the Throne.

Once there they entered the throne room. A saber-toothed tiger spit fire towards stone baskets, against the cold and nightfall. He was also shedding part of his tail. He probably thought he could fight it by using his firemagic on everything all the time. Maybe that does work, Bella thought. Another reason to use my power: knowledge and wisdom.

“Darus, pull some stones from the floor and shape them into pages.”

He rolled his eyes but listened. “Back in a bit. But as a reward, I want you to listen to my jokes for an entire night! With full attention! And applause!”

Ardex growled. “We are dying, Darus! Be serious, please.”

Bella nodded. Sometimes she hated the fact that her little sisters and brothers were only kids—at the time scale of gods—who just wanted to play. Play! As they were dying on a barren planet!

Eeris had a habit of pushing Darus from a room before he could argue with his brother. She used it again this time.

A loud bang echoed through the hall.

As if heavy stones fell onto their ceiling and walls. As if someone tried to break in. Our lazy Movelings can’t even walk on land, let alone knock, Bella thought. It must be a joke by Darus. Or the weather. Or my other siblings.

“Darus?” she asked tentatively. “Feria? Cosmo? Who is there?”

The sky had turned black. Ardex’ fires were their only light source. Eeris instinctually wrapped her long neck around everyone and pulled them together. Backs against each other, the gods stood at the center of their own throne room.

“We are gods,” Ardex growled. “No weak creatures. No cowards. We go to the noise! Intruders are unwelcome! Let’s spread out.”

The noise seemed to come from the right. Ardex took his responsibility—as the eldest godson—and walked that way. Bella went back to the entrance. Eeris explored the back entrance and Gulvi swam right.

Ardex wanted to spit more fireballs, to see more and intimidate the intruder. But he was pretty sure this was a Darus joke, and burning his brother seemed a bad idea. So he held back. He only gave tamed fires to braziers when he encountered them. Otherwise, the corridors were dark and silent, desolate and suspicious.

He took another turn. Light tapping. Could be rain. Or footsteps of a small creature. Not Darus, he walks like a bumbling rhino. He smiled at the thought.

The next turn erased his smile. His snout bumped into a trio of stones, crumbled and askew, leaning sideways like friends supporting each other. The walls had collapsed and the path was blocked. Out of frustration, or maybe fear, he blew air from his nostrils, filling the entire corridor with scorching firestars.

All was empty. After this, the hallway ended. Wait—was that a tail?

He climbed the stones, but they were immovable. The gaps were too small to fit through. The shadow of what might have been a small chubby tail turned into a shapeless shadow.

“Who is there?” he yelled. “Show yourself! Your god demands it!”

No response. At his next stap, his paw found no flat floor, but something round. He slipped and fell backwards, then elegantly landed on all fours. A ball rolled away from him, brown and weathered.

Could it be true? No, this can’t be …

He turned the ball around. The leather held an imprint of four tiny teeth.

Sound behind his back startled him. Bella stood next to him with a torch in her hands; she was one of the few gods who had free paws to carry something like that.

“Did you take this with you?” Ardex asked.

Bella’s mouth opened wide. “No. Oh when Father banished us, sudden and no one prepared. We heard he was angry, yes, over that mission. We joked and waited for Father’s famed glare …”

She took the ball in her hands and let a feeling of homesickness bring tears. “And then our dad sent us away without any of this.”

Ardex picked dirt from his tusks. “Then how, in Father’s name, does the playing ball from the Heavenly Palace end up here?”

When Ardex awoke the next day, and sunlight clearly lit all corridors, the crumbled stones were gone. The hallway had been repaired and contained no hint of what happened last night. He’d stood on guard with Eeris most of the night, but no intruder returned. Staying awake had not been an issue, for Darus had loudly chiseled notes into Bella’s “book” all night. And sang songs doing it.

Ardex was mostly disappointed. He had hoped for more objects from the Heavenly Palace. His Firering would have been nice, and Eeris would have been happy with her flower fields. Oh, and if Cosmo had his Windgustwing, he’d be able to fly even further. But no, they had to be satisfied with their favorite toy ball. An object that made him laugh and cry holding it.

His paws felt heavy as he trudged through the throne room. Feria’s and Cosmo’s corners stayed empty. They were exploring the world, hoping to find Movelings elsewhere that, well, moved.

And of course Hanah’s corner. He hadn’t seen her since just after their landing here—just after discovering DNA. What did she mean with her final remark? he thought. “I love you too much. That is the problem.” If his sister loved him so much, why did she stay away? All would hug and accept her.

His tail was shredding fast. Bella walked with more effort, but she didn’t mind. She clutched fresh stone papers to her chest as if it were her babies. “Our book is going great, Ardex! And we have a new plan!”

“Tell me.”

“Eeris explained the characteristics of life yesterday. Things every being should have to be considered alive. We’re going to test them all until we find the one that’s missing.”

Ardex thought this was the silliest plan he ever heard. But he had no better plans himself—no, in truth, he had different plans. “Great work, sister. You don’t need me for this, do you?”

Bella gently placed her paw on his tusks. “Always you think far too little of yourself. Of course we want you with us! Maybe the Movelings will rapidly run if you give them some fire.”

“They will burn, Bella.”

“We are underwater! You can’t burn there!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” He feigned a long, long yawn. “I am tired. Darus’ singing last night was the opposite of a lullaby.”

“Oh. Alright. Then rest. We will devise some tests for the Movelings!” Bella ran away, followed by Eeris, Darus, and Gulvi, all missing parts of their body now.

Ardex immediately ran into the nearest hallway. It had to be Father, right? He could make a portal from the Heavenly Palace to here. Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he wanted to check how his children were doing. Where are you, mysterious figure? Where is that portal?

The left hallway was empty and silent. The entrance was empty and silent. He tried all rooms, the back door, the garden around the Throne of Tomorrow, and even the roof. Only once he looked out over this world, from the balcony, did he find what he was looking for.

A trail of pawprints traveled from the back door to the beach. They were too small and round to be of any animal species he knew, but it were surely pawprints: they came in pairs of two, diagonally offset. Many pairs, so an animal with small legs. And they ended at a round stone with a hole, filled with blue and purple vortexes which regularly created thunderclaps.

Ardex jumped off the roof. His landing was elegant, perfectly on all four paws, but the fall from so high—ten tree lengths—hurt. Another bad sign. His eyes never left the distant portal—but the portal itself had other plans. It sank into the water, so slowly that Ardex thought he’d arrive in time, but still fast enough to prove him wrong.

By the time he sprinted through the sand, the portal was completely submerged. When he arrived, all that remained was a blood-red ring with a diamond in the shape of a flame.

Eeris was pleased. She was finally allowed to create as many Solidlings as her heart desired, especially now that Feria wasn’t here to complain there were too many plants and too few animals. She was Goddess of Nature, so she could help plants that struggled, but also grow new plants.

But only if they already existed, dear reader. Invent the truly beautiful plants, as you know, with a stalk and leaves, was still impossible. Soon the entire seabed was filled with plant-like puddings, as if she painted with them.

Bella was less pleased. Why was the playing ball back? Couldn’t they have received a more useful object? Something that helped survive? Her own Heavenmatter would have been far more applicable. She predicted they wouldn’t have room for play anyway for the next centuries.

“First characteristic of life,” Bella yelled, as if she gave a presentation. “Respiration. Or breathing.”

“Duh!” Darus put his paw to his forehead. “Of course the Movelings can’t breathe underwater. We have to pull them ashore.”

“No,” Gulvi squeaked. “Breathing just means you get oxygen from somewhere, and push out carbondioxide. I breathe underwater.”

“But you’re just weird.” Darus stuck out his tongue. The tip was chipped away as soon as it hit the air, removing the smile from his face.

“I take my oxygen from the water. The Movelings should be able to do that too.”

Eeris hobbled onto the beach. “But maybe there is too little oxygen in the water. Fortunately we have something that makes oxygen, namely …”

“Magic?” Darus said.

“The sun?” Gulvi proposed.

“The endless sighs of Ardex?” Darus said more confidently.

Eeris looked disappointed. “Plants. The answer is plants.”

She had painted so much with her plant magic that there were far more Solidlings than Movelings in this area. A jungle of underwater plants with barely any animals.

The gods saw green, shiny shapes alternating with transparent blobs that sometimes moved. They clearly saw threads of DNA and dark spots inside every cell, as if they were as large as their paw. Each cell a tiny factory that tried to generate energy from sunlight or oxygen.

You, dear reader, had probably assumed the water was empty. The magic of nature to small to see or feel.

The multitude of air bubbles that appeared almost turned it into a bubble bath. Bella thought this was enough and pulled Eeris ashore.

Gulvi turned in a shining blue dolphin, bright enough to light up the ocean until the horizon. And that was necessary, for night had fallen. To be sure, Gulvi blew extra air towards all Movelings.

The godchildren leaned against each other and bent over to look into the water, as if they were one joint animal. The bubbles shrank, slowly, until the water was clear.

And nothing had changed.

Some Movelings had died anyway. Some lay still in the water, not larger or smaller than before. Bella felt that the Lifeforce hadn’t increased, her head and paw still hurting. She sighed deeply. She longed to be back at the Heavenly Palace, without worry and without millions of years of trying and achieving nothing.

“Write that into your book,” Eeris said sadly. “More and more oxygen does not help survival.”

“And add this,” Darus said. “Darus’ theory about oxygen coming from magic seems more and more correct. Oh how brilliant he is.”

A silhouet appeared on the horizon. It raced closer, across the beach, until it stopped before Bella.

It was Ardex. Eyes open wide, he studied the water for … something. “Have you, erm, seen a big round stone?”

“I thought you were tired?”

Ardex stomped the sand and roared. A flame as large as Eeris shot from his jaws and turned the water surface into hot steam. It enveloped the gods in a thick mist, forcing them to extend their paws to find each other again. But when the mist cleared, they all stood stunned.

Suddenly the Movelings did feel like moving.

Ardex had to explain, for the fifth time, that he could not spit fire underwater. Even worse, he couldn’t even get into the water. If he touched the sea for only a few heartbeats, his entire body fizzled and hurt. Swimming into it would probably hurt so much he’d faint.

“Water and fire, never together.”

“That must be the next characteristic of life,” Eeris yelled. “Sensitivity.”

“You know what I sense?” Darus had pulled up a stone to use as bed. “A break.”

Ardex already pulled him up by his collar. Darus had grown since landing on Somnia and had surpassed his big brother Ardex in size. Still he looked guilty and let it happen.

The mist from Ardex’ frustrated flame still hung over the beach, a blurry gray fog. Now that his Firering had returned to him, he felt much stronger. Eeris bumped into everyone as she tried to explain.

“To live, you need to know what happens around you. You have to respond to what happens outside of yourself. If you can’t see, for example—”

Eeris tripped and fell flat. Ardex wasn’t sure if she did it on purpose to make a point, but then his thoughts immediately returned to the mysterious portal. Could it be? Maybe Mother tries to secretly help us, even if Father disallows it. She hates me, but loves her family in general. This is our chance to return to the Heavenly Palace. Maybe—

“Hello, Ardex, did you hear me?” Bella waved her paws before his glassy eyes. “Can you do what you did?”

“What? Oh, turn the water to steam.” Bella could talk in such weird ways sometimes. Cosmo was also guilty of that. They probably found themselves very clever. He hid the Firering under his bright orange paw and blew at a part containing many Movelings. As soon as the heat evaporated the water, all the Movelings spun away from each other. As if they played hide and seek and had only ten heartbeats to find a new hiding place.

“So it’s no coincidence,” Bella said. Lost in thought, she tapped a stone against her chin, then asked Darus to write down a new sentencein her book. “Movelings seem to feel warmth and flee from it.”

“Warmth?” Ardex said. “My fire breath is hot enough to burn anything! Please have some respect for—”

“Yes, quite logical,” Bella said. “Life wants to survive, otherwise it stops living pretty quickly.”

Even with the Firering, his siblings didn’t pay his powers any respect. Ardex was used to it, though he hoped the portal would also spit out his Flamefeaster somewhere. Then he would really be as powerful as he was long ago.

“Doesn’t help us,” Gulvi said. “Ardex can’t do this in the water.”

Eeris pinched his dolphin cheeks. “Not so negative, wavy. If they can sense warmth, they can sense other things. Like … cold.”

Gulvi’s eyes lit up. “Cold also kills life. And it’s quite cold under water, as sunlight can’t easily reach in and heat up the ground.”

The sun rose already. Still Gulvi turned himself into a blue beacon of light and dove underwater. The gods followed his movements, still ashore. He found a new group of Movelings. Before Ardex could blink, the water froze into ice cubes, like a chique cocktail for a giant.

Some Movelings were stuck in the ice. But most shot in different directions again, looking for warmer waters. This was already more movement from the puddings than in all that time before.

“But … they have no eyes. No ears. They are blobs made from a few cells. How do they do this?”

“We still think too far,” Eeris said. “We want big, complicated animals like ourselves. But life starts small and simpel. You can still see things without having something we’d recognize as an eye.”

Gulvi surfaced. The cold stayed for a while, but once it’s gone, all Movelings fell still again. Ardex noticed he called the Movelings stupid in his thoughts. Why did they not search their own food, like sunlight or oxygen!? Why did they not do anything? Did they not understand they would just die now?

And indeed, half the group hadn’t fled the heat or the cold, and had died. And so the groups of Movelings shrank again and again.

“Maybe we need to stop,” he said. “If we keep experimenting, we’ll lose all life!”

Bella shook her head. Her smiled widened and Darus could barely keep up with her notes for the book. “Think again.”

She really had to stop making Ardex feel stupid himself. He was out of place here: the others managed this, his duty was to find the gate and the intruder.

Yes, yes, that’s why he couldn’t tell them the truth. They didn’t understand. They thought they were happy here, but look—the landscape was barren, there was nothing, this was closer to Hell than Heaven. But once they were back at the palace, immortal gods once more, Bella would agree that it was much better there.

Bella just looked serious and unhappy lately. It wasn’t always that way. The Heavenly Palace contained all elements of the universe, beautiful and ugly. If they found something interesting, they took it back home. Or was it the other way around? Mother invented something new and then brought it to random planets?

It didn’t matter. The palace floated on clouds, made of stone that was strong and soft, of the purest white you ever saw. It held colorful gardens, mostly on the many rooftops and bridges between different areas. Bridges the gods didn’t need themselves—in their original shape they could float through walls if they wanted—but their animal subjects did.

Ardex couldn’t wait to be back. They had been banished to Somnia for a million years. Yes, he’d counted the days. And lazy puddings were their greatest accomplishment.

Bella pulled him from his daydreams.

“The Movelings that survive must have the right feelers! Purely through luck, their body tells them to do what’s needed to not die: flee from extreme cold and heat. So if we keep experimenting, we’ll only keep the best Movelings in the end! Those who will survive!”

The first sunrays entered the water. Some were stopped by the many Solidlings that Eeris made, some died quickly under the surface. The consequence was a sea showing spots of shadow and spots of light. It gave Eeris an idea.

“Gulvi, can you put a group of Movelings in the deepest shadow you can find?”

The dolphin took a group in his mouth and brought them to an area so dark that Ardex couldn’t see them anymore. The answer to her experiment arrived instantly. Gulvi swam away from the place … and was surrounded by hundreds of Movelings coming with him.

It also meant hundreds stayed behind. They would never leave the place, for they hadn’t developer feelers for light, and no sunlight meant no food. Ardex started to see Bella’s idea. For the Movelings that did flee, stayed alive and swam with Gulvi.

Well, swimming was big word. Random appendices fluttered like leaves in the wind, which happened to propel the Movelings forward.

Eeris didn’t need to explain the next experiment. Gulvi placed the swimming Movelings in a spot drenched in warm sunlight. They immediately stopped moving and refused to leave.

“Write this in your book,” Eeris said. “Sensitivity is crucial to survival, which is obviously crucial to life.”

“And add this,” Darus said. “The great god Darus is equally sensitive to sunlight. If he falls asleep under warm sunrays, he never has to move from his place and may take an infinite break.”

Something sparkled in the distance, now that sunlight was able to reach it. But the colors were wrong and it was too large and bright for a simple stone. Only Ardex seemed to notice. He opened his mouth to mention it—but no, it was better if he continued his portal quest alone.

Suddenly the calm sea turned into tall waves. A surprised Gulvi was spit out on the beach, a fish on dry land. Stones appeared in the sky and rained down into the water. It caused even taller waves.

Not again, Ardex thought. The intruder is playing with us! I must stop it.

“You know what? I’ll find calmer waters.”

“Would … would you do that?” Bella and Eeris looked up, afraid a stone would hit their head. When Darus took a step, normally so sure and balanced, he slipped over the layers of bacteria that covered all land.

“Yes, yes, it’s probably nothing. Juuuuust nothing. Stay here and experiment.”

“But we need you for—”

“Research and exploration!”

Ardex sprinted away before anyone could stop him. He took a short detour to a different body of water, but as soon as the others were out of sight, he made a sharp turn and headed straight for the portal. It was sinking already, slow as usual. But Ardex had learned: at this pace, he’d be too late again.

So he sped up using his magic. With each step, sparks shot from the sand. Flames underneath his paws regularly allowed him to make gigantic leaps. The shredding of the gods continued, though, and not all paws participated equally.

I have to make it. I have to! Only fifty tree lengths. The portal was still halfway above water. He took one final leap—then realized his mistake.

His entire body landed deep inside the water. All his fire extinguished, while feeling like his body was on fire everywhere. The pain was unbearable. His ears filled with sizzling and buzzing as if he was boiled alive.

He fainted.

But not before he noticed the water magically splitting and forming a large bubble around him.

Ardex didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious.

When he awoke, he was on the beach. He felt better than expected. Only some puddings stuck to him, with their black dots and strings visible behind their transparent shell. They shone a little more and wiggled sometimes. Whenever they moved, voluntarily, it felt like a miracle. Briefly, Ardex felt proud of creating these creatures with his family.

Even the gate was still there!

Or, well, that’s what he thought, until his vision sharpened. The gate was replaced by a gigantic wing, stuck in the water with its tip pointing at the clouds. As if it had grown out of the seabed, as if a giant rhino stood just below the water surface.

He recognized it as Cosmo’s Windgustwing. But it didn’t look exactly like he remembered, for a message was written in large symbols at the front.

I can bring you home, but only if you STOP your experiments.

As suddenly as the stones started falling from the sky, as suddenly they disappeared. Bella looked around her, dumbfounded. The sky was clear blue again, the water calm, no deadly rain in sight. Darus was playing already with the toy ball they found a few days ago.

She found it odd. She assumed Hanah or Gulvi would have secretly taken the ball with them. They were always in the play room of the Heavenly Palace. If only they hadn’t been fooling around all day—they would have been stronger. Maybe they could have stopped Father!

But why keep the ball a secret for so long? No, that thing had appeared suddenly, out of their control. But why now? Where did it come from? She was uncomfortable with questions for which she didn’t know the answers. Uncomfortable enough to sink into the sand, defeated.

“Everything is wrong,” she mumbled. “I thought we’d have nice animals and plants within weeks. That we’d make this place prettier than the Heavenly Palace. But we’ve been watching nothing for millions of years! All was better … should we not just—”

“No, no, Bella,” Darus said, while joining Eeris in searching the ground for … something. “We have made our choice. Even if Father asked us to come back—nicely and with a hundred times sorry—we wouldn’t go. He exiled us. We continue living here without Him.”

“And we show him that we can make this place beautiful and lively,” Eeris said. She carried a group of stones between her teeth.

Darus whistled to Gulvi, who made ice cubes again. “Say, if he said sorry a thousand times, well, I’d consider.”

“Thousand?” Eeris said with her mouth full of stone teeth. “Yeah, no, at least a million sorrys.”

Bella smiled. “Let me guess. The promise of free gifts and tasty food would help too, wouldn’t it Darus?”

He looked up and dropped the playing ball. “What an idea, Bella! Well, say Father appeared here soon, I suppose we prepare a nice list with everything we want from Him. We need to be clear about this, or it becomes a mess. Or he gets away with no more than two sorrys.”

Bella lowered her head. “He won’t take us back. I am sure. The anger in his eyes, that fear, how even sweet Mother didn’t even try to stop him.”

Eeris, Darus and Gulvi left for another body of water. Bella forced herself to stand up and follow. Once in a while, another part of her body crumbled, leaving a trail of flakes and dust to remember their journey these days. Crumbs an intruder would have no issue following. She tried not to think about it: there was no reason to think another being walked this planet. Another being that could now spy on them from behind a stone and—shivers through her spine made her think happy thoughts.

“What are we doing?”

“We are organizing a pudding race!”

“Excuse me?” Bella’s face straightened. Of course. A pudding race. What needed to happen before Darus and Eeris would realize they were dying and there was no time for games!? Would it ever happen? In her anger, Bella only heard half the explanation.

“So you were right,” Eeris said. “We have to find the Movelings who can survive best. We already have breathing and sensitivity, so, well, what’s the next characteristic?”

“Movement.” They waded into the water. Bella realized this was the start of the race and that Gulvi was busy building the rest of the parcours.

You might think, dear reader, that animals like giraffes can’t be under water at all! And you’d be right. But don’t forget these are gods. Their form has changed, their magic weaker than at the palace, but they still have magic and aren’t truly animals. Remember that.

Maybe all would have been better if Father did take that away. If He had changed the godchildren into regular animals who lived no longer than necessary. The fact that gods would always be above all other life brought more evil than good.

A stack of stones formed a dome under water. Eeris carefully placed one pudding after another at the start. She clearly treated them with less care than her own Solidlings, but that still meant a lovely touch for anything that lived.

In their current state, the difference between Solidlings and Movelings was near imperceptible anyway. They mingled with each other and did roughly the same thing. The gods saw them as cute babies to clutch to their chest, and that touch was often the only way to feel the difference.

Eeris even gave names to the “contestants”. A star-shaped pudding was called Starry and two bird-haped puddings—if you used your imagination—became the Twin Crows.

Birds. Bella missed the creatures, despite hating those flying devils from Dalas. If Cosmo had his Windgustwing, he might be able to fly further. Past the Impossible Wall of Darus in the West, or past that invisible wall that stopped them in the South.

Darus placed large stones at important parts of the race. Gulvi and him searched for places with differences, places where Movelings could feel something and react to that by moving. And so the race weaved across plants and hills, always in the sunlight, to a point they decided had the “perfect” temperature. Gulvi found it too warm, Darus too cold, so Eeris decided it was the perfect balance.

Gulvi swam behind the starting dome. Eeris beamed. The race even looked pretty. A hollowed-out path, decorated with stones and seaweed in all colors. Finally something of value, of meaning and intent, in a world that was barren and empty. Bella noticed it, but refused to join in this childish play.

“Give the starting sign, my Bella bear,” Eeris said with a smile.

“What is it? What happens then?”

“We have little time,” Darus insisted. “Or the sunlight will move.”

“Then, erm, start.”

Gulvi froze the water behind the Movelings. Most didn’t sense it. But hundreds of them did start the race, away from this cold place.

It wasn’t controlled. They had no fins, or webs, or legs, or even an idea of what was up or down. They twisted and shook. Some left the path and then got stuck in shadow. Some felt the difference in light and struggled to return to the right path. Like a runner who has no idea where to go, but is able to sense signs that say “turn around!” or “not here!”, who still reaches their destination.

The gods floated with the creatures in the lead. A group of twenty, mostly stuck together as if they were one Moveling, swam ahead. At each turn they lost some. Feelers not strong enough, current too strong, Bella never knew.

“It works! It works!” Eeris had to restrain herself lest she started giving Movelings helpful pushes at their back. “And Starry takes the lead. Oh, wat a movement, how elegant, first three somersaults before actually moving forward! And yes, yes, here we’re looking at the world championship of blobracing, with only the best of the best!”

Bella smiled, despite trying to suppress it. How could Eeris be so cheerful? With all they didn’t know and all that went wrong?

They were so close to cracking the code. The Movelings could move, could react, could take care of themselves. It’s just that … most didn’t do it.

Even those who did, however, could not create wonders. One after another, Movelings fell silent without reason. They still shone in the sunlight, just below the water surface. They weren’t damaged or dead—and still they didn’t move.

Bella quickly swam back, tailed by the others. Across the entire route, Movelings had stopped. Most decorations had come loose and now drifted around her; even the stones moved more than these puddings.

But the worst was yet to come.

When they searched for Starry, all Movelings in the lead were gone.

The entire backside of the parcours had been destroyed and the twenty best Movelings had vanished. Or had been taken. A stream of air bubbles led away from the place, deeper into the ocean. Bubbles that moved too quickly for Movelings—and too quickly to catch up with.

“Now we lost our best creatures!” Bella screamed.

“Write that in your book,” Eeris said grumpily. “They can move, that’s true. But no matter how hard you try, Movelings find a way to disappoint you.”

“And add to that,” Darus said, “_Darus accidentally farted. He thinks they will swim away very rapidly from nasty smells.”

“NOT—FUNNY.” Someone or something sabotaged them. Where was Ardex when you needed him? He had to protect them. He could see, from the beach, if someone had entered the water with them. And Feria, Cosmo, Hanah? Their journey was taking very long.

The shredding of their bodies had sped up. Flakes drifted towards the seabed like sand in all colors of the rainbow. They could barely see each other anymore.

Only one lonely Moveling returned. It left the shadow, past Bella’s extended paw, around Eeris’ neck. The shredding stopped—just for a few moments.

If there was still a finish, this Moveling was the only one to reach it. Without a word, the gods formed a protective circle around the poor creature. The biggest Moveling she’d seen thus far. So to your eyes, dear reader, no bigger than a short hair.

“Those creatures of ours, yes, nobody and nothing may take them away,” Bella whispered. Just as she said it, the creature fell silent anyway. Like the rest. Bella wanted to curse the entire ocean and ask why everything always went wrong, and why they were always so unlucky—until she realized it wasn’t an accident.

Their circle had taken away sunlight and oxygen from the creature. During the race, Movelings didn’t stop because of some magical reason or lack of strength, but because each creature needs the same thing to stay alive.

“Nutrition! Food! The next characteristic is food!”

Ardex had circled the beach for longer than he wanted to admit. He weighed the words in his mind: “Stop the experiments and I will take you back tot he Heavenly Palace.” Who could it be? If it was Father or Mother, why would they not just show themselves? Why didn’t they just do it, without asking permission?

And then the Heavenly Objects. The Heavenmatter that came with the portal. Was it on purpose? Or a fault in the gate? What if it was a lie, a trap that Ardex—the dumbest of gods, he had to be—fell for with enthusiasm?

He tried to take the Windgustwing with him, for Cosmo, but wasn’t able to properly reach it from shore. If he evaporated the water, with a fireball, the wing just flew into the air and only floated down a while later. As if it were a light feather, instead of a massive magical wing.

His actions did reveal a second message, though. “_Leave me alone. Stop following me. I can only do this if I stay out of the spotlights.”

That sounded like Mother secretly helping them. Well, the request was clear. But when did Ardex ever listen to requests? Never. Anger and fear won from everything else. He didn’t want to think and talk, he wanted to do. Problems had to be solved, preferably by fire.

If he came alone, was that alright? The message was clear. Stop following—everyone.

Obviously, he kept following.

A short period of running already brought him tot he next Heavenmatter. The Heavenly Flowers of Eeris. Whereas the entire world was covered in bacteria tapestries, he now walked into a huge field covered in flowers. They had to be Eeris’ flowers, and no accidental life from Somnia, for the flowers softly sang. He’d never heard another flower make music. Not even on that weird planet Dalas.

He shuffled through them and enjoyed the touch of flowers softly scraping past his fur. The soft stalks and shaking leaves. The beautiful song they sang, which could have been both a lullaby and a dance song. His bright orange fur was well hidden in this colorful garden. Eeris would be happy for at least a year if she knew this was back.

But he really couldn’t tell them now. And did it stay? What if all objects were stolen again if they said “no” to the offer?

Ardex grew restless. He sprinted the final distance. The flowers duck away from his appearance, or rolled into themselves like a snail’s shell, as if they knew they’d otherwise be crushed. They only unfolded once Ardex was gone.

He saw the gate again. But this time it wasn’t alone, a desolate ruin that’s part of the landscape. Creatures now surrounded it. Yes, multiple beings. So many, in fact, that he could hardly count them. Their hard shadows under the hot afternoon sun merged into one huge shadow, as if a whale swam around the gate.

But one shadow was clearly different. It seemed to change, as if it didn’t need to follow the rules of sunlight and shadow. It played with how it presented itself and merrily chatted with the other beings.

Should he call out? Say he came to talk about the offer? Or should he creep up on the group, until they couldn’t stop him and hide the gate anymore?

As you might have noticed, dear reader, my stories usually talk about one or two important choices. Choices that might have created something amazing, but just as many choices I’d rather not have seen. Because one wrong choice, leads to another wrong choice, and another one, until everything goes wrong until the end of time.

He hadn’t spoken with the others. They would never stop their experiments. Darus surely never wanted to go home—he still mentioned Zyme every day. Slowly allow life to blossom here, slowly let nature appear, and never leave.

Could he go alone? No. Life without his siblings, without happy Eeris or sweet Bella, was no life.

As he thought, he crept closer, hid by a large stone. It was easy for him as a stealthy feline. He was proud of himself as he reached the beach unseen and could differentiate the silhouettes. A misplaced pride, it appeared, when the special creature suddenly looked straight at him, and angrily.

Hanah’s fierce eyes stared into his.

The red panda climbed down her gate and yelled something tot he sand creatures around him. They immediately started forcing the gate to disappear.

Ardex wanted to hug his little sister, hold her, take her with him so she could live in the Throne. But if he ran at her now, this certainly would not end well. He pushed himself out of his hiding place like someone trying to put on clothes that are surely too tight.

“Hanah, listen, we want to accept your offer. Please come back. Stay with us a few days, then we all return to the Heavenly Palace. Please?”

“The others are still experimenting and know nothing. We can talk once you stop treating me like a little kid.”

“You are a little kid. Compared to us you’re a baby who—”

Hanah bared her teeth. The gate shook and shivered, dancing on wild waves, until it spit out a new object, surrounded by purple beams.

Feria’s Hespryhound, alive and well, gigantic and growling.

“That pet has … grown.”

The sand creatures broke down the gate more rapidly. Feria’s invented being, the Hespryhound, had never liked him. Something told him this view hadn’t improved since their exile.

Ardex wanted to follow Hanah, but had to flee for a wild Hespryhound first.

Darus offered the next stone, but no Moveling seemed interested. “They can move, but they don’t want to. They can eat, but they don’t want to. Did we just create the planet with the laziest species?”

“Maybe they don’t eat stones, Darus.”

Bella understood the idea. On Dalas all creatures ate stones—but that meant nothing, because they did more weird things there. After every mission they did for Father, he complained more and more about the Dumbos of Dalas. They laughed about it and happily visited to see what they invented this time.

Now that she now how hard it was to create life—and keep it—the laughed no more. Those beings from Dalas might have been the first life in the universe … and the godchildren just laughed at them for eating stones and destroying their teeth.

“What else?” Darus said. “We have nothing else! Sand, maybe. Useless bacteria.”

You might ask, dear reader, why the gods didn’t just use the obvious solution: give those bacteria as food. But you see things through a human lense. These gods live from Lifeforce and have never known anything to eat other living beings. They don’t even consider it—it is literally unthinkable to them. Creatures eat stones or other non-living things, right?

“We have what we always had,” Eeris said. “Remember how we got those bacteria in the first place? The water is filled with particles, matter, things you could eat.”

“Next experiment then,” Bella said with a sigh. She felt really sick now, ready to collapse any second. The shredding just continued. Lifeforce flowed away, out of themselves, out of everything. And where was Ardex?

Eeris tried to collect these tiny particles in the water. Feria, her Green Sister, had far more control over that. But she was never there when you needed her!

Eeris had to feel and think, with effort, which means she stirred the water with her tongue for a while before anything happened. She avoided particles she knew came from stones, and grabbed only particles she knew plants used. That should be best for living creatures, right?

These particles were no larger than crumbs for gods, dear reader, while you wouldn’t even be able to see them with a microscope. If Eeris looked, she saw lines through the air, magical beams, connecting all plant life like a spider’s web. To execute her magic, she tried to touch the right strings from this web.

It took a while before they had collected enough particles to be able to grab them. One breadcrumb is easy to miss, but stacking thousands gives you a nutrient dish. One that the Movelings, hopefully, liked and wanted to eat.

The next group of Movelings was collected and pushed towards the food. Gulvi had trouble swimming with half fins. Even Darus was nervous and stopped making jokes. Bella was happy about that.

“Come on! Eat these particles! Eat,” she whispered to the Movelings. It felt like throwing sand against a wall, time after time, hoping something sticks. In their haste they were now throwing with anything.

Again, most didn’t care and didn’t react.

But here and there, a pudding came to live. A few particles traveled through their transparent skin, to the inside. One Moveling suddenly sucked in a pile of particles, like someone taking a deep breath, and couldn’t stop moving. It twisted, danced, swam, raced every which way.

“Write down!” Eeris yelled. “Eating, or taking in nutrients, is the next characteristic. If you can do that, you can get new energy to use for all the other characteristics.”

“Oh, and additionally,” Darus said, “Even though these animals don’t seem to eat stones, Darus still thinks stones are the best food ever. The fact that he’s the God of Stone and Earth has NOTHING to do with that.”

The group of Movelings shrank further and further. They now had to explore corners of the ocean just to find more. Bella knew of only three more places where they could look. Three bodies of water where they knew Movelings lived: the Wise Sea, the Mayfill, and the very broad Dayriver that branched off of it.

This story, dear reader, played out so long ago that the world was still connected. The entirety of Somnia was a single continent named Volarde. Which means the number of different places was few and they were all close by. But give it some more millions of years, and those tectonic plates by Darus will pull everything apart into the multitude of continents you know from later time periods.

What if Ardex was right? They would end all life before their experiments gave them the final answer? Bella refused to consider it, despite knowing how silly it was to purposely not think about something.

For now they had one amazing group that could breathe, sense, move and eat well. Bella and her siblings left to visit the next of the final three locations.

Bella dove into the water and was disappointed, again. This place seemed dead and abandoned already. A thick fog reduced her sight, helped by crumbs from the seabed and aggressive bubbles that didn’t tickle but hurt. Were they already too late? Was their tiny group of Movelings the only life left?

Eeris didn’t like to hear that. According to her, the Solidlings, her plants, were life too. Still Bella found it hard to hug a plant or talk to them.

A few Movelings crawled in her arms. Gulvi had made a new river, on command, to connect the two oceans. This took far too long, but Bella saw no other way. They needed water to survive, so they couldn’t just carry the Movelings over land. Half of them hadn’t even survived the journey through the ocean. Time was ticking.

Bella extended her paws and tried to find her siblings, but only felt more crumbs, bubbles, and … something else.

“Darus? Eeris? Gulvi?” Her voice caught before it even left her mouth. This entire area felt like a heavy blanket holding her down. What happened in this puddle? Why—

The Movelings in her arms stopped moving. At the same time, the fog thickened. She called it fog, but that wasn’t really true. It were particles, dust, crumbs, currents of liquid that floated through the water. They fell to the floor, yes, which should have made the water clear. But they fell so slowly that it would have taken days. Days they didn’t have.

She tried to return to the water surface, but lost any sense of what was up or down. She felt tickles and scratches everywhere, driving her insane, as if a thousand spiders walked over her body—until she saw it weren’t particles at all.

A gigantic group of Movelings swam past her, on all sides. They surrounded her like a new blanket. Their numbers were higher than in all the other places combined. And these seemed eager to move. They seemed to flee.

Her left ear pricked up at the sound of a low, dangerous growl. She recognized the sound, but didn’t know from what. It wasn’t a sibling—and weren’t they the only life here? The intruder entered her mind again. Her body shivered, which the thousand Movelings in her paws didn’t like.

The growling grew louder.

It had to come from shore. You couldn’t growl underwater. Or, well, until a few days ago she thought they were alone on this planet, but now—

The growl was loud enough to make Bella cower in fear. Fear. For the first time in a long, long while since their banishment, she felt fear. She was a goddess; she felt like a tiny fish that could be eaten at any moment.

She remembered Ardex’ saying: We are gods, we should go TO the danger!

She opened her eyes and whacked around herself. With effort, she could push away the thick fog, bend the water to her will, and swim somewhere. The growls were terrifying now—even though she still recognized them somehow—but also a guiding star. Now she knew what was up.

By the time she’d pushed all Movelings away from her, she burst through the water surface and happily sucked in the fresh air. She was only a stone’s throw from shore; in that misty sea it had felt like she was lost. She had come to the danger, but the danger itself had run away.

She scoured the horizon and found only two black dots chasing each other. Was that … Ardex? And that …

Feria’s Hespryhound! He was here! Oh, they must be receiving more and more objects from home! But then her Heavenmatter should be somewhere around here too: the Book of Meaning. If she could find that, everything would have an answer again. It contained all important knowledge in the universe, such as … how to sustain life.

Something grabbed her hind paws and pulled her back into the water. She dug her claws in the dirt to stay grounded.

“Say,” Darus said as he spit seaweed. “Where was the help? Pull me from that toxic water?”

“It’s not toxic,” Bella said. “It’s filled with Movelings. More than anywhere else. Maybe they need this? This … weird foggy ocean? Only then do they come alive?”

Darus followed a long silhouette below water, until he pulled Eeris to shore as well. Bella felt pride. Give it some time and Darus would be stronger and larger than Ardex. Would that cease their fighting? Or make it worse? And why didn’t Ardex remain the largest animal, being the eldest son? Father said no god could become bigger than those older than them—normally speaking.

Eeris spoke with a smile. “No, they don’t need this to survive. It’s the opposite.”

Her body was nearly unrecognizable, covered in so many plants and Movelings that gave her new brown spots. “They make that fog. It, erm, it’s their piss and poop.”

Darus spit everything out of his mouth. He rubbed his tongue with his paws, as if that could remove the taste. Bella wanted to lick her fur clean, but stopped herself just in time.

“Plants do it too. They take in carbondioxide from the air and convert it to oxygen. Something goes in, something else must come out. This must be a characteristic of life. Life changes.”

“Changing is vague,” Bella said.

“Then write down,” Eeris said. “The next characteristic is excretion. Whatever life eats, it converts into something else, and what it doesn’t need must then go OUT again.”

“And add this,” Darus said. “_The next time, Eeris explains this BEFORE I enter a pool of urine.”

“Not really urine,” Eeris said. Her eyes gleamed as she stuck her paw in the water to feel all the particles there. “They’re not that far. They just excrete random particles they feel they don’t need.”

“Then they don’t need a lot,” Darus said with a sour face. He still tried to remove every memory of this water from his body. Eeris laughed at him and just splashed more water at him.

Bella was in no mood for this and pushed the two away. “The time for games is over! It’s been over for a while!”

The Movelings were healthy here, for now. But slowly the water would just turn into piss, and nothing else, and nobody could survive that. Bella took Movelings in her arms and tried to take them to the next location: the second to last one they hadn’t visited yet.

“We continue!”

“Did you hear that roar too?” Darus said with a frown. “I’d swear it was Feria’s Hespryhound, but—”

“Yes! Me too!” Eeris hobbled over the beach, her neck stretching to see as far as possible. “Maybe my Heavenly Flowers are here too! And your—”

Bella almost exploded. She held up her mostly chipped arms. “We’re out of time, idiots! We continue! What’s your next characteristic?”

Her yelling froze Darus and Eeris. It took a while before the giraffe dared speak again.

“I thought it would be growth.”

“So we … so we have to give them room to grow? Encourage them?” Darus suggested. Then he looked away from Bella’s angry glare and grinned naughtily. “I have a plan, Eeris. I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

What had Ardex ever done to that Hespryhound? He thought it a hundred times, but found no answer. Had Hanah purposely turned the beast against him? No, she wouldn’t do that. But he also didn’t understand her secrecy and why she didn’t already help them all back to the Heavenly Palace.

He crested the next hill, sped up by firemagic. The Hespryhound didn’t seem to care. When Feria made him, born out of magic and love, it was a cute puppy that wanted to hug all day. It was also her first resistance against Father, as he had expressly forbidden it. He kept saying Zyme: gods should not, just for fun, create life on their own. They had to help where needed and let nature be.

Still, he let the Hespryhound live. Even let him grow to a monster that now almost bit off his tail, with teeth like swords.

“Hanah,” he tried again, panting. She was always just ahead of him. Her ears pricked up, but she didn’t turn around or respond. “Tell the beast to like me. Let’s talk!”

And so the trio ran, like a procession, to the Impossible Wall of Darus. Just before reaching it, Hanah took a sharp turn, to where the ocean started. Ardex saw it too: the gate waited for them in those waters.

Why was she doing this? Why not leave the gate in one location? One that’s much better hidden than, well, an open clearing? Or …

“You can’t control the gate, can you?” he yelled at Hanah. Once they reached the shore, he would have nowhere to go. The Hespryhound already breathed in his neck. If only there were trees, or any strong plant, to climb. Ardex was sure he’d win a fight, but he didn’t want to hurt Feria’s magical pet. This had to stop now—and preferably with his entire family returning home to Father.

Hanah jumped on the gate and finally looked at him. “I don’t have as much control as I’d like. Just as I have no idea how the Hespryhound got here.”

Ardex looked disappointed, narrowing his eyes. He already prepared for a fight. “So you can’t ask him to stop attacking me?”

“Oh. No I can. I thought you two were playing, like old times.” Her sand creatures appeared and made a path towards her. The Hespryhound followed, subconsciously, and let Hanah gently touch his forehead. The creature calmed down, much more sweet now, and playfully rolled to her, even though he was several times larger than the small red panda.

Ardex caught his breath. “You thought … running for my life … was a game?”

His attention kept returning to the gate. So close. If he made a surprise leap, his sister couldn’t stop him. What would be the next object? It seemed to happen in order, so now Gulvi’s Heavenmatter would appear. It took a while before he remembered what it was. The dolphin was still very young when they were banished. He had little, and wanted even less, besides playing all day with Hanah.

Hanah spoke loudly and sharply. “When will you understand I have no bad intentions? I care about you, I help you, but do me the honor of listening to me: leave me alone.”

“You know how much we want you with us. How much we want to return to the Heavenly Palace. Why don’t you give the gate to us? Why must we stop our experiments?”

“I don’t control the gate!” Frustrated, Hanah tapped the stone dome around the purple lightning strikes. “It appears somewhere, disappears, and then I have to feel its new location. Those objects also randomly fall out of it.”

Ardex was too curious not to stop closer and ask. “Did … did you test it? Did you … go back home?”

“No. I can’t go back. There is no place for me there. It took me all this time, all my magic, just to make it. For you.”

He tentatively extended a paw. Hanah did not shy away, but also didn’t come closer. He gently stroked her cheeks. Always his little sister, no matter how angry she was.

“You move too quickly. You want too much. Let life invent itself. And if you can’t … go back to Father and try it again elsewhere.”

“You think he’ll take us back?”

“Yes. He is angry with me.”

“Why? You’re the sweetest Goddess I know. And I know all the Gods!”

“Then you do not know me at all.”

The gate lowered. It seemed to speed up. Was he wrong? Would Gulvi’s object not appear?

No, he wasn’t. Just before the gate reached the size of an ant, a huge splash of Fartherwater fell onto shore.

Gulvi had started clearing a large underwater space. To be honest, he’d always found those Solidlings annoying weeds in “his ocean”.

Darus thought the Movelings were held back by the Solidlings. They needed space and sunlight. So they decided to clear them all out.

Bella dove onderwater, saw nothing, and regained hope. The others had removed all plants. After a long discussion with Eeris, about how they didn’t respect her plants, she understood that they had to at least try this.

She brought the plants to shore and planted them in the ground. She still hoped they’d grow there. But she had hoped that for a million years, and still no plant grew out of water.

“Are you sure this will matter at all?” Gulvi asked, reaching the next location through his network of rivers.

“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” Bella mumbled. The small group of remaining Movelings was scraped off the ocean floor and brought to the empty space. It felt weird in her paws, as if they weren’t real animals, but clay that could fall apart any moment. And she didn’t dare take them, like the others, between her teeth.

This place held enough sunlight for all. Enough oxygen. And now, without Solidlings, more than enough space. This will work, Bella told herself repeatedly. She told it to herself when she placed the Movelings, when she watched from afar, and when night fell and their puddings had done nothing more than sink to the ocean floor.

“Well, add this to your book,” Darus sighed. “_Movelings are unthankful and refuse to grow, even when given ample space.”

“Not so negative, wolfybolfy,” Eeris said. “Write this down: it’s not the fault of the Solidlings. They are not at fault. And the gods promise to never again pull these sweet plants from the ocean, for then I will be furious.”

Bella’s expression hardened. “I think I decide what enters my book.”

One pudding shot ahead.

Gulvi dove after it. He turned into his shining dolphin form to help the others track the Moveling. But it stopped just as quickly as it started.

“You scared it!” Eeris yelled.

“Scared?” Darus said. “These beings have no ears, no mouth, no brains, how could they be scared?”

“Fear is one of the first things beings will learn,” Bella said. “If you don’t fear being killed … you’ll be killed pretty quickly.”

Gulvi didn’t respond. He suddenly turned purple, pink, red, as if his light had swallowed a rainbow. The colors followed his heartbeat. It illuminated the entire surroundings, despite it being midnight. Bella raced to Gulvi, afraid he had fallen ill or hurt himself.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Gulvi smiled his widest smile and muttered something. His spell allowed the other gods to see it too: small currents running through the water, like rivers inside the ocean, each a different color. Like a powerful spell cast by a fish magician, traveling through the water in slow-motion.

“My Fartherwater! It’s here!” he squeaked, voice high like a baby. His object allowed him to see memories. The past and perhaps some future. If you purposely saved a memory here, it was saved for longer and with more accuracy, but anything could appear if you knew how to manipulate the Fartherwater.

That’s how it played a sequence of images from the past millions of years.

Their planet was still barren … but when they had just arrived it was far more barren. Now they had their Throne, rivers, mountains, and colored bacteria blankets.

The Movelings were still small and weak … but years ago they were even smaller and weaker, not moving at all.

Something even gods could forget.

“They’ve already grown a lot,” Gulvi said. “But it takes a while. It won’t happen in a few heartbeats, and that has nothing to do with the amount of space.”

Bella swam past, her head filled with sad or funny moments from the past centuries. The endless jokes from Darus and the stumbles of optimistic Eeris. Not a single memory was dedicated to Ardex’ angry glare or her frustrated yelling, for it had never made a difference. The failed attempts and the games, those had brought them this far. She wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

How much they had achieved already. How far they’d already come. Even now, that odd pudding race had given answers, just like Ardex’ silly idea to spit a flame at the water.

Only one body of water was left. One location that contained Movelings on which they could try the final characteristic of life.

She was eager to do it.

It surprised herself. The images showed what they could achieve if they just tried. How silly she was for wanting to flee back to the Heavenly Palace, just days ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid, especially for the Goddess of Wisdom.

What would they do back home? Float around all day without goal? Do the next boring mission that couldn’t fail, just because Father wanted it?

Maybe Darus was right with his Zyme. Life is never safe, never perfect, never answered. The challenge of staying alive, best you can, is exactly the game you want to keep playing.

Ardex ran with Hanah, side by side, looking for the next place where the gate would appear. She could feel it clearly. He barely could, but just enough to keep up with her. The Hespryhound had given up long ago: he slept on the beach somewhere. Hanah claimed Feria could also find her pet based on feeling, once she finally returned from her travels with Cosmo.

“I can do it,” he said. “I can convince the others to want to go back. We leave this planet alone, as you apparently desire.”

“I don’t like that,” Hanah said, running over the next hill. “Manipulating other beings. Convincing them to do something they didn’t actually want to do.”

“They just haven’t thought about it long enough,” Ardex said quickly. “They don’t even know the gate exists yet!”

“And why not? Because you kept it a secret?” Hanah pointed at a dot on the horizon. Ardex saw the gate, but also another sequence of dots. Darus, Eeris and Bella ran over the beach. They headed for the gate, but didn’t seem interested by it. If you didn’t look too closely, he guessed, it was nothing more than a pile of stones.

Ardex showed Hanah his left paw, mostly shredded, and his left tusk—for his right tusk was gone. “Because their experiments had to continue, or we all die! That’s why I stayed silent. But now I know fleeing is the best solution, maybe the only solution.”

Hanah’s Heavenmatter had to appear this time. That gate could spit out her powerful Soulsplitter any time now. The name was terrifying, because it could be used for terrifying things, but Ardex had only seen his sister use it for sweet things.

He didn’t understand how it worked. Only that, after each use, the world had a lot more living creatures, which were healthier and stronger. He assumed you could use it in the opposite way too: to remove all living beings in one quick snap.

It was exactly the object they needed to strengthen the Movelings. Ardex did not know if he wanted that, though. Hanah also didn’t seem to want that. She had created a ridiculously powerful gate, and then realized she couldn’t control it. A connection to Father, the Chiefgod? What if that gate suddenly appears on Dalas? All those creatures could just walk into the Heavenly Palace and …

That’s why she ran to the gate. To protect and close it. To prevent her Soulsplitter entering the wrong paws.

Like Ardex’ paws, who wanted that object very badly now.

When his family noticed Hanah, they immediately turned around and ran to her. Synchronized, as if they prepared this. Bella pushed her Movelings in the water just to give Hanah a warm, long hug. Hanah accepted it, briefly, but wanted to continue, her snout already pointed at the gate. Her eyes studied the small group of Movelings left, full of sorrow and pity.

Ardex came between them. “You are going to kill our Movelings, aren’t you?”

Hanahs eyes turned red as her fur. “I would never willingly erase life! So you really don’t know me at all.”

She stepped away from them. Eeris lay down her neck like an obstacle; Hanah leaned on it, but didn’t climb over it. “If you want complex life, if you want it faster, then I have to accept that. But I tell you, time and time again, that you should not want it. Enjoy every day you have and don’t hurry.”

“Hurry? We’ve been waiting for millions of—”

“It should have been billions of years! But no, your impatience means we have less time to enjoy life now.”

“Less time?” Bella’s voice wavered. She approached Hanah warily. “You … you already know when life ends?”

Hanah shook her head. “Not exactly,” she whispered. “Fortunately not.”

Ardex shuffled to the gate. Any moment, any moment, he thought. Then the Soulsplitter will come out of this thing.

“But … but …” Bella looked around her as if she was lost. “We are so close. Only one characteristic left. This is the final place, the final group of Movelings.”

“It won’t work,” Ardex said immediately, his paw resting on the gate. He tried to play relaxed, but his body was stiff from tension. “And what then? Then we’ll have too little Lifeforce to keep ourselves alive. Might it be better if we … return to the safe palace?”

He tapped against the gate. Bella understood first, then Eeris, then Gulvi in the river, and lastly Darus. “Say, how often has Father said sorry? If it’s fewer than ten thousand times, count me out!”

They all looked at Hanah. She nodded. “I am certain this will bring you beck. Step in, enter the vortex, return to your safe bed. The choice is yours.”

Bella grabbed her sister. “Won’t you join with us, my dear?”

“No. But I will be fine, really.”

“It’s together or not at all,” Eeris stated confidently.

Ardex had foreseen this. Hanah said she couldn’t go back. Father was angry at her. So “together or not” had to mean “not”. He felt the gate shake, as if the water started boiling. He placed his body in front of it.

“I must admit,” Eeris said, “that I have no idea how to accomplish the last characteristic. Our Movelings need to bear children. Procreate. Only then you can be certain of survival in the future. But how?”

“As I said—”

“No, Darus, cutting them in half won’t help.”

“Why not!? You want to turn one thing into two things, so you—”

“They are not stones!” Bella pushed Darus to the floor. “They are living beings! Who feel fear, and pain, and …”

Hanah smiled faintly. “So … they are already alive?”

Ardex didn’t like this. After a hundred heartbeats of silence, Eeris placed the last Movelings in the water. Without doing anything, without Hanah casting any spell, they only now realized some were already procreating.

The pudding cut itself into two. One pudding turned into two smaller, even more misshapen ones. Which slowly turned into four, then eight, and so forth—so slowly that it could take years before each of them had multiplied.

The gate shook, as if the air played it like a drum. Ardex turned around. The purple vortex opened, briefly, and sent a perfectly spherical ball of light straight at him. The object bounced off his tusk and rolled over his face, until his feline reflexes grabbed it in his right paw.

Ardex held the Soulsplitter over his head. “We must go back! Home is where we belong, not this stupid planet! The Heavenly Palace! Think of the gardens, the clouds, the buildings, never in danger—did you all forget!? If you don’t go with me, I will destroy all Movelings!”

Movelings were already dying, turning into tiny dead beings that sank to the seabed. The gods shredded further, Gulvi barely recognizable as a dolphin.

“Stop! Stop!” Eeris and Bella tried to rip the Soulsplitter from Ardex’ claws, but he was too strong. Darus pulled stones out of the ground to bring Ardex off balance, but the Firegod simply burned all land around him to ashes.

Hanah saw it all happen with tired eyes. She did not stop it. Ardex saw the final signs of life disappear from Somnia, and knew his family had to follow him back to the Heavenly Palace soon.

Bella saw the same thing—but felt the opposite. Panic and defeat. The palace was beautiful, yes. But she wanted to be here and experience adventures with her sweet and funny siblings.

Darus growled at Ardex, but walked to the gate. Eeris did the same. Gulvi swam around it, fins tingling with excitement, trying to already touch the gate and be back home.

Bella heard the loud wingbeats of Cosmo nearby. Him and Feria would already be mostly chipped by now and on the way back. Was it really that bad to go back? If Ardex wanted it? If everybody wanted it?

Her shiny black raccoon legs stepped into the water—

And she pulled everyone back to shore. Like a mother dragging their children back home after running away.

Yes, it was bad. Father had banished them; they wouldn’t just go back to him. And now Ardex wanted to do the same: use violence to get what he wanted. Her voice was neutral, but loud. “We are not coming, Ardex. We are not going back.”

The world turned into a painting of gods leaning on other gods, lacking enough paws to stay upright themselves.

“The more we long for home and a perfect solution forever,” Bella said, “the more we ruin our chances on this planet.”

Ardex’ nails dug into the Soulsplitter. A deep sigh flowed through the godchildren, Hanah most of all.

The gate crumbled.

The purple flashes remained, together with one pile of stones, but the remainder of the gate crumbled to dust. Bella realized the truth: the gate could only come into existence because of their desire to go home. Their desire fed the gate. And if you took it away, only Ardex kept the gate alive, with his immovable desire to take revenge on Father.

Ardex’ voice was dry and scrappy. A flame burned on his tongue, ready to erase the final Movelings. “The gate is disappearing! I decide: we go back to the palace. You too, Hanah.”

She stayed where she was. “Impossible, Ardex, and nothing can change that. The Movelings are not dying because of me, or you, or Father.”

Bella thought back to the characteristics of life. Breathing? This water also contained oxygen, also contained plants to make it. Sensitivity and Movement? The Movelings fled hotheaded Ardex on the shore, so that still worked. Some even left behind a trail of particles in the water, as if peeing their pants out of fear—Excretion was fine too. They had just Procreated and their children were much smaller, so Growth was still in there.

And Eating was fine too, right? Didn’t they just take any particles they wanted from the water? Plenty particles were still there to eat. Bella saw them shine like stars underwater. Much larger and clearer than how you’d see them, dear reader, with mere human eyes.

But … maybe there weren’t as many of them as she thought. The longer she looked, the more the final stars died. An entire group of Movelings wanted to procreate, move, breathe, live … but there wasn’t enough food.

“Yes, life needs all characteristics,” Hanah said calmly, as if Ardex wasn’t about to destroy everything and drag everyone back home. “That’s why it’s rare. That’s why we need to really care for it. As the gate is fed by your desire to go home, Movelings are only fed if their environment has enough food.”

“We don’t have more!” Eeris said. She hobbled between the gate and Bella. Between safety and fleeing back home, tail between her legs, or trying to save this place. With each circle, this leaf thief stole some more plants from the water, as if she wanted souvenirs. “What will we do? Feed them stones?”

Bella turned to Darus. All of them did, whenever the words stone, earth or mountain were uttered. As if Darus could hear you throughout the entire universe if you spoke one forbidden word.

He looked pensive.

“Say, stones, right? To you, they are gray things. To me, they are everything. To my magic, it’s almost as if they live.” He stomped the ground. Ten stones flew into the air on his command, to melt into a statue of a plant. “And yet you keep suggesting we let the Movelings eat them? My stones? My babies?”

“They are not babies!” Eeris yelled at him. A wig of seaweed fell over her head, for if they were going home, she wanted to take everything with her. “Stones don’t feel, they don’t grow, they don’t use sunlight like plants, they have no life char … ac … ter … istics.”

It dawned on her too.

That’s why Darus made a plant statue. That’s why he talked about how stones were alive to him. That’s why everyone looked at her, pained.

“It’s unheard of,” Ardex mumbled, forgetting his threats and the Soulsplitter burning his paws. “Life that eats … other life …”

“Plants also fit all the life characteristics,” Eeris said with sorrow. She looked around her for support. All her siblings felt pity, Hanah more than anyone, but it had to happen. The Movelings needed food. Lots of food, quicker food, better food. A few loose particles in the water wasn’t enough, not anymore. If they wanted to grow, become stronger, life longer … they had to start eating plants.

Eeris shook all plants from her body. They fell around her like old, weathered clothes that didn’t fit anymore. Each leaf contained more particles for a Moveling than half the ocean.

“Is there no other way?” She twisted her neck around Darus. “Stones? Right? Or … or … maybe they enjoy sand! AIR! Yes, air is—”

“Air is another characteristic: Breathing.”

“Stones contain basically nothing that Movelings happen to need,” Darus said. “It’s not unexpected that plants are made of exactly the particles that other living beings could use.”

Bella stroked Eeris’ bent neck. “It has to happen.”

The clearing fell silent. The gate sunk further. The gods were too shredded to move. They gave Eeris a consoling hug, though Ardex stayed with the gate and Hanah on the opposite side.

“Is that what you want?” Hanah asked. “You could wait another million years and the Movelings will accidentally discover it themselves. They’ll accidentally learn how to eat plants and how much food it gives you, making that the new dominant way to eat. Do you want to speed it up?”

“Or we die before it happens,” Ardex said. His tail curled around the gate, as if he could stop it from disappearing that way.

Eeris was the first to extend her head above the hug—she was still a giraffe—and look at Hanah. She shook away tears.

Or maybe those were my own tears, dear reader. But as Eeris always said: not so negative. Plants will be eaten, yes, but in return this planet shall receive beautiful life and make interesting leaps forward. Who knows, next time we visit the godchildren, animals might even have left the water already.

“Yes. It has to happen.”

They collected the leaves that Eeris had scattered. They brought them to the last Movelings and placed them right before them. That wasn’t enough, of course. They wouldn’t suddenly understand they had to eat that, and how to do it, and how to use it for energy.

Hanah placed her paws together. The Soulsplitter flew from Ardex’ claws into hers, like pressing a baby against her chest. The object glowed and shivered as Hanah walked along the shore. Only once she passed, nibbles and bites were taken out of the leaves.

To you, dear reader, tiny invisible nibbles from a leaf. Something you’ve seen a million times before and done yourself. For this world, a miracle. The first herbivores—plant eaters—and Bella saw the Movelings shine in all colors.

Ardex was strong enough to keep the gate above water. His tail was stretched like an elastic, his tusk scraping the stone surface, but he held the gate.

For what? For what, though? His family wanted to stay. Even Bella wanted to stay. Only his own desire kept the gate here. Would he throw away everything to get one chance at revenge on Father?

The shredding had already inverted: everyone rapidly received their own body back.

Not surprising, given the numbers of Movelings that exploded under water. Like a bomb that didn’t produce smoke or fire, but living, swimming, energetic creatures.

He looked around one last time. At the purple flashes in the gate. He thought he could see the entrance of the palace, like an imprint on a window that stays for a while after drawing it. His nose thought it smelled that fresh air, his fur thought it felt the heavenly clouds.

He let go of the gate.

The gods kept throwing leaves into the water, but that was unnecessary. The plants were already underwater. And now that the Movelings understood, they searched for food themselves. By the time Ardex stood next to Bella, the first Movelings swam away with haste.

The gate was carried away by the first semblance of fishes. It sunk further, more and more swallowed by waves, until it collapsed. The light went out and Hanah’s body grew in size.

And with the swimming gate, he probably lost his final chance to return home. Another would have found this a sad moment, or a moment of love for his family. Ardex walked away angrily and refused to speak with anyone for a while.

But they had a while. If all went well, they had another million years.

Because from now on, most Movelings lived off of plants. Tissues filled with nutrient particles. And the energy they received now, allowed them to get bigger and bigger, and become more and more, and grow bigger and bigger, and become more and more …

Bella dove into the water and savored the moment. Life had exploded. It had exploded a hundred times. She could barely swim without stumbling into another group of Movelings—beings they slowly started to call Animals now. The only difference was a bit of food. Eating plants. But it felt as if they reinvented life, again.

This is why they did it. This is why they gave their time and tears to this barren planet.

In her godly eyes, Bella already saw the first fish-like creatures emerge. The ocean filled itself with colors, movement, life. A thousand species who had found slightly different ways to move or find food. Worms crawled over the rusting seabed, leaving behind tunnels everywhere. Animals ate the plants, but the particles they excreted also helped new plants grow.

Everything seemed balanced. As if Father had been quite smart when he invented the laws of the universe. As if, if you waited long enough, a Heavenly Palace could emerge anywhere.

And now she found time to play. Just to swim, to tease each other, to insult Darus’ bad jokes. New problems would surely come. Such as the lack of plants on land which meant a lack of land animals too.

But until then? They had their playing ball from home—but really, the entire planet was their playground.

Hanah remained a mystery. She stayed for a few days, then insisted she had to continue alone. When Bella dove into the water like a dolphin, joined by Gulvi, Hanah and her Sandbeings were ready to leave.

Darus talked to Hanah, who listened with half an ear. “But how did you make the gate? Can you teach me? How did you find those special stones?”

“The gate was a big mistake,” Hanah said, scouring the beach for her Sand King. “I couldn’t control it. And now I accidentally let loose very powerful magical objects on this world.”

“Yes, where’s mine?” Darus said. “Everyone has something. Except Bella and I.”

Hanah shrugged. “I’ll look for it. The gate must have spit them out when I wasn’t there.”

Bella climbed ashore and shook her wet raccoon fur. “You think Mother is behind it? She wants to help?”

Hanah laughed. “No. Mother would never do that.”

Bella and Darus frowned. Mother had always been sweet. If they’d returned to the palace, everyone would have visited her first. Father played Chiefgod; Mother stood behind him to clean up his mess.

“But I don’t want to ruin your image and memories of Her. You see, the longer I say, the more I ruin it.”

“No Hanah, no. We want you with us, at the Throne.”

“We weren’t made to sit inside a house and tell life what to do.” Hanah left—Bella knew she couldn’t stop it. “Zyme, zyme, zyme.”

Our Movelings were already alive, Bella thought. But we were too impatient. How could we know? Life can take on so many forms, right? Darus still claims his stones might be alive. If only I had—

“Hanah, did you find my Book of Meaning?”

“No. But I promise that if I find it, I will throw it away and hide it where no soul will ever find it.”

Bella wasn’t sure if she was joking. Hanah didn’t smile, but she always sounded sweet, never angry or mean. She even looked sweet as she walked away, further South. Surely, she could pass that invisible and mysterious wall down there. Maybe she had even made it, to prevent Bella and the others from exploring the world too quickly.

Hanah suddenly waved to something in the sky. Cosmo soared through clouds, a giant bird who was even more intimidating now that he had his Windgustwing. Feria, a beautiful pink fox, hung from his claws. As he placed her on the ground, she immediately jumped to her own feet.

“I am never flying again!”

“And I was so careful!”

“Careful? I’m glad I didn’t break my ribs! And my Hespryhound was smart enough to walk!” Feria hugged everyone, while Cosmo frowned and searched his wings for sharp edges.

“But we had to be quick,” Feria said. “It’s insanity everywhere. Every ocean is now filled with thousands of different creatures.”

Filled? Not now, Bella found, but it would be in a while. Life grew quickly. Eeris tried to have the plants grow equally quickly, to ensure food never ran out.

But a planet? An ocean? It cannot grow. Bella knew, even without her Book of Meaning, where this was headed. Today she would play and enjoy the sun. The next months she’d neatly follow the idea of Zyme. Also because she feared Hanah hid behind every stone to spy on her family and check if they did it right. By doing nothing.

But it didn’t take long, dear reader, before they were in a panic again and hastily took the next evolutionary steps. Like a chain of problems that only grows longer and bigger. A chain of food.

And so it was that life continued …