Once upon a time, there was a girl who burnt as hot and bright as the molten centre of the earth, which was only fitting, as it was where she had been born, and all she had ever seen. Once, when she had been much, much younger, the surface of the planet she called home had been hotter, and she had stared at the stars as she floated in rivers of magma. But, she had only grown larger, and the outside of the earth cooler, and the passing of time now threatened to strip the memories of space from her entirely. And so she figured, that if she compressed herself into a small enough version of herself, and contained all her heat within her core, and let her outside shell cool, much like the earth itself, she could walk upon the surface.
So she began to swim upwards from the centre, and every time she got closer to the surface, she compressed herself little bit more. Until, eventually, after days, years, or even decades, she broke the surface in a fiery explosion in the middle of the ocean, for she had bored a hole through the surface of the earth, inadvertently creating a volcano. And so, as she cooled in the sea, while the volcano grew around her, the girl laughed in her heart and stared at the sky, and decided she would travel the surface of the earth, even as her weight doomed her to sink to the ground, for she was made of glass and obsidian and basalt and other things that shone and gleamed and glistened, as her fiery heart burnt away in the centre of her being.
The girl walked along the surface of the sea, and even as she heated the ocean around her, she gazed upon the fish, and danced amongst the coral and other sea life, even as some of the hardier algae and moss grew on her, and carved pictures of the sights she’d seen onto the outer shell of her ‘body’. And so she walked and travelled and frolicked, until she came to a large precipice of rock, which extended above what she could see. So the girl began to climb, slowly at first, until she eventually became used to it, when she finally reached the top. The girl had reached land.
It was a vast expanse, of hills, valleys, and mountains. With lakes and rivers dividing it, as it rose out of the sea, and the girl stood at only one end, so she desired to see all of what stretched before her, so she could walk it. To accomplish this, the girl reasoned that she would need to climb to the tallest structure around, and survey the land below it. So the girl craned her neck, and came to the obvious conclusion that the ‘tallest’ was the structure that rose above all others, a giant tree, with branches as many and varied as there were stars in the sky. And so the girl began to walk towards the base of the tree, which was many miles away. The girl was not an organic lifeform, merely an intelligent one, and so she had no need for water, or food, or even air, as her travels through the depths of the ocean had proved.
And while the journey to the trunk of the tree would take many years on foot, the girl, who was arguably older than anything else on the surface of the earth, walked on, and continued to chronicle the sights she’d witnessed in her skin, until she reached the trunk of the tree, and one again began to climb. Branch, after branch, after branch, she placed hands and feet above hands and feet, as she climbed steadily high, past even the tallest of mountains, or the highest of clouds, until she felt close enough to the stars she felt she could touch them. And as the leaves of the tree whispered to her, she, who had no vocal cords to speak with, drew air through her body, and whistled like windchimes, or breezes through canyons of rock. And, as she reached the very top of the tree, and stared at the sky and the land beneath it, the tree began to grow just a little bit more, until the new growth looked almost just like the girl.
The New Girl did not have hair of fine obsidian, or a heart of fire, or a body of basalt, glass and crystal diamond. Instead, she had hair of leaves, and vines, and flowers, and a body of bark and wood, and roots which connected her to the tree pumped sap into her veins to act as blood, even as she rapidly modified her body to become self-sufficient, to photosynthesise using the sun. And while the Glass Girl could only whistle in notes and tunes, the Tree Girl could only rustle in whispers. And so the two began to talk using signs from their fingers, and sounds to mimic ones the other was making, until they had a language all on their own, the first language ever to exist upon Earth, for that was where they were. And even as the Glass Girl scratched new signs onto her arms, and face, and legs and torso to signify to the climb, and the meeting, and the observance of the stars and the land below it, the Tree girl bloomed flowers of differing colours and patterns in imitation. And so the two grasped hands, and wandered into the world together.
