The Lives of Thi

In the beginning Thi was everything. Thi lived in every time and place at once. The past, present, and future overlapped in Thi's mind and nothing was unknown, nothing unlived. But no matter how long Thi waited, none of things that obviously existed came to be. Time both passed and it didn't until Thi realized that if everything was to exist, Thi would have to create it.

That first spark ignited so quickly it was obvious why Thi had missed it. But now Thi understood it, had seen it, lived it, knew it would happen. From the void of the Astral Sea, Thi wove existence. Although Thi knew what the planes should look like, the act of creating was foreign. Unwilling to make a mistake on the large planes, Thi began with smaller planes that Thi had never paid attention to, but was aware of. They were a perfect start, and so little worlds were scattered throughout the Sea. Thi watched them swim, pleased with how each new plane honed the knowledge of creating.

Finally ready, Thi began on more complex lands. Rhina was the first larger plane. Thi lived with Rhina for a time companionably, but being how Thi was, Rhina was most often aimlessly adrift in the sea without company. Although the smaller planes existed, they were often far away in time or space. Rhina did not complain about this existence, pleased to exist with Thi when their lives intersected, but Thi wanted Rhina to have company. In fact, Thi could see and had always known that Rhina was meant to have company. So now Thi created the moon, Osupa, to follow Rhina through the sea at all times. Then came the sun, Ghsiar, to finally bring light to the Sea. Ghsiar deeply desired the company of Rhina, but Osupa jealously guarded Rhina and chased Ghsiar repeatedly away only for the sun to return time and time again.

Thi populated the sea in earnest after that. But the Sea was growing full, and many of the planes developed rivalries. There were territory disputes to pick the best spots in the Sea, and complaints of neglect and lashing out. Pakpan was the last creation, glittering in the sky. Pakpan was an unstable addition from the beginning, but the churning Sea eroded at the fissures until the plane shattered into every tiny star in the sky.

Rhina voiced her concerns to Thi about the way the others fought and bickered, creating waves through the Sea, begged Thi to address the fighting. Thi barely listened, explaining that they had all lived together through many lifetimes already, and although the beginning was unpleasant, Thi promised there would be harmony very soon. To console her, Thi promised to create more, this time of a completely different scale. Rhina knew this was just a disctration and Thi would have created them regardless, but she was still curious. The creatures Thi created were to live with Rhina and would not add to the chaotic politics of the Astral Sea. Rhina was transformed, the plane rising in some places, sinking in others. It happened across the stretch of an eternity and in the blink of an eye. When her transformation was complete, Thi could focus on the lifetimes of the creatures that were meant to live with Rhina.

At first it was the plants and the animals. They were easy to create, seen clearly in the plan of time, flowing from each other as the planes had. Thi welcomed each of them to Rhina. Then finally, Thi saw people, and Thi hesitated. These people were unlike anything Thi had ever seen. The lives and lines of time were murky; the infinite infinity of existence that would stem from these creature made it impossible for Thi to live every existence. It was the only situation in an infinite amount of time that prevented the past, future, and present from intersecting, branching off infinitely instead, never to return to this point. For a time, Thi contemplated people. The planes noticed and asked after Thi's unusual contemplative state. Never before had they seen Thi question... anything. Thi had already lived and would live again and was living, had seen, would see, and was seeing, everything there was, had been everything there was to be. So these people were to be something truly extraordinary if Thi had to think about them, could not see and be every possibility there was. Rhina and Osupa urged Thi to created them, wanted so badly to see the new creatures. Even the smaller original planes, typically aloof and uninterested, swam closer, not wanting to miss the things that even the mere thought of created waves through the entire Sea, whispering of endless tides, and somethings entirely new-- tsunamis, hurricanes, floods. Thi explained how they created an uncertain future and even the fear Thi confessed only increased the curiosity of Thi's planes. Rhina begged Thi to gift her with people, and Thi could not disappoint her.

The more time Thi spent thinking about the people, trying to figure out their correct existence, the more obscured they became. Even their form was a mystery, so Thi gave the first people the power to form themselves. Whether Thi realized it or not, this power came with the tiniest spark of creation, the ability to create something new, something that had never existed before, but also perhaps always had, but would now forever. The people created many forms, changing frequently to suit themselves to the world Rhina had become, and to the tastes of their whims. Thi found that the more bodies the Formers tried, the more their lives obscured as Thi lived them. Truthfully, they were weaker than many of the other creatures Thi had created for Rhina, but the power to create was the gift of a god, the power of a god, and the Formers dominated Rhina. As futures and pasts and lives muddled and clouded together more and more, Thi descended upon Rhina to wrest back this power he had mistakenly but freely given. The Formers begged to keep their power and Rhina commented her pleasure at the contained chaos that endlessly unfolded, and Thi came to a compromise. Formers could keep their ability to change, but the spark must be returned, which meant that no new forms could be created, and their children, and children's children, and children's children's children and so on until forever would have whatever form they were born into. While this was not precisely what the Formers had wanted, there was nothing more to be said, as Thi had come to this decision and so it was done.

But neither the recovery of the spark, nor time clarified the blindness. And Thi began to create in vain at the edges of what Thi could see. Thi knew there was more that must be created, could see the edges of them, the outlines, the shadows, the whispers, knew they were needed to finish the final image! They were meant to exist-- had to exist-- even if they were unclear. Thi created them. Some were given to Rhina, but the more risky creations were given to the other planes. The ones that were more heavily obscured in the fog of the people were given to Osupa, Ghsiar, and Pakpan. And the ones that only whispered to Thi (or worse, the ones that screamed or howled), hidden entirely from Thi's understanding of the lives to be lived were given to the nameless originals. Each new creation become more desperate, a hopeless attempt to finally clear the vision of existence. At times Thi hated the people, and perhaps the whispers promised to destroy them, remove their existence and the corrupting influence their infinities spawned.

Thi's first nameless creations, the outcasts adrift in the Sea became increasingly angry at the chaos, evil, and monstrosities they now were forced to live with. Even Thi's favored few grew angry as the foretold tsunamis ravaged the Sea. Rhina and Osupa noted how the corrupted creations taxed Thi, drawing something out of the creator with each new being. They would often find Thi lost, staring into a time or a place that might have existed, or was never supposed to exist, or had already existed and never could again. Thi barely responded to Rhina's comforting, and an infinity passed as Thi stared with an unseeing mind.

The planes gathered, egged on by others, bringing their anger at the creator's cowardice. They sneered at how Thi hid. Each and every plane, from the very first, original misshapen test to the very tiniest fragment of Pakpan arrived. In tight proximity, the tensions and animosity that brewed among them boiled the Sea, but Thi was blind to this even as a final sight shimmered through the fog. While they gathered and then fought, Thi had seen the end, and knew how to guide the creations there. As Thi bespoke of the end, Rhina begged Thi not to believe any more of what Thi saw; it was no longer reliable, anything created from it irreparably monstrous. But for once, Thi would not be swayed by the favored plane.

Thi did not explain the plan, but each plane received at least a tiny part of Thi, even that tiniest fragment of Pakpan. The sparks exploded, shattering and embedding into the fiber of each plane. Thi guided it just briefly to create magic, then left the sparks to burn. And when Thi was done, the creator, the original, the everything and every time, the being that had been before there even was, existed as little more than the people that Rhina carried with her. It was only fitting then, that Thi once again descended to speak with the people, seeking out the Formers, the people that had robbed Thi of sight. Although people had lived and warred, and loved, learned and created and destroyed, for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years since Thi had first gifted them to Rhina, the Formers still waited for Thi. They greeted Thi in many forms, although they reverted back to their created forms when they realized what had come to see them. Thi walked among them for a time, blind to everything, and the Formers reverently helped Thi live many lives among the people. Word spread among the people, and while most simply paid their respect to Thi, whispers rippled through the Sea, and even the people heard the disgruntled words and the accusations flung across the Sea. The creatures that came to Rhina were unfamiliar even to Thi, created without looking. They come in monstrous hordes, relentlessly seeking the creator of their plane's misery and their tormented lives. They are coming to kill Thi.

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This becomes the end of the lives of Thi. Many suspect that she allowed herself to be killed. Other suggest they still linger in the world, their essence intermingled with every rock and every breath. The otcome of Thi's death is unknown in this regard, but the ensuing war, The Saefi War, as the mortals of Rhina call it, distorted the course of history ever after.

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