Creation Myth

In a tale that does not begin. 
Lived a man who's life was dreaming . 

He told dreams for a year and a day. 
In a room with an open box. 

He had a fire that flickered dragons. 
He had a bird of ghostly song. 
He had a night sky filled with vampires. 
His dawn brought by soft winged doves.

It was he who first dreamed of darkness .
He first dreamed of love . 

In a house in the first great forest, 
in which we all still live. 
The old man tells his last dream . 
He closes the gilded box. 

And the songbird loved the vampire. 

The dragons begat the doves. 

Love was filled with darkness  

In the light they made came Man. 

"Alright so what does it mean ?"
He was pleased that his voice sounded steady, interested. His heart was making his ribcage feel like an internal earthquake . 
"I think it's all just metaphor really. " she said and he took it as an excuse to turn his head and look at her through the stems of grass. 
She was lying with her hands folded over her stomach, just below the swell of her breasts. Her green eyes following the slow movement of fluffy white clouds. 
He dragged his eyes away from her and lay back to look at them himself. He tried to remember if he'd ever seen clouds so wonderfully outlined in dark grey. He didn't think he had. 
He knew that he had never met anyone like Gai. Knew, instinctively, that there could not be anyone else like her. She sat up. One fluid movement that suddenly had her facing him , cross legged with her baggy shorts leading his eyes towards. ..Panic. 
"Wha, a metaphor for what? " Fumbling, she laughs and he knows that she's not laughing at the question. 
"Duality ". She said and sprang to her feet . "I'm going to the river. Can you swim? ". Adam had to follow her. Had to. 
Gai lived directly across the valley from Adam. The house had grown at the start of the summer and she arrived a week later.  Adam had expected the usual, people would stay there while they had business on the sphere. Flyers would flit back and forth to the city or the port just as his parents did and as he soon would. This valley hardly saw people at all these days, just kids. 
Gai was different. She went walking. 
Adam had been born in the valley fifteen years previously and had never left it. He thought he was the only one who walked the rivers run. Then he started to watch Gai. 
He watched with just his own eyes to begin with. Leaning on the balcony of his room he would watch her when she left her house and pranced down the hill to the copse and the river. 
Then he started to send his starling and watched screentimed through it's eyes. It wasn't spying he told himself but he knew he was lying. 
He was entranced. Every day he looked through his birds eyes every day and watched her dance. 
Then he started to plan and time his own walks along the river so that they would pass on opposite sides so he could wave.  Then he refined the timing so until they finally met at the impossible bridge.  They looked at each other across the waters race and she chose to cross. Adams heart soared. 
Everyone knows that you can't get hurt on a sphere but the impossible bridge is still scary. It's just something about the arch.  Most people tentatively creep across with arms outstretched but Gai pirouetted the length of the span. 
Downy fur over dark freckled skin and eyes made of emeralds she finished her dance facing him.
"Hello Adam,  I'm Gai, the starling told me your name "
He felt the world shift. 
"I think I prefer your side of the valley " she said "have you met my finch? ".
A goldfinch landed on his shoulder and Gai laughed. A beautiful sound. The finch pecked him  (quite hard ) on the earlobe and she laughed harder. 
"She says that you shouldn't spy ".
Gai tilted her head slightly and asked  "Would you like to walk with me? "
That had been a week ago and they had met at the bridge every day since. 
As they walked their birds flew and flitted twenty or so yards behind them, even the sphere sensing that they should have some space to talk about nothing. 
Nothing and everything. Abstractions and aspirations. Random observations that sound and feel profound. All the things that cumulatively become young love .
Today, as he'd listened to her tell of her dreaming man Adam decided that he would kiss her. He would tell her that he loved her. Explain that when he wasn't with her she filled his mind so completely that it was almost a physical pain. 
Today, with the decision made, as he chased after her lovely form (not to quickly while she was wearing those shorts ) he felt braver than he ever had and more terrified than he thought possible. 

Suddenly Gai stopped dead and turned back to him looking confused. Adam felt it almost simultaneously. A cold bite to the wind that just felt wrong. 
The light dimmed and they both looked to the sky. The sky simply was wrong. No sky on a federation sphere should ever look like that. 
The dark grey that had gifted the earlier clouds with wonderful contrast now filled the far horizon with a malign, boiling black that swallowed the sun. 
They were sphere kids and they instinctively looked for the birds, their own personal links to the sphere. 
The starling and the finch had vanished with the sun. 
Gai started saying "no,no, no, no, no " over and over. 
She looked profoundly scared and he ran to her and held her. She clung to him still repeating no.
Then they heard the screaming. 
A sound so soul piercing and terrible it hurt to hear. A distillation of all the universes pain and loss. 
The screaming came from the river and they ran down the hill towards the sound.
They got to the river at the point where it widens out and calms after the rapids under the impossible bridge. The horror they found took the strength from Adams legs and he nearly folded to his knees. The girl who had been screaming and was now sobbing uncontrollably on the opposite bank was called Angharad and she lived further up the valley. 
She was about twelve and her younger brother David was five or six. David who now floated face down in the reeds on their side of the river.  David who would never be older than his five or six years. 
Adam looked at Gai and saw the tears pouring down her face. He could taste the salt of his own tears. 
They didn't say anything as they both waded into the river to bring him back to his sister. 
He had fallen from the impossible bridge. 
On a sphere that should have been impossible. The fields that control everything on or in a sphere should of caught him. 
The rapids upstream had done a number on him. As Adam lifted him from the reeds he did his best to cradle him to his chest and hide the worst of it from Angharad. Adam looked at Gai. The tears had dried and had been replaced with a cold hard anger in the emeralds. She nodded and they waded across to the other side. 
Adam gently laid David by Angharad and she folded her body over his keening a heartbreaking whine. Her whole frame shaking with spasmodic sobs. 
Adam just stared at the tragedy of it and felt inadequate and useless and frustrated. Gai touched him on the arm and he turned to her. 
"Adam " she said "you need to get them back to their own house and stay with them. " He knew that she was right. The emeralds flashed anger again. 
"I need to go to Prime. As soon as you can please come and find me. When you get to the city look for Sven Manolson, he fixes up flyers. I have to go. "
She was about to run back to her house but turned back leant into him, whispered "I love you, Adam ".Then she kissed him. Then she was gone. 
Adams world had been torn apart. 
The gods that ordered his universe had forsaken them cruelly taking this small life with their leaving. 
Gai said that she loved him. 
As the first raindrops began to fall he bent to help Angharad to her feet, she insisted on carrying David, and he escorted them back to the sadness of their family. 
And Gai said that she loved him. 

(This is the first chapter of a novel that I started 34 years ago. I will try to finish chapter two before 2052)