*
Other world builders might have left them to their struggle, but how could I when my humans crawled toward the precipice of possibility? They called me Tiamat, the Sumerians. And while I wore another face back then, I can assure you I was no multiheaded dragon goddess as the myths recorded. I taught them to fish, to craft nets and small vessels. I taught them irrigation, how to wield the power of the Tigris and Euphrates. It was a busy time, as you might guess. I immersed myself in these teachings, with side projects like building ziggurats. If I stopped for long, I would miss Nuri and my cave daughter whenever I saw a couple embrace or heard a child crying. I had a cat named Nuri during the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. For a while, saying her name out loud brought me comfort. I could pretend my daughter was with me. Nuri, dinner is ready. Nuri, time for bed. Nuri, I love you. Nuri, have you met your sister among the stars? Where are you, Nuri? Where are you?
*
Do you see them? I asked her. Through the scope, we saw people hunting strange beasts with long sticks, people much smaller than us with skin you couldn’t see through, no light dancing within like nebulae. They had hair, like so many species, and traveled great distances in groups, carrying fire. The grass was green, not purple like our rolling hills. Some families had four-legged pets like her Zhirian Jabi （except without the horns and scales）。 I saw wars among larger tribes, wars of people clad in metal. I saw tiny vessels breaking free of the planet, great cities floating above in rings of glass. I saw a civilization that could destroy itself before it even reached the nearest star. But I also saw a world that would be the first to witness the quiet of intergalactic space and walk on the ruins of whatever remains of us.
When I think about my world, I imagine my husband in the fields, tending to the last seed our people ever launched. The riverbeds have grown dry and dull, no longer gleaming; our ganglia of caves succumbed to darkness long ago. Most of our kind have already left to tend their worlds, find other homes, blend in somewhere, living out eternity as simply as they can. The fields are empty now save for one seed, leaving large tracts of our planet pocked with craters holding only remnants of the worlds they once contained—voices, moments in history, the sounds of animals, the smell of exotic fruit. I’d like to believe my husband and daughter are getting on well, that in my absence they’ve learned to lean on each other. Do they visit Earth’s seed crater and train a probability scope on scraps of light in the soil to catch a glimpse of my new home? Do they dream about the lives I’ve lived? Do they, as I do, gaze at the sky, all the billions of years of light that separate us, before going to sleep?
*
The destruction of Earth’s first advanced civilization was partly my fault, I admit. I gave the Atlantians too much too soon. They weren’t ready for the knowledge. I felt sorry for the children—how they ran, screamed for their parents as Atlantis shook. Oh, and how it shook. Their scientists shot three tiny stars beneath the ground, hoping to quell the shaking of the volcano, absorb the energy of the planet. They twisted my words, weaponized them, until even I could not say for certain what would happen. And so, the stars grew until the ground cracked and glowed red. The quake amplified and the sea enveloped the barriers of the city’s outer rings, swallowed the land for as far as I could see. Stone guardians and ancient kings the size of skyscrapers collapsed, crumbling beneath the waves. I watched from one of the few boats that made it out, holding a girl who had no one else. I sang her lullabies from seven worlds, the same songs I sang to Nuri. And when we landed in what would become Greece, I slipped away, leaving the child beside the belongings of a young couple. But before I left, I whispered to her: “Your family will always be with you. Don’t forget them. Be strong.” I walked and walked and spent the next few ages alone. I let humanity be.
*
On my home world right before I left, I came upon my husband in the seed fields showing Nuri how world builders inject possibility into each seed, adding with trained precision the chemicals and minerals we debate for thousands of years.
“It’s not entirely up to you,” my husband explained to Nuri. “We plant potential realities. What we see through our scopes may or may not happen—at least in this universe.”
“So, who decides?” Nuri asked.
“Some of it is chance,” I explained. “Hope, love, ingenuity. Possibility is more than what runs through our veins, little one.”
Nuri walked up to the seed that was assigned to her and held a possibility scope to its glowing membrane.