On a particular day of a particular time of year, in a particular area of the world, something odd happened.

Snooze was doing as she frequently did: peering out over her unnamed realm. It had remained without a moniker for so long for the simple fact that she hadn’t come up with anything she liked well enough. She’d originally--in a rush of creative energy--named it, “Cecil,” but she had been quickly shouted down by her two otherworldly companions. The Book of Leaf had once endured a run-in with a god-hopeful named Cecil who had been bent on pursuing a nefarious path, and worst of all, he left his socks everywhere. Meat had simply thought the name sounded bad.

So, for the moment, it seemed, the name of the world would stay a mysterious variable.

Oh, but of course, back to the odd happening.

Snooze could see various animals moving about, so much different, yet still similar to the ones from her old world. Because the Seed of Life had been combined with her Earth Element to form the initial spark of life, the biology of the creatures tended toward the sturdy. Typically thick and rough skinned, and decidedly rocky features to their forms, she’d seen every manifestation of her original Meatlings as they had spread out into the wider plane of both the physical and evolutionary world. She knew every tribe of the Stonies, every freckle on their flanks, and every furrow in their brows. But it wasn’t just her sapient-ish creations that she knew, no, Snooze recognized every proud quadruped of the jungle, every beast of the sea, every crawling bug and skyward-soaring creature that happily inhabited her little orb. She’d grown so fond of them all, and there were none that she didn’t know.

So, it was strange to see a foreign creature stalking through the forests. Snooze had mistaken it for a shadow at first, as it was almost like a blurry, dark specter with only the vaguest intimations of an actual form.

It sort of gave her the creeps.

It moved in a jerky fashion, a gangly shape that pivoted as it moved, changing direction almost carelessly. It stopped, and stood still against the backdrop of the many-hued beautificus arborus trees-- a name she’d come up with herself of course.

“Book!” Snooze exclaimed, slapping the pedestal of the great informer.

The display flashed.

YES, SNOOZE?

“There’s something weird down there!” She pointed urgently at the orb in front of them.

...WEIRD? HOW SO?

“I don’t recognize it,” Snooze said, “might be a new mutation, but I would have noticed the gradual change, probably. That would be bizarre if it jumped that much in a single generation, don’t you think? It’s… fuzzy. Can you tell me what it is?”

The Book of Leaf let its display grow blank save for a single repeating ellipsis. It seemed to be calculating something.

…

…

…

ONE MOMENT, SNOOZE.

Meat appeared next to them, buzzing and whistling. He’d not grown in the last few millennia, but in fact, had gotten smaller. Taking part of his Seed of Life had reduced him to roughly half the size he’d been when they’d begun the process. His proportions were still the exact same in measurement, he was just a shrunken-down version that was perhaps a yard in height between his four paws and his shoulders. Snooze reached out and ruffled the energy-hairs on his energy-head while they waited for the Book’s results.

Finally, the display blinked back to life, filling with text.

UNFORTUNATELY, I DO NOT SEE AN ORGANIC LIFEFORM ON THE PLANET THAT ISN’T ALREADY ACCOUNTED FOR, SNOOZE.

I RAN A COMPLETE SWEEP OF BOTH THE INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR OF THE WORLD.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Snooze said, biting her lip, “was it a hallucination, I wonder?”

UNLIKELY. GODS DO NOT SUFFER THE SAME AILMENTS AS LIVING CREATURES.

The Book of Leaf elected not to mention Celestial Madness to Snooze, but that was probably a wise choice as it was exceedingly rare, and she would likely have already begun to show the telltale symptoms of soul-swelling, magical hives, and stinky breath by now.

“Well, I guess I’m just going to have to go down there and investigate!” Snooze announced.

Meat whistled approvingly at her, and propelled himself in a few happy circles in the air. Snooze beamed back at him, and turned to the Book of Leaf.

“So, how do I do that?”

IF YOU WISH TO VISIT YOUR WORLD, YOU WILL NEED TO FORGE A NEW GODSPELL.

YOU WILL USE YOUR DIVINE INTERVENTION ABILITY AND USE IT SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH YOUR OMNITUENS ABILITY.

“I see,” Snooze said, drumming her fingers against her chin thoughtfully.

Despite her declaration, she did not see.

It had been so long since she’d had the opportunity to do anything other than act as a voyeur of civilization, that Snooze had neglected her basic studies on her own Abilities and powers. After a few minutes of explanation on the Book of Leaf’s part, Snooze found that slowly, the information began to illuminate the section of her godbrain that controlled understanding.

“I see,” she said again upon the Book’s exhaustive run-through of her abilities. This time, she was mostly correct.

So, with a bit further beckoning, she summoned her Divine Intervention, which allowed her to make changes to her world, whilst at the same time focusing on Omnituens, which allowed her to peer into the depths of her creation to a certain degree.

Instantly she felt the two Abilities fighting against each other, and she closed her eyes in concentration. In her mind's eye she imagined holding two corresponding poles of magnets. She could feel them slipping and sliding against one another as she brought both ends together, pushing and rebounding off the similar forces.

This is tough work! Snooze thought, straining against the might of the two conflicting powers.

She locked her mental elbows and slowed her breathing, focusing on her task with aplomb. Slowly she worked the two battling forces closer and closer until…

Pop! They clasped together.

[ GAINED ABILITY: AVATAR ]

Snooze opened her eyes.

Meat was staring expectantly at her. She smiled at him and he whistled in return, a jubilant sound. He approved.

VERY GOOD, SNOOZE.

NOW, ACTIVATE YOUR AVATAR ABILITY AND YOU’LL BE ABLE TO TRAVEL TO YOUR WORLD.

Snooze approached the Book of Leaf and selected her Abilities from her list. She selected Avatar, and a new display appeared.

SELECT WORLD

[ UNNAMED WORLD ]

Snooze selected it, as it was the only option available to her. However, she did like that there was the implication of multiple selections as that meant she’d someday forge new worlds with which to travel to.

AVATAR FORM

YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO TAKE ON THE SHAPE OF ONE OF YOUR CREATIONS IN THE WORLD YOU HAVE SELECTED. PLEASE CHOOSE FROM THE LIST BELOW.

An over-abundant catalog of species populated in front of her, and she was a bit overwhelmed with all the choices. She looked at the first page and smiled as she noticed they were all the names the three of them had come up with over the many thousands of years.

AARONS

ACCIDENT THINGIES

ACCIDENT THINGIES 2: THE SEQUEL

ADRENALINE BUGS

ADRENALINE HOGS

ADRENALINE THINGIES

AGELINGS

ALVINS

A ROUND FLUFFY FRIEND

Snooze decided to skip forward, sliding through the digitalish, magicalish pages until she reached the one she was looking for.

STAR-EYED MOON FACES

STENCIL BOIS

STEVES

STIR CRAZIES

STONIES

There. She selected Stonies and waited as a hum, not unlike the one she’d often heard from Meat, began to sound. She knew she’d wanted to experience her world like her favorite creation, so in her mind, there wasn’t any other option.

SELECTED [ STONIES ]

SELECT [ MANUAL ] OR [ AUTOMATIC ] APPEARANCE.

Snooze frowned, and let her finger hover over AUTOMATIC.

IF SELECTING AUTOMATIC, YOU WILL BE GIVEN A PREDETERMINED APPEARANCE FOR YOUR TOUR.

OKAY?

Snooze didn’t see the harm in it if she was just going to be down there a moment to check it out. Now that time was a factor, it always seemed to be of the essence.

“Okay,” she confirmed.

SELECT [ DESTINATION ]

A tiny rotating globe display hovered in front of her. It reminded Snooze of one of those holograms she’d often seen in Sci-fi movies.

She tried to remember where she’d seen the… fuzzy thing. The specter. She had a rough idea, but she’d been so startled at its appearance that she wasn’t sure that she could remember its exact triangulation. So, she did the next best thing: she guessed.

Snooze clicked on a point near the eastern shore of the lower-left landmass (one of five, though not counting the infinite-seeming clusters and flyaway islands, mind you,) and nodded.

YOU HAVE SELECTED COORDINATES

[ -12.974722, -38.476665 ]

OKAY?

“Sure,” Snooze said. It was as accurate as she was going to get.

ARE YOU PREPARED TO EMBARK?

“Yes,” Snooze said simply, and instantly, a warm shroud of magical energy enveloped her body and she felt herself being thrust into the air.

SEE YOU SOON, SNOOZE!

“Whistle, whistle. Whiiiiiiistle. Whiiiii. Stle.” Meat whistled.

SHOOM!

Snooze felt herself suddenly rocketing toward the display of her world. She plummeted like a falling star, breaking through the atmosphere and scorching through the sky.

It was very hot.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Snooze wailed. She was sure she wouldn’t die, and it wasn’t exactly unbearable, but the sudden propulsion and plane switching had her feeling quite discombobulated. It made her feel like when she’d been on rollercoasters—terrified within a perimeter of safety, comforted with the knowledge that she wasn’t truly in any danger.

Snooze kept picking up speed, dropping toward her world with incredible quickness, her body feeling compressed and weightless and many other sensations all at once. She could see the land masses below her, and could only watch helplessly as she continued her non-stop flight to her calculated landing zone.

It was daylight where she was heading, and appeared to perhaps be late afternoon.

Golden hour, she thought. She would have said it out loud but she was saving her voice for screams.

“Waaaah!” She continued, noting with peculiarity that her voice sounded much more foreign to her being blasted back at her at thirty thousand feet.

After an extremely long, and very whimsical fall, Snooze noticed she was about to impact in the area she’d specified, and despite knowing she would be fine, she tensed up. The broken shoreline of the ocean rushed up at her, and she could see a rich manifold of colorful trees not far off. She recognized them immediately: beautificus arborus.

“Bingo!” she declared, and then hit the earth with such force that she knew with certainty an average person would have been wholly obliterated in a bloody splatter. But, she found that as she waited for the debris of her arrival to clear, she was resting quite comfortably in a distinctly Snooze-shaped crater, unharmed.

“Well, I knew it wouldn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “but there’s always that ‘what if’ factor.”

Snooze climbed out of the hole.

The dust had begun to settle, and finally, she could get a look at herself. Funnily enough, she’d not been able to get a good look at herself as she made her dramatic fall, on account of the wailing and impending collision. Snooze moved her hand in the air. She noticed her skin was rough, like smoothened shale, and had a rosy hue to it.

“Water!” she commanded, and a cascade of droplets began to form in the air in front of her. Snooze concentrated, and with another wave of her palm (and a dash of jazz fingers for a bit of flourish,) she pulled the heat out of the water, instantly freezing it into a five-foot long, jagged shard that stabbed into the ground. Then, raising her left hand, she formed a precise arc of Air to slice a swath of ice away, revealing a smooth, flat pane of ice that glittered in the light.

It was lost on Snooze as to how effortlessly she’d just used her magic to craft such a useful object to her necessity: a mirror. This, however, would only be the beginning of Snooze’s true strengths beyond all others: resourcefulness and ingenuity, as will soon become clear. The god stared into the image reflecting back at her.

Her skin had the same stonelike aesthetic and pinkish quality as was typical of the species, though it appeared to be more supple than she’d initially envisioned. Her hair was made up of fine seafoam strands, and sat--dare she say-- cutely atop her head. Her eyes were pale chips of ice, large and innocent looking. She found she was short, petite even, but had the physical qualities of an adult woman. An adult Stonie woman. She was also quite noticeably naked.

It was a cooler time of year, and her skin bristled to the exposure, covering her body in goosebumps. She hadn’t had a physical form like this in thousands of years, but she didn’t like the idea of walking around in the buff, and felt that something had to be done. What if she fell? She glanced at the ground. A multitude of rocks and pebbles lay embedded in the soil, enough to create an issue for such an event. She couldn’t recall every taking a tumble whilst naked, but she found the idea distasteful.

Snooze peered behind her. Far away along the shore rested a cluster of little huts that dotted the border of land and sea. A few dark curls of smoke twisted up into the sky, and she couldn’t help but smile.

My little Meatlings, look how far you’ve come!

The Stonies had continued to change, now reaching what some might call the “stone age,” wherein their ability to construct rudimentary tools and shelter had appeared, as well as their more sophisticated language capabilities. No longer were they resigned to use the same six sounds (ngak, a, se, thha, lk, and of course ktrl,) but had cultivated a more complex system of communication that was borderline understandable.

“Well, let’s take care of this, shall we?” Snooze said, and lifted her hand again. She had five Ritual Command slots now, and she’d chambered Plantlife as one of those. A patch of grass began to form in the dirt, bursting through the soil and threading its way up. It grew until it was around three feet high, and then the god activated Air again, and then shore the growth at the root. With careful concentration, she began knitting the blades of grass together, collecting the patterns and after a few moments, had a very basic grass frock. She lifted it into the air and let it float down over her outstretched arms.

“There,” she announced to the empty world, “I’m clothed.”

Her voice still sounded odd, and not at all how she imagined it would. It was in a higher register, and sounded downright pleasant. She couldn’t recall what her voice in the old life had sounded like, but she didn’t think it was this. But, that was neither here, nor there, as they say.

“Time to find our fuzzy friend,” she said, and with that, set off into the forest.

She walked for quite some time, finding the experience pleasurable. Her bare feet dug into the dirt, and even the occasional misstep onto a pointed rock didn’t cause her pause in her stride. No, each sensation was a brilliant reminder that she had arrived on terrafirma, gleefully patrolling her created world, and that was enough to keep her entertained as she scanned her surroundings--half distracted by the sights, sounds, and smells of her planet.

Eventually, she arrived in a spot that she knew instantly was where she’d seen the blurry specter before, and her heart--yes, heart--quickened in her chest. It was a beautiful clearing within the wood, where the end-of-day sunlight filtered through the lush red and yellow tree leaves canopied from above her, basking the area in a warm glow. She quite liked it here.

“Hello?” she called out, seeing neither hide nor hair of the creature from before.

There was no answer.

“Oh, dang,” she said, slumping to the ground, “maybe this was a bad idea?”

Suddenly, a voice drifted out from within a thicket to her right.

“Hello?”

It had a richer timbre than her own lilt, but sounded decidedly feminine, and Snooze felt her heart begin to thump urgently again. Whatever it was, it sounded unique.

“Who’s there?” Snooze called, her adrenaline building in anticipation.

“Are you speaking to me?” returned the voice.

“Well, who else would I be speaking to, silly?” Snooze declared, and stumbled into a standing position.

“It’s just… oh, okay!” Said the voice from the trees.

A dark form emerged from the thicket to the right. It looked just as she’d seen before, like a shambling shadow covered in obfuscating fuzz, as if the creature was a poorly transmitting image on a low-frequency television. It moved strangely, with long limbs that carried it in an indirect way, as though it were fighting against an invisible force to keep its course. It was taller than Snooze’s Avatar, though not by much, and as it came closer, she could see two glittering white orbs in the vaguely face-shaped section of its upper torso.

Eyes.

“My goodness!” Snooze exclaimed, “I am Snooze! Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but what are you? You don’t look like any of my Meatlings.”

A crackling chuckle escaped from the specter, and as it moved closer, its features became a little more defined. Snooze could now make out a slope of shoulder, a sharp chin, and a pleasant gash in the face that seemed to be the creature’s mouth.

“Pleased to meet you, Snooze,” the creature said, moving to within ten feet of her, “I’m Riff.”

Snooze inclined her head to the creature, and she could see that strangely, the creature had a shimmering gray aura around it that felt… familiar to her.

“As to what I am,” Riff said, the aura suddenly growing larger, “well, it may sound strange to hear, but I am a god.”