Laurence was enthralled by Luke. He was the first real immortal that the boy had ever knowingly met, and constantly bombarded him with questions about immortality. Eventually he sat Laurence and Yun down and asked if he would like to hear a story. Laurence agreed without a second’s thought, so sat down with a warm drink and listened to the man talk.

“In the beginning...” He began. He spoke with a sombreness that that seemed to imply he missed the beginning of all things. “In the beginning there was nothing. Nothing but the stone and the void. Nothing to see or hear, to eat or even breathe. Nothing but cold, hard, rock and an abyss of emptiness.” Luke stood at his kitchen area and began making some food. He brought out the leg of an animal from a storage space of his and began preparing it as he spoke.

"That was all there was, all there could be until the eye opened, until it reared it's head for the first time.” He began to pound the meat, tenderising the leg beyond what was needed. “For thirty days the eye comprehended only why it lived. It could do no else. Each moment of the day it would spend introspecting and analysing, until finally on the thirtieth day it knew «Life».” He stopped pounding the meat and began roughly putting in shards of a root vegetable that looked very much like garlic. “This is why each month has thirty days.

“Once it knew what it was, it decided it needed a name. It called itself Babel and decide that it was a she.” Luke stabbed six pieces of garlic into the leg at equidistant points, each time pushing his thumb into the beast until it was past his first knuckle. “Babel decided that she needed to understand more than just herself, so she looked at what she was not.” He pulled out some salt and began crushing it with great gusto. “She spent ten months on this. Ten whole months, until she finally knew «Death» and all that it contained. This is why ten months is a year to us.”

Once the salt had been crushed to fine powder, Luke grabbed some herbs from the side and tore them to shreds, before adding them to the powder. “Babel knew what she was, and what she was not. She knew life and death in their most intimate and purest forms, but that was all she knew. She craved more, so she looked out into the world she was part of. She stared into the void, looking, studying and analysing, until finally she saw the primal nature of things. She witnessed the elements in their most basic forms and knew «Chaos».” With the herbal salt mixture that he created, Luke began to rub the animal leg down. He was as vigorous with this as he had been with everything else. It was like he was still trying to hurt the animal, even though it had long since died.

“She understood the building blocks of reality, but lacked the way they connected together to form everything, or anything. So once again she looked. She observed the elements and how they interacted until she had seen as many permutations as there could be. She saw that there was a beautiful unity in the way that the elements connected, but she still did not know why they connected like they did. Finally she saw the fundamental laws that make up our universe and understood «Order».

“She was getting closer to the understanding she sought after, she could feel it. However it eluded her grasp. For days she could not see what she was missing. Days turned into weeks and weeks became months. For the first time in her life, Babel was directionless. Eventually, in a fit of rage, she destroyed the earth and watched it shatter. She destroyed half the world she knew so she could understand more.” There was pride in Luke’s voice as he says this. Pride, when before there had only been slowly tempered rage. He began covering the roast in oil and putting a variety of vegetables on the tray he had set up.

“With this one act...” He continued, as he put the tray of food in the oven he had prepared. “With this one act she realised what she had been missing. With rage she understood «Destruction». She began driving everything she knew, everything there was to ruin. She only stopped when there was nothing left to destroy. Once more feeling empty,she knew there was something else left in the universe for her to understand. However she could not fill the void until she got an idea stuck in her mind. She had to fill the void somehow, fill it with everything in her mind and allow it to progress like she did. She laid the foundations and began creating her great tower of layered realities.

“The moment she began constructing the magnum opus that would be known by her name she gained the knowledge of «Creation». And so, five years and thirty days after she first opened her eyes she became sovereign of all. With her great knowledge she created the boundless earths and the land on high, then sat on her throne at the top of the tower ushering in the second cycle.”

Laurence sat while Luke told the story, completely enraptured. He had heard the story before, but the version his father had always told him was different in tone. The way Laurence's father spoke of ‘the first’, who he assumed to be Babel, bordered on reverence. Luke, on the other hand, spoke of the story like he hated her. He just sat for a minute, scratching between Yun’s ears, and thought about the differences in the stories. Finally he spoke. “Your story is slightly different to the one I know.”

“I'm sure it is.” Luke replied. “It's only the first half of the story too. Do you want to hear the second half?”

“Of course!” Said the young boy, eyes bright at the idea of learning something new about his world's creation myth.