Then there was something. A blink of consciousness, into a green and blue void of space and time. She sees a branch, and then words form in her mind. Language and thought, downloaded directly into her very being at a rapid but somehow still manageable pace. The basics, of course. I’m born of Yggdrasil, she thought. A newborn child of mythology, her pages blank of all history. Ready to make her mark upon the multiverse and cosmos. There was still yet so much to be done, though.

She was a beautiful woman, of darkened and tanned skin. She was nude, as all newborns are. Her skin unscarred and unmarked by time or touch. She possessed gorgeous orange eyes, along with a smooth and youthful face. Her hair was of shoulder length, black as night. It would have been considered difficult to mark her out of a crowd if she wore standard clothing, beyond her otherworldly eyes that seemed to glow in dimmer light conditions. What conditions did she find herself in, but a void that she remained in for indeterminate time.

Create, another word popped in her head. What to create, though? She supposed that she was to start with the basics. Hmmm, ground. Yes, that’ll do. It was not an instantaneous process, as dirt formed beneath her feet while she levitated several feet above. Grass came after, and she found feet touching and feeling earth for what she could only perceive as the first time. She found it to her liking. The blades tickled between her toes, which cracked a smile and a giggle. There’s a voice, she discovered! My my, that will be useful.

She spoke aloud for the first time in her existence, “Uh, more?”

She noticed her plot of land being smaller than a single acre. She expected a world, somehow. That thought formulated into an expansive field, the dirt forming into a flatland of comforting grass. She frowned, the aesthetics of which displeased her. She expected rolling hills, and then it became so. The land became pregnant, birthing further plantlife. The more she thought, the more that there was. Trees began to sprout from the branch of Yggdrasil, spawning a sparse forest that dotted the landscape, which by the hour was becoming more homely and livable. Hour by hour, more necessities were required. A house, some clothes. She thought nothing of her nudity, but if she were to have guests in the future she’d figure it may be polite to possess some form of robe. So it came to pass, a lovingly layered dress formed around her, the fabrics born of grass and reeds that had made their home around her. It was simple in form, but it’ll do for her purposes.

Though, her purpose still eluded her. As information slowly crawled its way into her mind, she thought of childbirth and immediately painted her spawning as irregular. She was not born directly from the gods that call Yggdrasil their home, but the universe deemed her existence necessary. What is she, who is she. So many questions, and not a soul was around to answer them. She surmised that she too, was perhaps a god. A god of what, though? She still lacks a name, and a motivation that still eluded her. She’ll have to start with something of course, and the only thing that truly came to mind was… “Matriarch”. More of a title than a name but parents have done worse, and she has none to speak of. Still, the thought of motivation creeped into her mind, and she just wanted to learn. So much, as much as possible. Just as the thoughts came to be, a massive summit of a structure broke free from the void and into her grassland. The rumbling was intense, the ground shook beneath her and she popped into some levitation to counteract the sensation. The Matriarch had to investigate of course.

The building was fairly featureless in its own right. It lacked windows, and was more of a monolith than a building. It was longer than it was wide, but it had to have been a few dozen stories in height, and easily dominated much of the early flatlands she had created. Her brows furrowed at this, as it was quite the eyesore in comparison to the beauty of the land she originally created. She still lacked a house proper, and if she was as powerful in this realm as she thinks she is then there might be plenty of room for improvement. Still, the investigation had to continue.

Hells, there’s not even a door. Then there was, as her thought willed it to be. She stepped inside and was overcome with senses. It was nothing like the land of nothing on the outside. It was… a library. Refurbished and practically used. It utilized darker browns and was lit very dimly, looking abandoned and apocalyptic. There was a draft coming from an unknown source, as stacks of scrolls and papers fluttered around the place without a care. Using her very limited detective skills, she surmised that it was indeed an abandoned library. She heard no sounds of any beast or persons, but the halls and shelves echoed the flying of papers and the shuffling of books as time and weight shifted their location. Of significant interest, she randomly picked one and skimmed the initial pages. First in a language she did not at all understand, the words shifted into understanding within a few moments. It was a collection of poetry, based around forlorn lost loved ones. The themes involved wartime, or hasted divorces due to family and circumstance. Cute, she thought, but her investigation was not over. She shut the book and flicked her fingers across several bindings, enjoying the sensation of the rough leathers they boasted. Plucking another book out merely a foot or so away, she discovered that the theme could not have been more different. It was a combat manual, with plenty of pictures and diagrams. It was a sort of martial art, originating in an earthen country. Her expression was neutral, but she nodded in approval as a realization hit her.

“Gods and hells,” she thought, albeit aloud despite not a soul to be present to hear. “There’s no sorting here whatsoever, is there.” A smile cracked upon her face, which contorted into a deep grin. It’d take quite a bit of time to sort this mess, wouldn’t it? A type of glee washed over her. Sorting would require a great deal of reading. Her motivation was a bit blurred before, just an abstract thought. However it just became very clear and very real. The Matriarch exists to learn, and that’s exactly what she would go on to do.

To a mortal’s perception, hundreds of years would have gone by. Several, in fact. The sorting of her expanse of knowledge only took a couple of decades with some focused sorting, but Matriarch would have gone ahead and added another as her focus constantly drifted into reading the books in full. Her sorting was haphazard, being categorical rather than alphabetical. She eventually decided to sort them by some earthen centuries to help her follow a linear path of technological understanding. Effectively learning things ‘in order’.

The Matriarch learned how humans evolved from primates, to walking and speaking. They discovered fire, language, and civilization. She learned of the weapons and war they created and used upon each other, as well as educated her on their love of music and art. She loved it all. As she drifted into the more modern times that included engineering and computers, she thought those would be incredibly useful tools in streamlining her process.

So, she created her own estate with the full benefits of electricity. An octagonal tower with various wings dedicated to the expected purposes. An office, a kitchen, some guest bedrooms. Just in case.

Her estate was extravagant and comfortable. She went with a theme of red and white appealed to her greatly, with the occasional black highlight. Even in terms of color theory, this was a popular choice in human culture and media. The colors just complimented each other well, the sharpness of red complimented the monochrome of the black and white, and it’s a theme she would use throughout her void-spawned estate. With the occasional practical choice of brown and other colors, as to make sure her interior did not look like a cartoon of some kind.

The guest bedrooms were more or less scaled down versions of her own main bedroom, which housed some of the obvious necessities. A desk, a computer, a bed. Singles for the guests, a double for herself as she liked to sprawl around and swim in the silks from time to time. Sleep seemed to have been unnecessary for her, but she still found it useful to decompress her mind after several dozen hours of straight reading.

Her office was outfitted with computers and a sort of emulated internet; in the sense that she was not directly connected to anything. Ultimately, her systems effectively “refreshed” every so often to give her access to more updated information.

As alluded to, none of this happened over a small period of time. She’d dedicate chunks of time to singular tasks. Sorting the library took the bulk of her first few years of existence. Again, as sleep and sustenance was unnecessary, her own estate did not become important until she read about things that she simply wanted to possess. Once a manual of interior decorating was discovered, well… she just had to have it of course.

In a way, her own personal realm remained disconnected from all others. She yearned to explore, but there was still far too much to learn in order to be prepared to interact with others. A creeping, nagging feeling became incredibly irritating to deal with over a grand deal of time. She was lonely, as the more she learned of outside worlds the more she wanted to interact with them. There was of course, nothing blocking her from directly doing so. The massive branch of Yggdrasil that hung over the blue and green alien sky still invited her soul to find the nine realms and beyond, to possibly even meet her creators. She still felt too impotent to interact with her fellow gods. As they were thousands her senior, with the activity and experience to match such a boastful existence. All she had were books, and as some mortal scholars have said; “Experience is the best teacher of all”. She wasn’t even sure her own existence was known at all. Of all the centuries she spent fixing up her realm, not a single soul or deity found themselves to her. No answers, no family, not even a reverberation in the aether. It was an awful feeling, a quivering in her heart. She wanted so much, but saw so little of herself.