Of all The Seven, Aomy may well be the god most expected to be procrastinating in any given circumstance. However, all The Seven were people, and a common throughline of people in both inhabited worlds, was a desire to put off things you didn’t want to do until later. So, perhaps it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that Aomy was not the only god procrastinating this day.

Surrounded by a glorious forest of 100-foot-tall birch, Naturum lay completely face down in a field of moss. Her green skin, hair and clothes camouflaged her amongst the plants, causing a herd of green hamsters to prod her curiously, to little reaction.

She’d made a start. The flora of her new land was glorious, huge trees, all an incredible size, styled on oak, birch, willow, pine, alder and even acacia. And that wasn’t mentioning the magical varieties, such as the rare tree whose trunk was a deep purple, or the section of the forest where trees retained their autumn orange colours all year round, photosynthesising despite the lack of green with the help of magic.

But she just couldn’t force herself to continue much further and had collapsed here. She didn’t get it. She’d felt terrible all day, barring occasional moments of reprieve, like watching the great elf vs dwarf debate, or the assurance that the gnomes would respect nature. Other than these brief reprieves, she couldn’t shake the great longing in her gut. Perhaps… Perhaps that was because of her dream.

“Holly! Holly, wake up!” Naturum’s eyes blearily half-opened at the sound of her dad calling her from outside her room.

“Huh? Dad?” she moaned before bolting upright. “Dad?!”

She stared around the room, her room, devoid of the wood that defined her home as a god. She dashed to her door and flung it open to reveal her dad, exactly as she remembered him. Small, somewhat portly, his wild bed head barely different from the unkempt hair he wore during the day.

With a cry of unrepressed emotion, she flung her arms around him, tears now streaming down her face. “I’m back!” she cried. “Finally. Finally back.”

Slightly surprised, he joined her embrace. “Back?” he asked. “You haven’t been anywhere.”

“I. I thought I had.”

Her dad smiled reassuringly at her. “I think you’ve been dreaming poppet.”

Had she been? It had felt so real, realer even than what she was experiencing now, but still, she nodded. “I suppose I must have been.”

Holly noticed her dads smile looked so concerned despite how desperately it tried to comfort her.

“This isn’t common for you” he murmured. “You were alright at uni, weren’t you?”

“No, it wasn’t like that at all! In the dream…”

Slowly, the tears stopped falling, and her eyes sparkled with that wonder that had defined her childhood experience with nature. She smiled as she desperately tried to recall all the dream contained before it left her memory.

“It was amazing at first. A world built by my own hand, so full of beauty and magic. Strange, strange creatures and alien landscapes I worked to bring into creation. Not to mention all the wonderful people except Damon I met.”

Then, her eyes darkened and her body shook. “But it was never all good. I’d barely made any progress on the world before people began accusing me of terrible things. And that wasn’t the worst bit. I was completely cut off from the outside world. I. I knew time was probably passing and you must be worried, and I had no way to escape, and I JUST FELT SO TRAPPED.”

She sniffed and buried her head in her dad’s arm. “I missed you so much.”

“Oh poppet. Don’t worry. You know it was all just a dream.”

And then her eyes had flown open. Saw Your Thanks nibbling on some food in the cage next to her bed. Heard Damon’s voice ringing in her head, telling her to get to the meeting. Just a dream. It had all been just a dream.

Back in the present, Naturum sighed and tried to put the memories of the past behind her but found she just couldn’t. She’d tried to think of all the good happening or the progress she’d made but no matter what she did her mind kept dragging her back to those memories.

She lay there long enough for the herd of hamsters to grow bored and move on. Then she lay longer. Repeated her memories of the dream. Then she lay long enough for the weather to change, at which point she suddenly shot up. Because unlike the weather events of Earth, this particular phenomenon was heralded by the screams of the damned.

‘More like screams of the sand’ she thought wryly, and the humour perked her up enough to at least pay some amount of attention to the situation. For barrelling towards her, was Rizzlerich’s third atypical addition to the weather cycle.

A great wall of black sand surged through the forest; its shape contorted so it looked like faces writhed in pain amongst the storm. The few birds she’d imported from Earth fled from the trees and deer burst from their hiding spot to escape this clear danger. Oh, and perhaps most notable, the storm was screaming.

Naturum smiled faintly, partly from relief as she conjured a barrier no sound could penetrate over her ears, partly because there, outrunning the storm, was the one original species she’d made today before she’d fallen completely into despair.

It was a humble creature. If you isolated it, it may look like a somewhat plump blackbird of Earth, although its feathers weren’t a clear black, but speckled with tiny black dots. When grouped together, and you weren’t paying much attention, you might think you were looking at a small beach of black sand.

And then, if you saw them while they flew together, you might start to notice faces in the sand. Darker birds flew next to lighter ones, and together, with remarkable cohesion, they made up a picture that, while far from perfect to one scrutinising it, was a copy of the tortured visage of the storm they sheltered in.

Camouflage. Somewhat unnecessary as all other forms of life fled the storm that screamed into their mind, but Naturum quite liked these birds. Although, she’d had to put in a lot of work to make them work exactly how she wanted them to.

For starters, she’d had to adjust their brains a little, so they actually liked being screamed at constantly. She’d considered just making them deaf, to sound both physical and mental, but that raised the issue of them being easily ambushed in the night, and she just decided this was easier.

Which connects nicely to the next issue. The birds had to rest, and when they did, the storm would roll merrily on to startle the hell out of all the other poor animals trying to sleep. She’d considered giving the birds infinite stamina so they could shelter in the storm forever, without need of sleep or relaxation, but that was a little overpowered.

Instead, she’d just given them an inbuilt magical compass which would guide them to one of the storms. And there were multiple for the birds to choose from, although, they never moved quick and were fairly sparse. On behalf of the gnomes, Naturum was glad you could live for years in this third country without encountering a single storm.

And then came the final issue. The birds expended a lot of energy, as they needed to fly constantly to keep within the shelter of the storm. Additionally, they couldn’t spend much time on the ground finding food to eat, meaning they couldn’t acquire enough fuel to offset all the energy they were expending.

Naturum had considered doing more research into migratory birds and their feeding habits, before deciding she really had no energy left to even do something as simple as using her omnipotence to learn bird facts.

Instead, she’d just made the birds ambiently absorb magic from the storm and use that as fuel. Was that how Rizzlerich intended magic to work? At this point, the nature goddess no longer cared. If it wasn’t how it worked before, magical weather now released excess magic into the environment, and some creatures could evolve to feed on that. Fuck it.

It was then that Naturum had collapsed immobile into the moss. She’d done a bit of work on the third nations fauna before making the birds, cautiously filling the land with animals adapted to fit environments like this from Earth, and occasionally adapting a creature she’d made from the previous nation to fit this new land.

The most effort she’d put in was filling sections of her forest with an absolute excess of moss to give the Excelsian green hamster an environment with enough camouflage for them to thrive in. Good thing she had gone to the effort as it meant her stress induced lie-down at least took place somewhere relatively comfortable.

Naturum shut her eyes as the sandstorm washed over her, snapping her out of her reflections on the bird making process. In mere moments, it had blown past her, leaving her alone in the forest. She let out a dramatic sigh. It was time to finally add some more creatures to the new land, she supposed.

She cast her eyes around the forest, trying to determine what she’d most want to see within it. She thought back on the woodlands of her home and an idea came to her. She held out her hands and before her, a model of a creature began to form.

A squirrel to be precise. Grey furred and bushy tailed, it was practically a copy of certain squirrel species on Earth. With a slight smile, Naturum willed the model to grow, until the beast was similar in size to a grizzly bear. A giant squirrel for a giant forest. Naturum knew there were also some giant nuts around somewhere for it to eat.

Content with her new animal, the nature goddess willed them into existence in the numbers they would naturally reach after living 1000 years in this new land’s completed ecosystem. She hadn’t bothered with her usual process of planning said ecosystem out beforehand, that would have been far too much effort in her current state.

Instead, she just told her animals not to eat anything while sustaining them with magic. If the ecosystem fucked up, she was pretty sure she’d know about it when she tried to summon her creatures in the state they’d be after 1000 years of natural selection, and nothing turned up.

Naturum eyed the beast that had been her model as it leisurely made its way deeper into the woods. Her eyebrows narrowed and her fists clenched. It was just a big squirrel, wasn’t it? How thoroughly uninteresting. She was losing whatever touch she’d ever imagined she’d had, no one on Excelsior would ever like this creature.

Several miles away, a gaggle of gnomes poked their heads through the hanging boughs of a colossal weeping willow. Eyes wide, they stared at the strange life form that had appeared before them.

Body rippling with its mighty muscles, teeth strong enough to crack each gnomes head, it was simply awe inspiring.

“What is that thing?” one gnome murmured.

“Excelsian giant squirrel. Does your brain not tell you that, ya goober?!” cried another.

To which gnome one rolled their eyes and sagely said “A creature is more than a name. “What is it?” is a pertinent question still.”

The third of the trio, tired of the bickering, burst from the cover of the leaves to approach the beast.

“Hello” he called out. “We come in peace!”

To which the beast in question glanced nonchalantly over to the source of the noise. Being a much larger creature, the giant squirrel needed none of its younger cousin’s skittishness. Uninterested, it began to lumber off.

“Awwww, you scared it off!” the second gnome yelled, scaring even the bravest birds from all nearby trees.

“We cannot have this!” the first cried in response. “It must be an act of divine fate for it to appear before us! We must follow it!”

The squirrel spooking gnome’s eyes lit up. “No… WE MUST WORSHIP IT!!!”

At this, his fellow gnomes smiles widened into almost unsettling grins. “YEAH!!!” they chorused.

“AFTER THAT SQUIRREL!” screamed gnome one.

With much whooping and hollering, the gnomes chased the squirrel through the woods, leading to a glorious day of harassing the poor creature, until it eventually got fed up and fled up a tree.

Naturum let out a dramatic sigh. ‘What’s made is made, time to move on.’ She thought to herself. ‘But what next? Maybe… A literal feathered boa? Snake body, bright pink feathers, punny concept. Almost sounds like something happy Naturum would come up with.’

With a thought, a model of the snake sat before her. It was a relatively small creature, a tree boa, and thanks to its feathers it did indeed look much like a feather boa with a snake’s head poking disconcertingly out one end.

There was a problem with it, however. As flagrantly uncamouflaged as it was, being bright pink and all, it may have trouble hunting. Heck, given how exceedingly noticeable it was, it would probably end up being hunted more than anything else.

‘Ah, but maybe’ Naturum thought ‘I can use this to my advantage. Give the thing crazy reflexes, enough to dodge a bird of prey and bite it. Give it some venom too, technically disqualifying it from being a boa, but guaranteeing a kill. It eats its fill, leaves the rest of its meal for scavengers to eat and that’s one complete creature.’

Assured the technically-not-a-boa would fit comfortably within her ecosystem, Naturum brought them into existence. Which should bring her happiness right? This was an interesting creature, right, something kind of funny?

And yet, she felt pretty much the same as she did when she unleashed the squirrel unto Excelsior. Just a vague unease, a disappointment, the sense that she’d messed up in some way. After all, it wasn’t like this was some work of genius, just some cheap joke you might expect to find in some children’s fiction. Any fleeting feelings of satisfaction weren’t deserved.

In another part of the woodland, a gnome hunter spotted something odd slithering across the forest floor. Bright pink and long, the ‘Feathered boa,’ as the gnome identified it, wasn’t much on its own. But perhaps, sewed together… a garment could be made?

Taking place before Aomy’s speech, this gnome had no love of nature and so had no qualms pulling a bow from their back, taking aim and, with a sudden jolt- missing their shot. The gnome frowned and pulled the bow back once more.

With a twang, the arrow shot forth and hit the exact spot the snake should be. Except it hadn’t actually hit the snake. To the gnome’s shock, the fashion-statement-to-be had, with the twitchiest of movements, dodged the projectile.

“CURSE YOU!” cried the hunter, bursting from the underbrush to try and leap onto the creature. All seemed well, until mere centimetres from the ground the snake zipped forwards so the gnome faceplanted into the soil in a way that would be much funnier when shown rather than described in text.

This did not deter the hapless hunter. Blearily rising from the ground, they locked eyes on their quarry.

“I will claim you.” The hunter swore.

And so began a great chase, lasting even longer than the squirrel harassing incident mentioned earlier. It ended much the same way. The tree snake ascended an acacia, leaving the gnome hunter really wishing they could scale the near sheer trees the snakes lived in.

Naturum was really running out of ideas. Every second she feared falling back into the moss and returning to that realm of unproductivity. Maybe a hamster would help? She loved Your Thanks, and the Rizzelian snikpopkaputiorthanks was one of the favourite creatures she’d made.

What would differentiate this hamster from the others? Going by Captumon types, she’d already made a normal hamster and a poison hamster. A flying hamster could probably work well in this environment, maybe she could make that?

Without even giving much thought to the process, she made a crude hamster model in the palm of her hand, stretched out its proportions so its limbs could support patagia, like those seen in flying squirrels, and then, before she could even mull over her decision, threw the model as far as she could away from her.

It sprung to life with a joyous squeak and began to glide through the forest, as across the nation, its brethren burst into existence alongside it. The nature goddess was a complete contrast to the jubilant hamster. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed face first into the moss. Everything, the whole process, just felt so incredibly wrong.

And now she’d thought the first sad thoughts, the rest came rushing back. Being blamed for monsters, her worries over whoever the hell was scheming in the shadows, her heart crying out for her family who must be so worried, her isolation from being completely cut off from the rest of society and how she just felt so goddamn trapped!

With a choke a tear fell onto the moss. And then another. And then, something magical happened. Each drop that fell from her eyes floated up from the moss, past her downturned head and without her even noticing, up to the canopy of the trees.

They began to grow, shape changing as they did, the subconscious intent of a goddess desiring more creatures for her world. More and more tears joined the first, all moulding into rough copies of that original shape, until a pod of animals floated in the air.

They were whale shaped, if whales could fit into the palm of your hand. Fully aqueous, their bodies shone like bubbles in the sun and when they flew through the air, they left a trail of sparkling light behind them.

With a hauntingly beautiful song, they began to float through the great forest. Startled by the noise, Naturum stared up, then continued staring, now filled with wonder at the radiant swarm of creatures. On shaky steps, she stood up, and began to follow the pod.

It did not take long for one of the pods to cross the skies above a gnome village. Panic ensued, initially, as creatures whose names never appeared in your head tended to be monsters. Once a gnome named them though, the panic subsided, and the village gathered to gaze upon the creatures. The name they now saw in their mind was thus:

Naturum’s Tear