1: In Which Eshu Takes In A Show And Looks Up An Old Acquaintance.Well, this is perfect, he thought grimly, watching the Heirophant creep towards its resting pyre. Only two beings left in the entire Universe and one of them is dying.

He'd watched the Fonose galaxy boil itself away in a fury of artificially inspired singularities. It was a lovely spectacle and a true testament to the will of the Fonose civilization. Even at the End of All Things they insisted on choosing the form and moment of their own demise.

Stupid. Futile. And yet, strangely beautiful, even to Eshu's jaded sensibilities. You had to admire their grit if nothing else.

He had admired it for all thirty-five ticks of the cosmic pulse it took for the Fonose to expire and then he'd lit out for greener pastures.

Only there weren't any, were there? The cosmos was winding down and there wasn't even anywhere left for him to get a decent view of the festivities. There was almost nothing left at all beyond a non-ocean of non-energy not filling the non-void the dying universe was in the process of leaving behind.

Entropy, he thought and not for the first time. Could there be anything more tedious?

Eventually he had to settle for Oneiros, a dull-as-dishwater little speck so far out at the edge of things that it would certainly be the last to go. The pathetic little planetoid didn't even have a sun but instead orbited the gravity well of one of those tedious subspace folds. So prosaic.

Still, beggars couldn't be choosers-- not even the omniscient, omnipotent, devastatingly handsome ones.

He found Oneiros as he remembered it- little more than a sphere-shaped desert, nearly devoid of atmosphere and totally absent of even the slightest possibility of diversion.

The Oneirosans or Oneirosi or whatever they called themselves had long since given up the ghost-- all but one. That one, the Heirophant, had only stuck around long enough the light the death pyre of the last of his brethren.

Pathetic little octopeds, thought Eshu as the Heirophant nestled himself down into his pyre. The creature swiveled its great bovine head towards Eshu and seemed to smile.

"Ikitini," it said in its great low moo of a voice. That's what these creatures called him, he remembered. "Greetings, Trickster. There is puzzlement that you have not fled away like all the other gods."

"Oh, you know," said Eshu offhandedly. "I never like to leave a party until I'm sure the music has stopped."

"Yes," said the Heirophant. "That sounds like you."

Eshu was about to remind the Heirophant that they hadn't actually met when he realized that that wasn't exactly true. The Onierosi were one of those dreary gestalt species, like the Eersh and the Makakak.

Or was that The Mexekek? It was difficult to keep the names of the Lesser species straight.

The bottom line was that the Heirophant had all the memories of all the others of his race that had ever lived so, in a way, they actually had met before.

"In any case," said the Heirophant, "there is pleasure to see you here."

"Really?" said Eshu, actually surprised. Most species tended to fold up shop on just the rumor of his approach.

"Indeed," said the Heirophant. "This one is the last of the cluster. There will be no more."

"Yes, I'm afraid that's true."

"So there is none to perform the Final Rite as this one has done for all the Onierons," said the Heirophant.

Oneirons! That's what the little specks were called. Well. Not for much longer.

"What is the final rite?" said Eshu.

"There is the telling of the First Day and then there is the fire and then the Beyond," said the Heirophant.

"The First Day?" said Eshu.

"All that lives has a beginning, Ikitini," said the Heirophant. "Is this not so?"

Eshu was thinking of a crystal sphere he'd met on a dead world nearly a trillion years previous that claimed to have no beginning but the sphere and the place had long since dissolved into the chaos that was most of the rest of the universe.

"And all things have an ending," said the Heirophant.

Yes, that was readily apparent. All you had to do to see that was look up.

"So, at the End, the tale of the Beginning must be told," said the Heirophant.

"And you told this story?" said Eshu, clearly skeptical that this Lesser thing could have the first inkling of how the cosmos had been birthed.

The Heirophant nodded. "It is the survivor's duty."

"And how did this yarn go?"

"There was fire and ice and a great stirring of music and light and from this sprang all the days and nights of Time," said the Heirophant. It went on to say some equally ridiculous things about Love and Joy and other meaningless concepts.

Eshu sighed. What was it about the Lesser species that forced them to get everything so completely wrong almost all of the time?

"All right," he said sitting down in the ancient dust beside the Heirophant's pyre. "I'll tell you the story and then I'll light you up but I don't think you're going to like it. I was there on the first day, my friend. I was there before the first day and, let me tell you, there was no music." © copyright 2006 Geoffrey Thorne all rights reserved