Before you beats the four-chambered heart of the world, playing the song that holds up the cosmos.
…
You are living starlight.
A shimmering wavelength, spiraling through the void, weaving between the great rings surrounding a planet with coral-pink jungles and green oceans.
You swoop down because it is your wish.
Though none but your own kind can see you as more than a brief glimmer stretching across the sky, across the universe, you can see everything below you. Your form descends through the warm atmosphere, rippling and eddying.
Sight is joined by touch, by scent. By a million other senses.
But the sense that brought you here was sound, a sound that reached beyond the air that carries it. A sound that reached you in the warm bath of the sun where you were born.
It called to you, and here you come.
Your rays first make landfall in vast strawberry-tinged meadow that seems to stretch on forever.
Odd loping creatures graze across the fields, plucking grass with their trunks as they murmur. Deep, slow bleats sound, the tremolo wavering in time with the mysterious rhythm.
You sweep past them. Though they are a part of the song, they are not its source.
The fields dip down, yielding to the banks of a river where more animals languidly drink from its slow waters. You enjoy the way the currents of the water bend and twist your rays. You feel closer to the drumming heartbeat of this world. But you are not the only thing that plays in the garden of smoothed stones and silt. A sleek yellow shape swims beneath the surface.
A smaller trunked creature strays from the pack, venturing deeper into the river than it should, emboldened by youth. The savage mustard-colored predator draws closer.
A splash. Twisting bodies, an animal shout. Young blood is spilled in the water.
This, too, is part of the song, brutal as it may be.
You let it be, and move on, following the current.
When you eventually leave the cool waters, you are deep in the heart of a jungle. The mosses and roots are a dark purple. Rays from the sun are filtered through countless swaying branching, causing the illumination and shade to dance in tandem. You feel drawn to the carnival of light, wanting to join your kindred photons in their delight, but you know this is not the source either.
You pass by vines linked like chains, flowers that breathe, plant bulbs with countless glass-like layers, and thousands of other wondrous children of nature.
Animals cry out for their shade as you dart by their hiding places beneath the leaves, bathing them in your glow. The rhythm is stronger, closer to the ground.
Beneath the ground.
You are a sun king, an empyrean being of energy. You consist of far more than just mere light. You condense your will into the minute, ghostly neutrinos that whirl through you, and dive down.
You phase through strata after strata, weaving a long and winding road as you follow the sound. It grows stronger by the second. The different strands come together as you near the source, blending together into something far more potent than any of them alone.
Onwards. Almost there.
You break into an open space.
Before you beats the four-chambered heart of the world, playing the song that holds up the cosmos.
It is wondrous in ways that cannot be described. And it knows you are there. It greets you, each of you exchanging your warmth with each other.
You offer it colors and rays that cannot be found at the center of the world, provoking a beautiful swell in the music. The heart pumps molten joy.
It tells you its name. Its four names, one for each chamber.
…