Chapter One
Mother
DIAMOND
For eighteen years, the world was darkness, but I had no sight to witness it. The world was small, but no vastness shrank its perspective. The world was warm, and no cold could pierce my comfort. The world was her, and I knew her to me my mother. She was the thumping heart that gave me life, the intimate warmth that embraced me, the encasing walls that protected me. She was the cord that fed me, the womb that molded me, the voice that spoke to me. The voice was a whisper in my mind, a tingling along my spine, a soothing caress through the growing chaos of thought. I grew and became, filled the space with my mind and body, existed as one with her until something suddenly changed. A piece of me that had not been there in my long incubation, another half of me that gave me independence from the mind that had made me. For the first time in my eighteen years of life, I heard words.
You are my daughter, Mother whispered, my first of another, and you will be my joy in this world.
The voice spoke of joy, and I felt it swell boundlessly. The voice spoke of trust, and its resolve strengthened me. The voice spoke of love, and I told the voice I already knew it.
You are love, I said to the voice, knowing it to be true in the purest sense. Love was the comforting warmth that surrounded me, love was the heartbeat that assured me I wasn't alone, love was the life that I grew into, that I would never depart from. Love was this eternal bond of mother and daughter.
For now, I am your love, the voice chuckled, but you will find that your love cannot be held by just me. You are different from the others I have made.
There are more than just you and I? I asked, awed by the revelation. Where are they?
There is a world beyond the one you grow from, Mother said. Too vast to explore in a thousand lifetimes, and too deep to even scratch the surface of. Upon the world, live billions.
Billions was not a thing I knew, so Mother taught me numbers. The numbers themselves meant nothing, so Mother gave them perspective. My world of primal emotion expanded to one of material and concept. Space and stars, earth and sky, rocks and plants, beasts and people; Mother planted perspective into my mind, and from it, sprouted the stalks of wonder. My curiosity was a ravenous thing, and each hungry question that was sated only spurred an appetite for more. Mother was an enthusiastic enabler, and fed my dependency with her immense breadth of histories and stories, facts and theories. I learned the processes of logic, the histories of man, the mechanisms of the stars and the cycles of the earth. The painting of knowledge changed from abstract, to impressionist, to realism, but it was only a portrait of understanding; I needed to sculpt it with my own hands.
When can I join the world? I asked Mother.
When you are ready, child, Mother replied sweetly, her smile evident in the tone of her voice.
I'm ready now! I insisted eagerly. I want to see the cities and the mountains! I want to talk to people and love them all!
Patience is a concept you've never seemed to grasp.
When will I be ready? I asked, testing the strength of my growing body, pressing restlessly against the confines of Mother's womb.
Very soon, Mother said, calming me with her hushing whisper, easing my restlessness with the comfort of her warmth, there is someone very special I need to tell you about first.
