Once, in the heart of the universe but not the center of it, there was a Forest. As vast as it was minuscule, as obscure as it was unencumbered and as resilient as it was fallible – the Forest was the well from which all life flowed out to occupy every inch of the unending universe. The populace of the Forest was made up of giant animals, their sizes as they were in the Beginning. The Great Queen of the Forest was a delicate, airy girl who left mighty oaks in her footsteps and warm breezes with every shift of her hair. Powerful though she was, the incredible frailness of her corporeal form limited her movement. And so, in her first breaths of naked life she created a great white buck from the thicker filaments of starlight, with a fistful of her green blood, and a sprinkling of the cold mountain water that flowed over her in the stream from which she was begot.

His thick and beautiful coat rang like pure, silver wind chimes and reflected the light akin to glossy, misty mirror. Coupled with her natural bioluminescence they were a beacon of light, of life, of triumph over death and were rumored to have been born before Time and to have the ability to outlast Time himself. Trees, plants, animals, winds, mountains, and even the mighty cosmos and especially her besotted silvered buck bowed to her and bent themselves over backwards to satisfy her every whim above their own instincts of self-preservation or their own natural laws. His antlers, which fall off for other bucks when the rutting season is over, never fell off from him and in the hollows and depressions of his antlers were rooted the fairest and most delicate of plants that glowed as a cause of their proximity to the Great Forest Queen and their roots being intertwined as a part of the great silvered buck's circulatory system. His coal black hooves could carry them faster than any wing on the wind or any fin in the waves – faster than light – and were renowned to strike sparks from their journeys into the Mountains-That-Cradled-The-Forest. From the back of her silvered buck, she ruled over all the Forest – all forests, all life – with a fair and just hand.

Yet, all was not well.

(As if things ever are.)

At the darkest and coldest reaches of the known cosmos, a Great Nothing accumulated and took sentient shape. Nothing is a fiddly and conniving thing to define. Simply put, nothing is everywhere. The universe, as we know it, began as nothing – which invariably exploded. So it only stands to reason that we should all have a touch of nothingness within every hidden crevice of a crevice that we are mostly unaware of until we become aware of it. In every wide open gash of a gap between atoms and their flighty electrons or between bonded atoms of everything that Is there is nothing and so threaded is the Great Nothing in the Everything. Still, despite the abounding presence of Nothing in the Everything, the Great Nothing suffered as it was flanked and imprisoned by the Everything – a terrible, agonizing punishment for one so young and innocent.

One theory posits that, as with most newborns, what it did not understand it feared and, as with most adults, what it fears it hates and what it hates it desires destroyed. But this is only assuming that the Nothing was simultaneously young and old – a newborn with all the knowledge of the universe at its disposal, lacking the wisdom and understanding as to how to put it to the use that would benefit it the most. However, this also carries the assumption that Nothing can have wisdom or any kind of sentience – which inherently connotes that a Nothing can have a something contained within and still truly be called a Nothing, which can often prove to be too much for most men's mettle. Still, how else can we classify the Nothing to have been when it was clearly seeking out and devouring the Everything? Some philosophers agree with the first theory to an extent. The latter group chooses to believe that the Everything grated and wounded the Nothing – which must be redefined as a Something, but as an Anti-Something – to such a tremendous degree that it was forced into devouring and destroying every atom, every point of light, every ray of hopefulness, and every frail blossom of faith in the night of a terrible bleakness out of a sheer and basic instinct to make pain end.

However, for the purposes of this essay, I will continue to refer to the Nothing as such so as to limit confusion as much as possible.

As the Nothing slowly ate its way through the universe, the Everything, it did not grow or shrink, as conventional wisdom would have it. That would imply that the Nothing was something that possessed qualities akin to width, height, length, or even an overall volume that could be measured. This was, of course, not the circumstance – even in the case of an Anti-Something. It was only that more and more chunks of the universe ceased to be at an exponential rate. The Nothing diligently annihilated the fabric of existence, unwound it to its very threads and unwound the fibers that made up the thread and dissolved it into a great not-heap of immeasurable nothingness. And when it reached the heart of the universe, the Forest, it took pause.

It was winter in the Forest and everything was asleep – as had commanded the Great Forest Queen and her silvered buck, which both slept as well. Against the instinct of conventional wisdom, no one versed in these matter of matters would go as far as to say that the Nothing looked upon the Forest, as that would imply that the Nothing had eyes and a mind with which to see and perceive such a sight – and Nothing can only possess nothing – but perhaps it felt the peace of a deep winter and a world at rest as opposed to the rest of the universe that had been caught up in the fervor-madness of its own Existence. The Nothing had long ago dissolved every star, but the Forest-In-Winter was kept in a soft glow by its own light, by the light of the Great Queen and her silvered buck and the pure snow it was blanketed in.

The Nothing circled the Forest-In-Winter as a school of predatory fish would around a targeted victim. The Forest was contrary to everything that the Nothing knew – if a Nothing can know something and therefore possess power over something and still be called a Nothing – and it was intrigued – if a Nothing can possess the emotions required to form the mental state of intrigue and still be called a Nothing. The Forest-In-Winter was a part of the Everything, or in this case was Everything since nothing existed outside of the Forest thanks to the Nothing, so it should stand to reason that the Nothing should have been pained by it and therefore hate it and therefore destroy it to finally be at peace.

And yet, the not-thought of destroying the Forest was increasingly lamentable to the Nothing. A sluggish, creeping not-thought of what it would do when the Everything was gone gradually brought itself to surface. It had invested so much time and energy into what had to be done that it had no time to devote not-thought in what was to be done when its goal was finally accomplished. The not-thought of absolute solitude had had an appeal when it was experiencing the pain of Existence. And still, now that it was on the threshold of experiencing the point to everything that it had been doing since its inception, how could he be hesitating?

The Great Forest Queen stirred, in the throes of a vaguely unpleasant dream, and settled back down into a more comfortable position against the side of her silvered buck. The Nothing peered at her, without looking, and moved in closely for a better not-look. Due to his presence he was unmaking the air, the snowfall, and gravity itself – the world to begin to float, not having enough mass to hold itself together – and the Nothing began to take a vague semblance of a corporeal form.

A restless bear cub, slumbering with her mother in the throes of hibernation, awoke and, upon seeing nothing approaching the Great Forest Queen, squealed out in fear. The fear rippled through them, waking them into a nightmare. They were kept immobile by their fear of the great not-mass of Nothing and their instinctual need to be at all times near their Queen.

The Great Forest Queen, opening large and green doe eyes smiled coyly at the Nothing while her silvered buck attempted to stand between the two of them protectively – although he couldn't be sure who he was protecting.

"My dearest of friends, Great Nothing, why have you spared me and my immediate vicinity?"

"Spared?" the Nothing did not ask.

"Yes, spared. You did not not-think that I wouldn't notice that you've been steadily devouring the universe. You don't put too much not-thought into your not-plans, do you, dear one?" The Nothing finally finished devouring the Great Forest, sans the clearing they were currently conversing in.

"You've known of me? You did nothing to prevent the destruction of your wards." The remaining animals shivered but were forced nearer and nearer to their Queen and the Nothing as there was increasingly less and less to stand on.

"I make life, I do not protect it. If that were so, I would not have lives end to clutter up the space for new life."

"You are wise."

"I am old and petulant."

"In your wisdom you must know, what am I?"

"You are nothing."

"I don't know that already. But what am I?"

"You ask not what you are, which is nothing, but what you may become."

"What will I become?" She looked down at the disappearing ground, turning into a vague film of dirt beneath her feet, pressing her lips together and then smiling and cupping his corporeal face,

"Great Nothing, I have lied to you. You are not Nothing. You are a Something-Made-To-Think-It-Is-A-Nothing."

"Then what am I?"

"I haven't decided yet. I haven't decided what I will name you and what you will be."

"Decide! I! Am! In! Pain!"

"You are…" she whispered his name into his ear, softly enough so that no one but them could hear and then the Everything was unmade and remade into the universe we have now.

Some speculate that he was the thought of a universe, or some great beast that will fly among the stars and devour worlds. Whatever the case may be, neither have made their reappearance as they did in the other universes prior and after the fact.

Yet…