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existence and all of its dimensions were born not through a twinkle of something in an empty sky, but through violence and anarchy, through a dagger slit its way out of nothingness; a powder-keg explosion of being.
of course, to the eventual desert lovers, it is all only speculation. neither of the two were there to experience the opening ceremonies, so they can't know for sure. they arrived a few blinks into the life of the unending cosmos, too early to be fashionable and too late to receive a welcome, and believe that the first proverbial sunrise was just as awe-inspiring as it was described, if anything, just on principle.
the two of them began as particles, specks of incomprehensible light in a universe that was otherwise mostly-void. they danced around each other in erratic, half-formed waltzes from one edge of existence to the other, having fallen in love near-instantaneously. they were the first childhood sweethearts and would be the last reunited lovers, proving quantum entanglement before anyone would have the means to recognize what that meant.
they didn't have names yet, not at that point, and wouldn't need names. not until they were ancient and wise and young and foolish all at once, not until cosmic dust turned into barren rock turned into brash civilizations that rose and fell with startling quickness. they didn't know how or when they would reunite, once they'd been pulled apart, but they knew, with utmost certainty, that they would. names, to them, were just another formality to be figured out at a later date.
after all--they were quantum entanglement, coalesced into a physical form.
eons passed. stars they once knew, stars that quickly outgrew them in a race to shine the darkness away, collapsed and died without so much as a chance for goodbyes. the pipe bomb blast that was the beginning was soon replaced with the cold stillness of a universe in middle age. and all throughout, they grew vast and powerful and all-encompassing. on a tiny blue-green little pebble in the a swirling white galaxy, they became more than just ashes in space. they became god to some, the devil and monsters to others, and earned earned things in turn: followers, believers, gifts of viscera and blood. they created religion, and did so accidentally.
they earned names on their own as well, though out of necessity, instead of serendipity, and they did so for the same reason that they became compact and travel-sized and completely nondescript. after all, it was getting harder and harder to stretch out tentacles or wings or serpentine tails for a day of rest, what, with villages and kingdoms and empires springing up in their way.
masquerading as a human, one of them chose a gender and a face and an identity, slipping into his full form only when he sat alone, the sun dipped far below the clouds. he chose hair and skin and bright, blinking eyes, and perhaps most important of all, he chose a name for himself.
cecil.
the sound slipped through his mouth like rush of the tiny grassy pebble's quick rotation. he was fond of it. he was fond of his elastic form. he was fond of being human. and so, he lived a quaint little life in an extraordinary little town, pretending to be nothing more than a voice in the night.
and as he lulled a friendly desert community to sleep, cecil waited.
decades later, after standing still for so long, the other came to him, and for the first time in millenia, cecil's hearts beat with the roar of the stars behind that tiny, lovely pebble's fragile, eggshell-thin sky.
for the first time in millenia--cecil fell in love instantly.
carlos was what he called himself, and it rolled off cecil's tongue like honey, like dna replicating itself a thousand times over in a minute, like the coppery-smoky smell of the star-filled void; the kind that cecil knew filled them both to the very core.
but carlos, perfect, flawless, eternal carlos, didn't seem to remember--didn't seem to realize that beneath his broad muscle and supernova-warm skin was a form that, thousands of years ago, was worshiped with prayer and blood sacrifice; he didn't seem to realize that, even further beneath that form, was consciousness that already knew all the answers to the questions he asked, to 'what do the lights mean?' and 'what is beyond this something?' and, 'what is drawing him to me?'
but cecil was nothing if not patient.
so he waited for carlos and kept on singing his lullabies to the sun-baked town they'd turned into home. cecil waited patiently for the first kiss, the first date, the first rough, entangling tumble between the sheets. and as carlos unraveled himself thread-by-thread, molecule by molecule, scouring ancient runes with a creeping feeling of déjà vu, cecil sat in his booth, leading his cult of personality the way that only a fallen god could ever begin to know how.
yes, cecil was nothing if not patient. and when carlos finally came to him, feathers and scales dotting his arms and galaxies in his eyes, cecil would do nothing but smile and hold him close, whispering the steady, comforting heartbeat of the universe into carlos' ear.
"i'm so sorry," carlos whispered, his voice heavy with a billion lifetimes flooding back into him, "i shouldn't have kept you waiting."
to which cecil, lovely, kind, untiring cecil, simply laughed a laugh that completely lacked spite or malice or anything but genuine happiness--and replied, voice soft: "my darling carlos. hasn't anyone ever told you? late is better than never."
they kissed, and somewhere, the void exploded into infinite pinprick lights between milky blue scars.
the universe was born again.