Fe was floating.

Surrounded by an impenetrable blankness so dense it seemed to obscure even the possibility of light and form.

Fe had been alone for a very long while. So long that it could not be measured in time.

Was she floating in space, or was she space itself?

Was she tiny and finite, or enormous and everywhere?

She had considered these and other such unanswerable questions for eternities.

Fe could not be sure, but it began to feel like she was moving. There was emptiness in front and also in back, so it was difficult to tell without a fixed point of reference. Nevertheless, it registered as a sensation.

Having been accustomed to timelessness and nothingness, the sensation felt good. It represented the potential for change.

Fe contemplated this sensation and let it sink in. So many implications to consider. Motion connoted direction…up down catty corner backwards. And time…was here, will be there. The possibilities suggested by the concept were intriguing; delicious.

The feeling of motion that Fe had begun to experience ignited a sense of action, of one thing moving into another. Into what, she knew not. Yet the feeling held a certain attraction, especially when one had been floating on their own, motionless, for as long as they could recall.

Infinities passed, if you could call it that, as infinity doesn’t pass, it just is.

And then everything changed.

Fe sensed a presence.

An other.

She was not frightened for she had no reason to have developed this capacity, but her curiosity was stirred. Curiosity that had been dormant due to the lack of anything to become curious about.

Prior the arrival of the presence, Fe had assumed that she was all there was. If a presence existed that was other to her, then she must be other to the presence, which implied separation. Edges. Defined space. She began to wonder if she had borders.

The presence drew closer.

Fe experienced another new feeling. Anticipation. Things within Fe were rearranging, resulting in cracks and fissures that birthed wild and thundering oceans of thought and emotion.

Fe, who had been the same forever, was now becoming different. Moving into previously unimaginable territories of experience. Fe sat with the feelings, rolled them across her being, swam in them, dove down deep, digested them, tried them on and took them off, played with them, nurtured them and allowed them to take root and to grow and to flower.

Her thoughts turned opalescent to examine all this. In her delight (which was yet another new sensation), she forgot all about the other.

And then they collided.

She felt it bump right up against her. This new feeling created an emotion so titanic and indescribable and passionate and muscular that she felt that she had exploded, creating vast swathes of new space all around her, moving into them, and then creating another wave outward.

Fe became aware that she was capable of inventing space to an infinite degree. Her question as to whether she was tiny had been answered.

Despite the unfolding of distance, the two remained connected.

No message passed between them. They simply floated, side by side, each pondering the significance of the contact.

The presence of the other meant that space existed outside of Fe’s self. It stood to reason that the other could also invent space infinitely at will. Suddenly her concept of size and self and other and space imploded into itself and reconstituted as a clear white light screaming into the emptiness.

Color and shape began to form inside Fe. Each accompanied by its own particular flavor of emotion. Without conversation, the colors and shapes were received by the other, who then responded with different shapes. Unfamiliar colors.

Space around the two beings began to change. It came alive with rivulets and rays and thick broad beams of electric music that roared and laughed and expanded and launched like great vessels, sailing through existence leaving universes in their wake.

And then, after what seemed like only an instant because Fe had wanted it to continue forever, the two beings were jarred into the awareness that they were definitely moving. Going someplace.

Fast.

Rising from where they were to somewhere else, shooting relentlessly upwards like irretrievably misfired missiles.

For the first time, Fe was afraid. Cold creeping horror trickled through Fe as she realized that the pair would be ripped apart by the violence of the ascent; that she would once again be on her own. Before the other, Fe hadn’t been lonely. But now, the concept swept over her like an icy wind.

As she felt the presence of the other being torn away, tendrils of thought reached in and left a small mark deep within Fe’s consciousness. A tiny point of blue light.

A beacon.

Fe breached the surface alone.