Cascades of stars slowly approach two horizons. Starlight falling into a chasm like marbles in thick flowing gravity that pours as molasses from a tipped jar. Shapes containing memories. Shapes that have a beginning. Shapes searching for a way to honorably end a lifespan in space. Large and small plunge effortlessly within an eternal mystery. Large blackened crispy rinds of rocks, tiny suns, massive planets, swirly streams of dust slowly creep to each edge. An innocence collapsing, smearing over two cliffs. A rip in space that seems unnatural. As if a knife cut the universe in half. The chasm is guarded by two figures hovering above silent decaying light. Intelligent powers who constantly argue. They engaged each other respectfully, while fully knowing their place over chasm is combat. Wrestling with competitive thoughts. Ideas that are locked in positions. It is part of their game to outmaneuver who will dominate the next step leading to cosmic control. They are absorbed in concentration, as if a surgeon gliding a scalpel through the heart of atoms. Their voices are hushes and whispers. The opponents jostle in this tension. “That took you a while. You sure like to take your time, Shadow Eight,” an electric blue five pointed star figure continues to repeat the obvious, “Now it's my move.” “Father Zero,” squiggly lines curled up in a midnight black ball responds, “You don’t have to narrate every turn.” Shadow Eight resists saying more. Lecturing Father Zero’s natural anxious anticipation can be exhausting. Instead, Shadow Eight’s darkened focus relaxes in the moment. Peers into drops of galaxies drooping upon abrupt bending precipices below. Suddenly, a sleek smooth silvery tinted craft materializes. It could be mistaken for a speck of dust catching rolling rays of light. The craft has a front that opens up like petals. Seven curled petals of silver attaches to a narrowing body. A ship that looks like a flower and stem. The craft hovers between tense forces that spill out from the chasm. Shadow Eight, slightly amused by this interruption, “Hey, Father Zero, look at what popped into the chasm. I think it’s a visitor from your side of falling stars.” “My side?” Father Zero’s electricity becoming unfurled. Rebukes, “What? This dust isn’t my creation! Its design resembles a mammal craft. What is a mammal craft doing here?” Shadow Eight is fully aware of Father Zero’s distain for anything mammal. Remains quiet to let it’s electric foe release pent up pride. Sure enough, Father Zero fills empty silence, “You’re the one who likes these furry microbes, not me. No No,” shaking it’s pointed neon blue point of star, “Obviously, we must destroy the craft immediately. But of course, rules are rules. Rules. I bet you are going to start a ceremony to inquire why the mammal ship is here. You love the rules. Right? I bet I’m right.” “I wish I could laugh at your frazzled reaction, but that would be too mammal for your superior sensibilities. Correct, Father Zero. You are right, rules,” Shadow Eight’s voice is like a freezing frost scolding heat, “As the more sensible of us two, I’ll repeat the rules before you do anything rash. First, we need to judge the weight of punishment for entering our domain. Losing your electric composure. A mammal craft, right here under our feet of awareness. Since your electric impulse has already made a decision of death, I’m gong to lead the court of ceremony to determine just balance.” Father Zero’s electrons slow and gather into its star blue center, “Curse these rules. Yes, yes yes yes. Only to keep my turn. To honor our game!” Lightning blue energy recoils and tapers into composure, “Go ahead, take the lead. I have waited too long for my turn.” “Very well,” Shadow Eight says, eager to find out who is inside the flower craft, “We go together and meet this surprise.” They attach a magnetic pull on the ship with their will of thought, like a rope tying a battered ship lost to the sea. Silver shimmers on the space craft’s undercarriage as a gigantic sun shimmies down the razor line chasm. Its blustering white shafts twinkle upon the mammal craft. Ray soaked flakes of dust blanket the flower, revealing silver then golden metals. Light then diminishes as dense solid mass folds and bubbles like a foamy froth chaos casually sips down. Father Zero chides, “I’m going to introduce myself as a god. It’s a role I’ve been enjoying on my side of chasm.” Shadow Eight goes along with Father Zero’s wishes, “That’s fine with me, Father Zero, I mean God. As long as you follow the rules. After all, your next move may win domination over all of space time. Why lose that opportunity now? The ceremony we initiate with the mammals will be your best next move.” They summon an approach to the small ship idly floating like a delicate golden silver bloom washed in the basin of imploding starlight. Zig zag steps condensate downward from their position high above - as if gravity were a dewy moisture finding low hanging branches to ascend. Shadow Eight bends its crooked black limbs. Its squiggly round body is fuzzy with eight legs gingerly stepping onto each zag of gravity’s branches. “What kind of impression are you going for?” Father Zero asks while stepping too close in their descent. Its electric five points resembling a human shape. Two blue lightning bolts as legs, two thin streaks of electrons as arms and a sharp pointed head. Impatiently Father Zero repeats, “Come on, I have become God to these filthy furry beasts. What are you then?” “Well,” stepping like each leg were a cane to support its misshapen dark round head as a body, Shadow Eight responds, “as you know, our eternal creator… ah, game maker as you like to say, won’t allow me to assume mammal shape anymore. Soooooo,” as if rubbing its forehead to clear a burden it doesn’t like to talk about, “I’ve been figuring out what best represents my role in their cosmos.” “Oooohhhh,” Father Zero snidely projects, “You are such a simple servant. Doing whatever good old game maker wants. It makes universes, you don’t ask why. It makes games for gods to play, you don’t ask why. It makes rules for its inventions, still, you refuse to ask why.” Blue electricity pushes on its foe’s shadowy limbs from behind, “All right faithful servant. Let me guess. Our game maker assigned you to watch over shapes in time. Tasked you to tie pieces of particles together. Fastening like knots, particles containing memories,” Father Zero nearly throws Shadow Eight off balance with another push on its round leggy body, “Ah, ah ah ah, I get it. You are like a memory weaver. Like a tiny creature who strings one end of memory to another. A web. You think yourself a noble web maker… what is that shape called by mammal tongue?” Ignoring Father Zero’s proddings, Shadow Eight quietly, cautiously leads their arrival to mammal craft stem. As they descend their shapes shrink to match a size comparable to the space ship. The oval stem no longer a speck. Rather large now. Big like a mountain sized flower growing higher than any peak a mammal may dare to ascend. The chasm keepers stand at its outside metal hull. Respecting the rules given to them by game maker. Rules for events like these. They send their thoughts into the ship’s elements. As if knocking on a door, they locate what frequency the inhabitants inside can understand. Blips of thought particles ping inside the ship. Shadow Eight forcefully nudges Father Zero standing too close behind. “What?” Father Zero’s blue electric bolts stammer back, “What what what was that for?” Shadow Eight lifts one of its midnight limbs. Points to Father Zero’s shimmering center of star, “Follow my lead or the heat charged inside you will end the game. I suspect that will give me the win. I would rather experience victory in a more honorable manner.” Father Zero quips, “Don’t worry.” A few stars drop below and implode in dense forces. A pit of gravity that tramples shapes of space into coded digits. Father Zero and Shadow Eight sway on a branch of dense data. A cordial manner powerful entities like to possess when meeting lesser life forms. Father Zero narrows its perspective on golden metals. Feeling a puny size doesn’t match its robust ego. Says, “How long do we have to wait here?” Shadow Eight, “Does it matter? Our guests have no where to go.” ………