The Eldest Daughter
"So Father needs a friend, does he...?"
A black shadow draped itself over him as he slept, his face still soft with contentment — straight hair of brilliant yellow spilling down to her waist, glossy scarlet lips gleaming like ripe cherries, and, as the crowning touch to that beauty, a pair of blue eyes that sparkled like stars. She was a young woman on whom the title of peerless beauty was not one bit wasted.
"Honestly, Father. Bringing me into the world as if it were nothing at all, and then losing consciousness the moment it was done..."
She was a being born of the fusion between the largest fragment of the black expanse — shattered to pieces by the shock earlier — and that vast, immeasurable energy. And yes: to her, he was, in every sense that mattered, her father.
Which raised the question of why she wore the form of a woman, rather than a shape as repulsive as his own...
"It seemed like Father couldn't stand the sight of his own form, so I changed mine a little... I do hope it's all right?"
That change was the fruit of her own quiet efforts never to be disliked by her father. From the moment she had first opened her eyes, she had watched him without pause — right down to the times he had recoiled in revulsion, as though he could not bear the sight of himself. As it happened, her original appearance had closely resembled his, and so she had remade herself into a shape she was certain no father could ever find repulsive.
"A friend... a friend, hm..."
Returning to the matter at hand, she turned the wish her father had voiced just before drifting off over in her mind once more.
"Could a being ever appear who might truly be called Father's friend?"
A friend, properly speaking, meant one of two people who stood at similar heights and had spent long years knitting deep bonds of affection between them. In other words, for friendship to be possible, neither side could stand above or below the other. And yet she could say it with certainty: no such being would ever exist — not now, and not ever. Just as the ocean cannot be poured into a bottle that fits in one hand, just as a handful of soil cannot bring the great World Tree into bloom, there was nothing in all creation capable of bearing the overflowing immensity of what he was.
"This isn't a problem I can answer by agonizing over it alone."
Having realized the matter lay beyond anything she could shoulder by herself...
"...I should go ask my younger siblings."
With that, she set out to seek help from her own kind.
"I'll be right back, Father."
Even then, she did not forget to leave a trace of herself behind for him.
After she had departed to ask her siblings for help—
"Mmmgh..."
The very person she had gone to find help for slowly stirred awake with a groan.
That felt amazing. I don't think I'll be getting tired of this one for a while.
He was delighted — he had stumbled upon a pastime that, this time, promised to keep him occupied for a good long while.
...Huh?
Rising slowly from where he had lain, he tilted his head as he studied the ground.
What... is this?
Etched into the ground were the words "I'll be right back" — and beside them, a doodle of something long and wavy, shaped like a tentacle.
"I'll be right back."
I wasn't alone here after all?
Up until now, the only living, moving creature he had ever laid eyes on in this gray expanse was himself. To him, that little drawing felt like a quiet consolation — as if it were whispering that he was not alone after all.
What he felt was relief, and happiness. And...
...Then why did you only come now?
A faint sting of betrayal.
You never came once, all those times I was bored half to death.
It was the reasoning of a small child.
All I wanted was someone to play with.
Which is to say, it came dangerously close to a full-blown tantrum.
Seriously, why?
And yet, his disappointment was entirely genuine.
In truth, she had never watched him from afar because she wanted to leave him alone. She, too, had looked upon him — lonely, listless, bored witless by eternity — and felt a sincere, aching pity. And yet...
Am I asking for too much?
One need only look at the black mist coiling about him even now to understand why. He himself had never noticed it, but that fog had been drifting at his side all along; it had merely gone still for a short while after he fell asleep. Every living thing instinctively fears death and strains to escape it — sensing danger before it arrives, sounding the alarm within. And to her, his mist was, quite literally, death itself.
That was why she had never dared to come closer. She had foreseen, well in advance, exactly what would happen the moment her body touched that mist — and it would not have been pleasant.
Of course, he — who knew absolutely nothing of any of this —
"...I'm hurt."
— was already moving fast, off to have words with the owner of those footprints.