Chapter Text
There is no “once upon a time” in the Horizon.
To be fair, there is no “once upon a space” there, either. Even the concept of “once” is a difficult concept to grasp in the Horizon, not to mention the very possibility of “one.”
The Horizon is the meeting of time and space; it isn’t possible to remove one from the other because they are one.
Similarly, there is no one inhabitant of the Horizon, if it can be said that there are any inhabitants at all. Even in spacetimes where space and time are separate, life is a nebulous thing, after all: an animal can be alive, a plant can be, but can a robot? What if, over an undefined period of time spent cleaning its ship, that robot comes to think and feel? What if it develops life-like empathy for the child on board its ship? And what of the child itself; is she alive if she is biologically, fundamentally different from most other plants, animals, even people? Should a person's body stop breathing but its ghost linger, is that alive?
Perhaps it is better to speak of existence. All of these things, living or dead, may exist. Even the Horizon can be said to exist, for all that it is unreachable by the living.
No, the issue isn’t quite about life, or where, or when. The issue is that along all of time and space, the Horizon exists and has always existed as a whole. There is no need for the concept of “one” because it is already entirely complete. There is nothing separate to separate.
Until, of course, there is.
For the first time, there exists in the Horizon the barest, vaguest suggestion of curiosity. About what? Well, itself, which is to say time and space. There really is an awful lot of it, isn’t there? Planets and seasons and hours and life, shockingly, bits of spacetime that consider themselves separate, and isn’t that unusual? Isn’t that… interesting?
Curiosity blooms: why on earth would anything consider itself not a part of everything? To be all of existence is calm and still; the alternative is certainly not. The Horizon doesn’t understand, but it finds that against all odds it wants to.
This is quite alarming to the Horizon, which has never wanted before — indeed, the Horizon has never even had a first of any kind, and now it’s suddenly had three in the form of “curiosity,” “want,” and “alarm” — not to mention that now it’s counting things.
This is unprecedented. The Horizon is uncertain about this development, but... more than that it wants to know what happens next — and it has literally everywhen and -where to start.
Too eager to deliberate, the Horizon picks an eon and a planet arbitrarily and observes, seeking to understand: why be one instead of all? Why separate?
The planet is a small one, barely dense enough to keep a small moon in its orbit, and life comes to it in the usual ways. Still, the Horizon observes closely, ravenously, as life flourishes and changes, dies and develops.
If there’s a point when life starts to think of itself as separate, the Horizon misses it. It considers going back, tracing along every molecule and moment to find the answer, but time moves forward and that seems so much more interesting — sea life crawls onto land, adapts legs (and how fascinating is that, to travel one’s space by controlled falling?), breathes air, and evolves in a thousand thousand directions at once.
It is when life starts to think of itself as not just separate but individual that the Horizon realizes that something beyond life has changed. It missed this moment too, and it seems so vital that the Horizon immediately wishes to go back and observe again, pin down the very atom of this change —
But it can’t. Time moves forward, relentless, as the Horizon stumbles against its edge, confused — but there’s no time for that, for over the course of a few thousand revolutions of the planet, societies form and the Horizon is drawn to observe, to understand —
The planet has a saying that “curiosity killed the cat,” but that’s not quite right, and the Horizon lets that part of the world fly by. Flight is a curious idea, even if not all birds have it, but the Horizon dismisses this as well; and, though compelling, the hunger of flame in spirit form is so familiar that the Horizon looks elsewhere.
It’s getting harder to focus on everything when there’s so many tiny details — the Horizon’s alarm is growing but its drive to know is growing faster — it closes in on the planet, observing humankind, listening to the way its newest generation is spoken to.
There's a nonsense lullaby the children sing, about leaping cows and cutlery pretending at life; the Horizon learns of it while passing the moon, which seems such a delightful coincidence that it laughs —
It… laughs?
In a sudden panic, the thing that had been the Horizon reaches back, but that it can reach at all means it is too late: the Horizon cannot reach, does not do, cannot be, so then what—?
It isn’t the Horizon anymore. It is a piece of it.
The Horizon Piece scrabbles against the moon because, all at once, it is scared. It has never been scared before, never been separate, and when did that happen? Where was that moment? How could it miss it?
The planet drags at the Horizon Piece, and it is too little and weak to resist; it is pulled down, down, the moon impassive at its leaving, and even then the frightened thing cannot help but want to know what happens next.
It is almost like an ember, drawn helplessly down instead of up but just as potentially fleeting. It gathers as much of itself as it can (and it’s practically nothing compared to the Horizon, how can this have happened, how could it have let this happen—), somehow certain that with every passing moment it is burning out, losing more and more of its connection to the Horizon until—?
The forest beneath it is so dense that the Horizon Piece cannot see beyond its canopies. It despairs, piercing and sudden — it has existed as itself for so short a time, and already its end approaches — before a section of the forest abruptly loses all its leaves, growing dark and cold in a brief season, revealing — a village!
The Horizon Piece desperately angles itself towards it as the seasons around it start to slow with its fading connection to the Horizon. It has so little time left.
At the village’s highest point: an ornate home. The Horizon Piece darts from room to room, clutching itself together, but the upper floors hold only figures that are frozen solid and a strange, achingly cold beast that repels it.
Time is against it (which feels like a betrayal: not so long ago it was time); it dives deeper, hoping, wanting, and in the basement the Horizon Piece finds its salvation.
The cold of the cellar ensures that the figure is well-preserved without being encased in soul-leeching ice. If it were alive and escaped its chains, it could walk around with that body, traverse space, exist.
More importantly, it’s empty.
The Horizon Piece once was everything; no knowledge was barred from it. Now, it’s operating off of a guess and desperate hope: please, please, let it exist for just a little longer.
It collects every last bit of itself it can and, for the first time, the Horizon Piece intentionally tries something new.
***
Once upon a time, the body of the prince woke up.