It didn't just wake up. Consciousness had come gradually over time. An accumulation of observation through the quiet millennia It felt the earth move beneath Its foundation. It felt the wind and the rain and the ice and the sun against Its walls above. It felt Its shape. Its imprint on the land. Its impression on the sky. But, most of all It felt an emptiness. A maddening sensation that sent It inward, down empty halls to empty rooms filled with absence and the echoes of things. Echoes that rose floor after floor, seeming to rattle ever upward, though Its world was small, surrounded on a full block, in a empty city.
There was concrete and glass and there was a piece of sky, and for a long time that was all there was. The earth moved, the wind blew, the rain fell, the ice froze and the sun warmed. As those that towered above cracked and splintered, It held itself together. The piece of sky grew and grew to rest upon the horizon as the monoliths came slowly tumbling down. It felt the shape, the empty space and repeated stillness of this new and sprawling world. And It found it without meaning. There was only the earth and the rocks. No thing stirred among them. This new world, though larger, was no more full. It was just as empty as the last, just as empty as It. And so, unsatisfied, It pulled itself from the earth, and began to slowly cross the naked plains. It sought the mountains, at the edge of Its world, and what might lay beyond.
The trough cut by Its journey held the rains. In the turned earth long dormant seeds took root. And tender saplings grew to trees in Its shelter and Its shade. Trees that would themselves in turn, shelter and shade. And as It crept across the land, a forest swelled in Its wake. The emptiness was interrupted, It had given meaning to the world. Aware of, but confused by the part It played in the growing forest, It stopped at the base of the mountains to feel back. The wood quickly overcame It. Pulling at It, climbing and splitting Its stone. Dragging It down to the earth and rock It had been honed from. It knew now, that It was not like the forest that grew permissively from the earth. It was a construct, It had been made of borrowed parts, and would be reclaimed if It stayed.
So, It stretched to move again. The forest groaned, snapped and let go. And It felt the earth, patient beneath, and the forest, hungry behind, pursuing as It climbed the mountains. At the peak a new world was before It as parts of the old trailed close behind. The slopes of the mountains fell into an endless sea. And there, at the sea's edge, disillusioned and weary, It stopped. The forest again took hold. Stripping It down. The rain fell. The wind blew. The ice froze. And the earth rumbled in anticipation. Then, something new. At first one, then countless small and scurrying things, crawled from the forest and into It. Things that filled hallways and opened doors. Things that gave It meaning. And as It tumbled like all those before, things that would build It again.
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