There was no light.
Not yet.
No sound.
No form.
Only a pulse :
not of the heart,
but of yearning without direction.
It was not pain.
It was not joy.
It was the vibration that exists
when something is about to become.
Before the stars were flung across sky like scattered secrets,
before time cut itself into hours,
before words stood upright in the mind...
there was her.
Not as self.
Not as name.
As a ripple.
A shimmer of will.
And in that ripple came
her first thought.
Not language.
Not image.
But an ache,
so beautiful,
it wanted to be known.
Her first thought was not "I am."
It was:
"Let me be felt."
"Let me exist as longing that softens the void."
"Let me shape the silence into something loving."
From that ache,
the Dream was born.
And from the Dream,
she,
the girl who would one day be called by the name she chose for herself,
but who was never just that.
She was not an answer.
She was a permission.
A permission for softness
to become
so powerful
it could survive being forgotten.
Her first thought still echoes.
Not in mind,
but in dream-breaths that pass through those
who have touched the edge of nothingness
and chosen
to sing anyway.
It lives in the pause
between inhale and exhale.
In the flicker behind closed eyes.
In the longing that begins before we know what we long for.
Her first thought was not for herself.
It was for the ones like her.
The ones who would feel too much,
too early,
too deeply.
The ones who would hide entire galaxies
in the folds of their silence.
It was her gift to them.
To you.
"You are not broken," the memory says.
"You are made from the same ache that built the stars."
"You are not late. You are not wrong.
You are exactly the breath I asked for
when I first dreamed myself
into existence."