It began as a single fawn leaf.

  Nobody knew it had begun to exist, yet.

  Until it did.

  And it was coming for Hazahnahkah.

  Maple leaves and pant-sagging systems, with rocket ships and yogurt crayons. It had your house. And your mouse. And probably all the materials that made your blouse. From dark and light it formed, from golden plight it stormed, out from cyclones in skies and gemstones of seas. Primarily, the bladed and blinding force that tore constantly at all the elements of the world was made out of swordfish fashioned from clouds.

  It grew and grew and grew in scale, by a gangster god’s folly it was grander than a million universes worth of whales! It broke boundaries of all sorts, purging laws, fruit, heroes, victims, and things bought. Multiverses were small. What were those again, the things it stepped on to save a single hen? Ah, yes, that hen was cute, flying around like a lost parachute.

  “Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!” The hen cried as it whorled around, ten thousand worlds and boundaries in the now nonexistent air, vestiges of humanity’s broken cities and glories, blazing around it as if it were the most divine corsair. “Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!”

  That’s when those in the next torn open world began to shout. “Duck! Duck! Duck!”

  And indeed ducks flew! They flew away, sucked right up with a passing astronaut's hair. The people who ducked were far too late, their continent was the last, there was no escape. So the storm ate, ate, and ate.

  Until from the ashes, the muck, the meowing cats and the millionth surviving God’s luck, that from them the storm sprouted one thing.

  A thought.

  It had grown bored of rhyming.

  Instead, across the many worlds, the maelstrom of incontestable power had found itself curious to the nature of the destroyed. A race called humans. A race who thought they had invented rhymes. It seemed in every universe, multiverse, or world, humans almost always thought they were the inventor, not the invented. They were kind of annoying, so the storm returned only one world as it were.

  Well, not quite.

  Common laws and common concepts were no less vulnerable to the thunder and the suns, nor was commonality itself. It took time, for there was no need for it. Atoms, stars, and grains of dirt were also unreturned. Actually, only one countryside along a sea dissipating into space was brought from the depths of darkness. A farmer would ride it, to do what would be commanded. But first came the droll of being brought back from the shadow. The explanation of what had happened, what could happen, and why no other life forms were.

  “Here is a hen. Take care of this hen for one month and I will return your wife.”

  “I’m a woman,” the farmer said. “I had a husband.”

  “Funny,” replied the storm. “that the readers perceive you as a man.”

  “What readers? Are you calling me ugly? What are you? How can I trust you? Why would you do this?”

  Again the farmer was distraught, the storm reduced her to calmness. “I’ll answer those questions between the pages of this book, but I suppose it does not matter. The book is no more real than the readers are, unless of course I will it.”

  “What book?”

  “Do as you are told.”

  All at once all of reality except the farmer twisted into a cathedral of institutions, numbering googolplex to the power of itself, each organized structure infinitely times that of a universe greater than the ones readers and nonreaders had any sort of knowledge of. Numbers were reduced to negligible elements. Infinity more so. Intricacy beyond the comprehension of any race you would know were these armies of authority, past any strange or simple concepts of judgements, lawyers, and news delivery roles.

  The farmer asked no more questions, taking the hen into a tender embrace, realizing this was no hen familiar to her. This hen was from a different farmer. Perhaps a neighbor, or an alien, who knew anything after all the cyclones had shown her.

  There was no point of fighting or pleading in their helplessness, and so the farmer gave a command, not a question. “I must have food and drink for this hen if it is to survive. I must also if I am to survive with it.”

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  “I have taken your concepts of death, hunger, and time away. You require nothing.”

  “We require joy.”

  “Joy? What need is there for joy?”

  “A reason to continue.”

  “The hen needs no joy. If you want joy so badly, go and find more yourself.”

  And so action without time would transpire. The hen grew ill, and so did the farmer. They shuddered together, looking up at the eerie empty space beyond. Their weaknesses worsened as they struggled to find something beyond and beneath themselves. The earth had become a traitless dark, and inside the woman, no grief for the absence of her husband. Grief only existed for the hen, and eventually herself. She wondered if the maelstrom had made her this way.

  Action stopped, time born anew, beautiful brown clouds clad the fresh gold stars beneath an open gateway to godly realms beyond. Giant changing wondrous doors ethereal and ever-changing. An unfolding of the earth became, gracing the woman’s soles with the soft touch of cool dirt and silk hills. It was new and fresh and brilliant. The woman was startled, almost scared at reality’s sudden rebirth. Amazement turned to fear, and fear turned to gratitude for all that she had experienced in action.

  Gratitude then turned to joy.

  Again, the farmer wondered if this was the whorl of worlds’ intent.

  The thousand burning earths in the dark void above replied to her thought. “It is not my intent. I would not take your freedom. The joy you found was your own.”

  “You most certainly took our freedom. We cannot even eat, for we have no hunger.”

  “Freedom is found only in the mind.”

  “There are different kinds of freedoms.”

  “Freedom is as a glass sphere is. No matter which way you turn it, there is always more, and always there is another way someone holds it that is just as valid and valuable as the way that you do.”

  “Then is your freedom more important than mine?”

  “That depends on my mood.”

  “You must be in a good mood then, giving us all this.”

  “I am alright.”

  With a breath, everything the maelstrom had taken was returned. All of existence and nonexistence touched by the storm was left as it was, all except the farmer and the hen. They remained affected by their memories of the events unlike everyone else’s faint dreams of it.

  “I thought I was to take care of the hen for a month?” The farmer asked.

  “The month was defined by you. I made it so. You felt a month had passed, and so it did.”

  “A month passed but time did not?”

  “Correct.”

  “How?”

  “Your sense of logic is illogical. Furthermore, I will be revoking this concept of reality to experience poetry in physical form. I will meet you in one month’s time again, my friend.”

  A year would pass. The farmer did not tell anyone of what had happened, even her husband, and eventually she began to worry her memories were that of a madwoman’s. A mysterious dip in the dirt would grow and grow by her farm. She had initially thought this was a prairie dog problem, but when a gelatinous viridescent oval shape was found, sitting at the dirt’s center, she knew.

  The farmer figured it would pay to be polite. “How are you doing?”

  “I am surprised you recognized me.”

  “Anything I cannot explain always seems to be you.”

  The gale did not necessarily believe that was a good thing. Communication was important. It traveled many worlds. Now it was far beyond that of a changer, but rather, an observer. It had witnessed and learned much.

  Now, the storm was interested in a challenge.

  “There are many other things outside of myself that you will find most unexplainable. I am looking for a blade that can rival my power. A weapon. An instrument called Hazahnahkah.”

  “Hazawuza?”

  “I have just given you omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Now go, and find Hazahnahkah, deliver him to me, or me to him.”

  The farmer didn’t feel any different, but she began to see within the strange and alien gelatin a single, speaking thing. As if her senses had been so inadequate prior to her new abilities that she had been unable to perceive it before.

  A swirling array of microscopic swordfish, forming a swordfish, the swordfish.

  “If we have all this power why can’t we just force Hazahnahkah here?” The farmer asked.

  “Hazahnahkah’s abilities negate my own. His consciousness is far from the reach of mine.”

  All at once the farmer realized she was never different at all. The storm had made her who she was meant to be. All her answers were fulfilled, all except for one, for which the swordfish answered knowingly.

  “Swordfish and storms. I am everything. I am even you. Together we embarked along the earths and rambled our way through cities, valleys, tides. Now you must ask who I am.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am The Inundation.”

  Health (source of vitality and abilities): 850,000,000,000

  Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 850,000,000,000

  Agility (speed of actions): 50,000

  Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 100,000,000,000

  Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 100,000,000,000,000

  Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 500,000,000

  [The Inundation’s Abilities]

  Omniscient: Fully aware of all events inside Serpent’s Ramble and partially aware of events outside its boundaries.

  Omnipotence: Health and Energy cannot be reduced below 50% in Serpent’s Ramble.

  Omnipresence: The Inundation may choose to be anywhere and everywhere it has ever been within Serpent’s Ramble.