Toad God
by katerauner
It moved through layers of existence, among ten intricate twisted dimensions, as if a smooth wedge-shaped head was gently separating the fragile margins. Space expanded within each void that touched its surface but nothing impeded its movements.
It pressed against an interface as if pushing a glistening bulbous eye into a froth. It perceived.
Matter and energy fluttered in and out of existence. Threads of actuality coalesced and disintegrated, leaving average field densities unchanged across the vastness. Beautiful and directionless. It found a boundary and pressed as if its fingertip pad stroked a bubble.
Pop. And it was gone.
It touched the next universe on two sides, on edges that moved away from each other, leaving photons racing to catch up. It found measurable durations, concentrations of matter, quarks condensing into protons and neutrons. A lovely dance. It paused as if breathing in a fragrance. And pushed.
Pop.
And so it slithered through the quantum foam. Touching, feeling, and loving. Pressing two bubbles together would merge their differing physical parameters and create fascinating conflicts that collapsed waveforms in novel ways. It created. And destroyed.
Pop.
It seemed to crawl, to push out with webbed feet to feel space and time glide over soft skin. It freed a bubble from the foam, watched the perfect sphere float away through...
Not space - space existed within the bubbles. Not blackness, for photons were irrelevant. Not time - the dimensions of time coiled back upon themselves.
It touched the lonely bubble and waited. For fourteen billion years it waited. Matter concentrated and stars were born. Protons and neutrons became bound by strong nuclear forces. Randomly established values of cosmic parameters allowed nuclei to persist until the stars blew apart in novae and supernovae.
Existence scattered into near vacuum, but not uniformly. Clumping into clouds of gas and then belts of debris, colliding and merging to form new stars and small cold objects.
Cold, but not as cold as space, because they were warmed by the new stars and by nuclear decay in their cores.
It protruded a slender tongue from its forward edge. Precisely tapped a star and sent it billowing outwards to swallow its rocky companions and coalesce again.
Gravity.
Beyond the strong and weak nuclear forces, beyond electromagnetism, beyond the cosmic constant, was gravity and the shape of space.
Eventually it approached a main sequence star surrounded by scraps from its formation - balls of rock and oblate spheres of gas, each laced with traces of heavy elements. One miniscule and beautiful ball gathered complexity. Atoms became molecules, the molecules replicated until threads squirmed, divided, and recombined. Complexity increased, defying entropy.
Its golden eyes glittered, its spirit soared. Souls. There were souls here. What it searched for, what it desired. This was the purpose and the meaning.
It spread its maw wide, from the beginning of the past to the end of the future, and swallowed. Nothing important remained.
Pop.