Primeval and Other Times

Between Earth and Heaven there are Eight Worlds. They hang motionless in space like eiderdowns hung out to air.

God created the Third World a very long time ago. He started with the seas and volcanoes, and finished with the plants and animals. Yet as there is nothing sublime about creating, just hard work and effort, God grew tired and disheartened. The newly made world seemed boring to Him. The animals couldn’t understand His harmony, they didn’t admire Him or praise Him. They ate and multiplied. They didn’t ask God why He had made the sky blue and the water wet. The hedgehog didn’t wonder at his prickles or the lion at his teeth, the birds didn’t give their wings a second thought.

This world went on for a very long time, and bored God to death. So He went down to Earth and forcibly equipped each animal He met with fingers, hands, faces, soft skin, reason and the capacity to wonder – He changed the animals into people. But the animals didn’t want to be changed into people at all, because people seemed to them as terrible as monsters. So they plotted, caught God, and drowned Him. And that is how it remained.

In the Third World there is no God and no people.