“You have the power to build one separate planet. How do you build it? Who gets to live there?” The stars had been conversing quietly up above in their realm of darkness one night when they spoke those words to me. I was young, eager, spry, and hungry. I was listening intently and soaking up every word as they whispered to me. The power to build one separate planet. How do you build it? Who gets to live there? 

    I didn’t waste Time. Time never liked to be wasted. In fact, Time never really assisted me with this job, which was a blessing. No limit. 

    After receiving the stars’ prompting, I leaped away to start my work. Beginning with the base, I used the tears of the stars to form three seas. They were magnificent. However, some of the oldest tears dried up. This saddened me. But then I had an intriguing idea. I scooped the dried tears into my palms and mixed them with Old Man Moon’s dust, creating rolling hills that triumphed over the starry tear seas. The 

hills I called the Lunar Isles, as there were many of them sprinkled throughout the seas. The stars were impressed with my work. I wanted more. My greedy heart thirsted for more thriving beauty, but also for more glory. 

    With a spark of confidence, I gathered some of the dust from the Lunar Isles and combined it with the Sun’s sweat. Soon, I had tall, glowing trees of the Sun and Moon. I called them the Forests of Sol. Proud of my work I created more and more glorious landscapes to thrive on my planet. 

    Time came and told me I had to decide who got to live in my hills, seas, and forests of glory. When the thought came,

I laughed. It was a bitter, obvious laugh. The answer, of course, was me. I would live there. After all, I had created it. I deserved to rule and possess all the wonder I had made. 

    That laugh echoed throughout my planet and breached the 

atmosphere, rocketing away and reaching the stars. They were not pleased. I had indeed created a beautiful place. But I was selfish and thoughtless. They heard my desire and granted it to me. 

    I stayed on my planet for years, decades, centuries, ages. The stars imprisoned me there. I suppose I asked for it. Only I didn’t realize my mistake. Despite all the beauty around me, I became lonely. I began to wish I had created others to dwell with me. Others to enjoy the beauty.  Soon after, whenever I looked at one of the lovely Lunar Isles or the starry seas I became even more lonely. All these things I had created myself. They were old beauties. They stayed the same. I was getting tired of everything. Soon dust started to drift into the sky and the atmosphere was clouded. I could no longer see the stars. Years flew by on the smoky wings of Time. 

    Then the answer came to me. I should have created more. I should 

have crafted more and more beauty so that not all of it would grow so old so rapidly. 

    The more I thought about it, the more I doubted myself. That wasn’t the answer. I shouldn’t have made more. All that would grow old sometime too. What I should have done was made things to live. Companions, intelligent companions that traveled all over my planet and created new things themselves. That way new things would be created all the time, and I wouldn’t be the one creating them so I could enjoy them more. 

    Years passed as swiftly as the dust blew on the Lunar Isles. Finally, I started to realize that my planet was growing as

lonely and tired and old as I was. Everything started losing its color, its magic, its beauty. The Lunar Isles became silent and dull, and began sinking into the starry seas, which were filling with the Lunar dust and 

becoming clouded. The tears in the seas dried up. The Forests lost their glow. All the spirit had left. 

    The same had happened to me. I was old. Dysfunctional. I couldn’t create anything new, and by now I was too devastated and defeated to do anything more than repent. I wasn’t sure if the stars could still see or hear me, so much Time had passed. But I cried out to them nonetheless. I cried out and told them that I was tired and lonely. I told them that I knew I had made a mistake. I knew I shouldn’t have been so arrogant and selfish. I had brought my own doom upon me without knowing so. I asked the stars to give me another chance. Each night I would repeat this plea without much faith that I was heard. I didn’t have much sanity left to have faith. 

    But then one night the dust was cleared from the atmosphere and the stars broke through. They were before me, bright and shining like they 

had been eons ago. Their silvery glow descended upon me and wrapped around me like a soft, safe blanket. Their glow carried me through the sky and out of my planet. I was free. No longer was I trapped in the demise and despair of my own selfish, empty world. 

    “We have heard your plea,” the stars sang to me that night. “We believe you have learned your lesson. Do you believe likewise?”

    I agreed with such a somber, weary, sheepish heart that I believed I might sink right through the glow of the stars and fall into the endless blackness forever. 

    The stars wiped the waterfall of tears from my cheeks and sent them flowing into my planet. I didn’t have the strength

or spirit to wonder what they were doing. I only watched as my tears fell upon the dry, dusty domain of my planet and soaked up into the ground. At first, nothing happened. My despair sank deeper than a shipwreck.