Began as a rejected canvas and found new life as another alternative creation myth!

The painting is here and this is the story:

When the universe made the first world, she was not pleased with its attitude so she destroyed it in fire and gravitational compression.

Her second attempt was a little more satisfactory; more rounded, less lumpy and with the kind of rotation that didn’t fling everything on it into space. But it had a radioactive core so that every living thing she put on it, died almost straightaway.

She learned lessons, making many worlds that sputtered into life and seemed stable to begin with but quickly, in universe terms, became unviable.

There was one though, a surprising little thing, almost a pet really, that popped into life with no conjuring required.

She watched it, let it grow, then noticed an unusual thing – it was multiplying. This required closer inspection and so she flourished her skirts and cruised on the magnetosphere to its location.

And there it was; a small, green bubble in the deep black of space, popping out more and more small green bubbles which trailed behind it like a necklace with a broken fastener.

This was very strange, but something much more strange was about to happen. When the universe looked closer, she saw the that the worlds were not making more worlds, instead a completely unknown entity was making them. And it was singing, and with every note, out came a new world, fresh and green and ready for … She stopped, what was the word she was looking for? The world-maker intervened, ‘Bird’ it said, ‘Singer of Worlds’. It fluttered its feathers and hopped onto a twig it had manifested. The universe realised then and there that, while she had not made this creature, she had given it the conditions in which it could exist. Bird sang some more worlds into being and flew away.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2026