//------------------------------//
// Straddle the Line, 
// Story: Discord and Rhyme 
// by Phoenix Quill 
//------------------------------//

In the beginning, all was awash with a blankness. There was no light to see by, and no stars in the sky. No earth or sky to behold as the universe itself did not yet exist. That's where the gods and goddesses came into the nothingness, and gave light to all. 

It was in this light, that they could see what they were doing, and for the first time, beheld themselves in what would become our universe. Everything was bathed in a white glow, as if the universe itself was made out of paper, and they would prove to themselves their own power here. At first, nothing happened, they simply stood in wait, looking at the vast white nothingness that they had to build up into something. Suffice to say, the mood was ruined when someone sneezed. "Really? You chose now to do that?"

"Sorry," the gryphon replied. "I'm like, half a lion, and I'm allergic to cats."

"Then why did you pick that form when you came here if you knew it would make you sneeze?"

A white alicorn turned to the arguing gods and frowned deeply. "Look, I know it's uncomfortable for you all to be here like this," The leader said to them all, and received a few grumbles. "Now look, this isn't our first world building exercise, for most of us. This one's going to be different than most things you've worked on before, and in order to understand what's going to be here, we need to be what will be here. Understand? Now, let's get to work."

There was a few more grumbles in the crowd as they began to gather their supplies, leaving the leader alone with a few of her core team members. "Mother," one of them said with a frown. "This really is a small crew for everything you have planned out. Are you sure this is enough?"

Mother laughed slightly, not from the question, but because of the fact that the small pegasus before her was around her age, came up with the nickname for her. "Well, you know how it is with management these days, they want to save as much as possible, budget cuts and bottom lines and all that." Suddenly everything fell back into darkness. "HEY! Who's in charge of the lighting?!" 

There was silence for a moment, followed by a distant, "Sorry!" There was a sound of power coming back to the lights, and as soon as things were lit, everyone continued setting up the supplies they needed.

"Okay, first of all who's got the plans for the celestial movements?" Mother looked over at the committee she kept close to her, and was quickly passed a set of plans. "What's this?"

One of the creators, a diamond dog, raised a paw in apprehension to the question. "Ah, that's the master plan we had drafted. Pretty standard stuff for a new world. Planet with land and oceans revolving around a stationary sun with a moon option revolving around the world." He then smiled as his smugness came through. "Not to brag but, the boys down in HR feel that sentient life forms tend to do better with that moon roof. Makes them feel relaxed at night."

"Sorry Fluffy," Mother said with a frown. "But I thought we were clear before going in that this would be different. It might take some micro-management, but I think they can handle what we throw at them." She looked at the dimensions suggested on paper and frowned. "This sun's too big. For what we need it's going to be a lot smaller, and a lot closer."

"Closer? But mother, wouldn't that cook them? I've got a family you know, and I doubt my little ones would be thrilled to know that we-"

Mother snorted slightly, and was surprised that she had. Despite that she kept a cool face and continued. "I know what I'm doing here. You might have hired me and helped me select my crew, but when we're done, trust me when I say not only will your little ones love it, but you will at least tolerate being with them when they see what we've done." She turned away from the overseer from the company, and instead went over to the plans and supplies. She browsed around for a while on the makeshift desk, pausing over the map for the continents and nodding in approval before picking up a pen. Alright, I've got this.

She looked at her wings, and gave them a flap to test them out. Sure enough, they propelled her forward with ease. Her horn lit up and she quickly grabbed the pen from her hoof with the magic, and couldn't help but laugh at how easy it came. "Alright everyone!" She looked around the white void around her, and discovered that nobody was upright anymore, and had simply drifted throughout the emptiness. It took all she had to not slam her hoof into her face, but instead forced a smile. "Grab your pens and paints, and get ready to follow me!" She flapped her wings and lowered the pen as she flew in a great lazy arc. She looked back and saw that other's were either flying like her, or running through the nothingness, but all of them were doing basically the same thing, drawing a line behind them into the void to create a series of arcing lines. "Keep it up everyone, it needs to be as close to a perfect ball as possible to work!"

It didn't take too long for Mother to meet up with the unicorn that ran in the opposing direction she was flying in. When their pens met, the two backed away from what they did to survey their work, and joined the others that were done to wait for the rest to catch up. The lines continued to fill in behind the crew of gods, until what finally looked like ball made up of latitude and longitude wire frame was floating in the void. "Alright," Mother said with a smile. "Dump it!"

There was a sudden mad rush as everyone grabbed a bucket of blue paint from the supplies. It didn't take more than a minute before the wire frame took it into itself and became a giant floating ball of water. "Should we render it now Mother?"

"Not until after we're finished with the lands, or we're just going to have a big ball of water floating around." She looked over the what was done so far, and felt giddy from excitement start to build up in her. "Alright, team A, you're with Top, get over to the far end and start in on that moon. I want every detail on it done within the hour. Every rock, crater, and shade of white detailed to the last dust speck! When you are finished, join team B. Team B, you're with Big Guy. Get down there and start working on the land masses. Team C, you're with me on sunshine duty."

Teams A and B quickly dispersed to do what they had to, but team C groaned loudly before joining Mother off to one end of the void. "So how far away should we go? A few billion miles or..." 

"Or," mother replied with a smile. "About the same distance as the moon, if not just a bit further." Mutterings went through the small group, and Mother noticed some of the things they were saying. "Now now, it's going to be a very small sun that orbits the planet. I have faith in you all." The other gods replied with a collective groan, and Mother shot a few sparks from her horn. "Hey! If you wanna be that way, I'll just have the company replace you all with trained chimps! But I'm sure you would rather get a pay check at the end of all this."

That did it, the other gods zoomed off without too much prompting, and Mother gave chase after them. "Hey wait! You don't even know where it's supposed to go yet, follow me!"





At the great blue ball, Big Guy was having issues of his own. "Alright, who's the wiseguy that spilled their ink bottle here without cleaning up?"

"Uh, I did Big Guy, uh sir," a small parasprite said bashfully to the minotaur. "Sorry, it's really hard for me to hold things like this, I'm just too tiny."

Big Guy just rubbed his temples and closed his eyes as he tried to think of what to say. "Alright, look, I know you're real talented, but maybe you should have tried to be something that isn't the size of a tennis ball when you got here? I mean, you just created a bunch of islands that weren't supposed to be here. What do you think I'm supposed to do with these?!"

"Well, it's south of the equator, maybe it can be a desert and jungle region? I mean," the parasprite stopped and swallowed down his saliva, only for it to cause him to accidentally spit up a copy of himself.

"Grand, another one of you. Bob...s, just... just go, I want you on detailing, and detailing ONLY. Use your pen to do something that doesn't involve an ink well, please?" The matching pair of insects saluted before flying off and grumbling about lack of respect, and Big Guy wiped some sweat from his brow. "Why did I take this job? I'm never going to recover from this."

His thoughts were interrupted when everything went pitch black again. "Great, SOMEONE HIT THE LIGHTS!" 

"There's no need," He looked up and saw Mother and her crew floating down to surface level of the planet with a grin. "Any second now, that new sun's gonna roll up over the horizon." They waited for a moment, yet nothing happened. "Any minute now."

Big Guy and the pair of Bobs all looked to the east, only to find nothing happening, Finally Big Guy coughed into his hand and adjusted his glasses. "Uh, you think you did something wrong here? Maybe the planet needs to spin after all." 

"I'd rather not do that with us all standing here," Mother said with a frown. "You think that the A team is done on the moon yet?" Just as she asked the question, a white orb appeared above them in the sky, casting everything around them in a soft glow. 

"Well that answers that," Big Guy said in a huff. "Let's move to where the sun is and work our way around with it. Probably best that way." Mother nodded and quickly called over the rest of the crew to head east with their supplies.

And so it was that they drew everything. Every mass of land, every rock, tree, mountain fissure, lake, blade of grass and grain of sand. It could have taken eternity, and maybe it did. But for them, it was nothing. And yet the sun and moon refused to move on their own. It took Mother herself to move those orbs everywhere they needed it to keep a normal cycle of day and night.

It wasn't until the final days that the gods began working on drawing all the life. Creatures both fanciful, and deadly. Some were wild beasts that would be apart of nature, and others were designed to be different. Masters of the earth and skies with intelligence that rivaled only each other. None of them were living yet though, not until everything was ready.

But not everything was going to plan, and one of the gods had to speak up about it. "Alright, we've got everything ready to go, and are ready to hit the render button on this project of yours Mother, but we've got two problems," Top said with a frown.

"I'm listening," she replied with a frown. 

"Okay, one is the issue with the sky. The sun and moon are both in constant need of manual control to move them, and nothing here has the ability to move them when we're gone." Top then pointed at the forest behind him before continuing. "The second issue is that none of the weather patterns seem to work here. The only place that works right on that aspect is over the ocean in patches, and that forest back there. So tell me, did you come up with a plan for this?"

Mother looked around her and noticed that there was a group of roughly sketched butterflies atop some freshly painted flowers. "Hang on a second," she turned away from Top and shouted, "WHO FORGOT TO COLOR THE BUTTERFLIES?!" There was a quiet sorry shouted from over the horizon, and she rolled her eyes slightly before turning back to the earth pony. "Yeah, I've got a plan for the weather. Once everything is rendered, the flying life forms we've designated to become sentient will be able to handle that. As for the sky," she trailed off and gave a slight sigh. "I might have to come up with something soon, I'd rather not retire here for such a mundane task."

Top nodded and headed out as Mother looked in her bag for a pen. It needs to be magical, that much is true, she thought to herself as she pulled the pen out. But much stronger than anything else is here in that department. Using her magic to stroke the ink into the air, she tried a few different ideas in a row based off of what was already created. First she tried a gryphon, but despite her best of intentions, she couldn't figure out how it would be able to move the sun, so gave up on the idea.

She then drew a unicorn pony, and smiled. "Alright little one," she said to the sketch. "I give you life, and knowledge. You are a your own pony." The unicorn blinked to life, and looked confused for a moment before seeing Mother and bowing deep. "My foal, would you show me if you can move the sun?"

The unicorn blinked a few times before bowing again. "I, shall try, Mother." Her little horn flared up as she reached out with her magic to grasp hold of the sun. The unicorn grunted and groaned a few times, and for a moment it looked as if it could work. Then the unicorn passed out before the sun even moved an inch.

"Hmm, that wouldn't work then," she said with a frown before wiping her memory and placing a spell to keep her asleep. She tried again with a great dragon, and quickly found out that even though they were given sentience, a dragon doesn't care who you are, they'll try to eat you. 

Hours went by, or maybe it was days. She'd lost count by now. The extra gods had left long ago, leaving just herself and the small core creative team leaders she'd specifically wanted to help. The ten of them had been waiting for a while, and in boredom decided to join her in trying different drawings. By then it became a sort of game to see who could come up with what, have a laugh and erase it before bringing it to life.

"Mother," one of the gods finally said after who knew how long. "Look, we're starting to run behind schedule. Maybe we're going about this all wrong, are you sure you've tried everything?"

"Not quite everything," she said with a frown. She then started to draw something else before kicking over a can of paint, creating a colorful waterfall. "Great, we haven't even finished with rendering and everything's going to collapse, because of a pair of stubborn celestial objects!" The bored group of gods behind her began to mutter before shrugging and continuing with there game, snickering at what they'd created. "And what's so funny now?!"

"What? Oh, it's nothing. Just this thing we drew. I thought it was kinda funny." 

Mother groaned as she turned around. She was about to say something about how they shouldn't waste resources, but instead simply asked, "What is that?"

The gods all shrugged again before one of them stepped forward, "Sorry Mother, it's just what we were doodling to keep spirits up. You want us to go ahead and hit the render switch before we leave you alone?"

She froze as the words rang out, and a smile crossed Mother's face. "Don't you dare move! I'm about to be brilliant." The gods and goddesses all gave a collective groan as Mother's red mane began to fray with excitement and she began to rant. "We're not done just yet," she then began to pace back and forth quickly while making pen strokes in the air. "We've been going about this all wrong."

"We?" a gryphon good called Fuzzy said with an accusing glare.

"Shut up, you know what I meant," Mother said as she continued drawing. "I've been trying to use ideas based on the mortals we already created. But mortals are so short lived, to use one to move these objects, it would burn out it's life in a decade! But, a spirit..." she trailed off as she continued adding more features to the sketch before her. Bored once again, the others returned to their game of drawing. One added a single antler to the head and giggled slightly as another placed a goats horn. "And done!" Mother said once she applied the last bit of paint.

The ten others looked in confusion at what she'd drawn. It was almost as big as she was, and she was easily the tallest among them in the group. The creature was a white wolf with a serene look on it's face, as if she knew something they didn't. "Well," one of them said as she rubbed the back of her neck. "It's certainly nice, but how is she supposed to work?"

Mother grinned as she slowly rotated the large wolf before them. "She is Rhyme, the answer to everything we've been needing. A spirit of harmony, reason and logic. She will maintain order among the mortals of this world. She'll be a goddess among mortals, keeping everything in check while we are gone and answer only to us." She ran a hoof down the wolf's fluffy back and smiled. "She also can move the moon and sun for us while we're gone. So, what do you think?"

The others looked at the beautiful creature before them, and quietly shoved their finished work behind them. "It's great!" Big Guy said with a smile.

The others mostly nodded in agreement before one of them said something. "Wouldn't she be lonely?"

Mother's smile dropped somewhat as she stopped petting the fluffy fur of Rhyme's suspended body. "Pardon me?"

Out of the small group, one of them, a Mule named Jayson was singled out and he looked embarrassed, but continued. "Well, if she's perfect harmony, and can live forever, won't she be lonely? And besides, what kind of a world would this be to look at if everything was in perfect harmony? I propose a counter to harmony is needed to keep things in balance." He then pulled forward the sketch that they were goofing off with and smiled. "I say that without confusion, and chaos, life would be too boring, and harmony would have no meaning. Let him balance her out."

Mother looked over the strange doodle and shivered slightly. It was cartoony, that much was certain. But there was something off about him that she didn't like. The haphazard body parts, or pair of fangs weren't even the issue, but rather the serious and stoic look drawn onto his features. She quickly grabbed a pen and eraser and dabbled a bit on him to soften his look. Finally, after a few more minutes of work, she felt satisfied and grabbed some paint. "Everyone grab a color and body part, he's got to be her opposite, but I don't want him to be too much of a menace to our world."

Once they were done, they moved him next to Rhyme, and they gave a small cheer, it was done finally. Everything needed to get the world started was in place, the creatures were set where they should be. The ponies, gryphons, donkeys, minotaurs, dragons and cows that were to be the intelligent life were ready to be activated in their respective parts of the world. All they needed to do, was hit the render, make some talk with the life they made, and go.

"Alright," Big Guy said with a grin as he placed his hand on the leaver. "Here we go!" With a shove, a spark ran through the universe, making everything real instead of drawings. The water became fluid, the life started to animate, and the plants began photo synthesis. Everything was perfect.

"Alright," Mother said with a smile. "Each one of you look like a different form of the intelligent life here. You all know what to say, right?" They all nodded silently as Mother used a hoof to try to get one of them to speak.

Finally, they took the message and Fluffy was the first one to open his beak. "I am Fluffy, one of the eleven gods that created this world. I created you in my image, as they created others in theirs. All of you are to share this world in peace as masters of all that you find here." He then smiled wide as Mother nodded.

"Very good. If they have questions, you may answer them. I don't want too much difference between the races here, and hope for a peaceful world. Mind you, the dragons might be a problem, so be sure to make your point strong, okay Smokey?"

Smokey nodded before disappearing to do his bit in a jet of flame, leaving the others to follow suit and go down to talk to the life. Leaving Mother alone. There were no Alicorns, and she was rather happy with that idea. No, no alicorns yet, I think that should be something they could strive for. Only the best of my ponies can be symbols to unify all the races. But I still have to talk to them, after all, I am the high goddess of my ponies. As for the others, well, if they accept me, then they do. If not, at least the ones that look like them will still work under me. With a silent nod she left the ethereal realm to join the other pony gods to say her part to them.