“Universe has been quiet lately…”
Kairos tried to hide his surprise at the voice that had caught him off guard. He had been silently working on sewing together a small paradox in the side of the universe, created by the remains of a miniature black hole, when Epani had floated by and suddenly started talking. Closing paradoxes was always complicated work, so the Dragon God of Time needed to concentrate, clearly to the point that he had not seen the kilometer-long beast looming into view.
“Epani, I did not… what are you…” Kairos fumbled on his words. “What’s up?”
“Am I interrupting?” Epani immediately replied. “I can come back in a moment.”
Kairos finished what he was doing then shook himself down, his arm-wings exhausted from the fiddly, microscopic work he had been doing. He then glanced up at the Panelix, the Goddess of Space, realizing just how small he was. Okay, sure, Kairos was a 50m tall draconic being with an enormous wingspan and a tail that could easily wrap around a skyscraper several times, but he was minute compared to Epani. “No, no! I’m good. Is everything alright?”
“Yes, everything is alright. Everything is perfectly alright…” Epani floated somewhat ominously. Had she arrived earlier, Kairos was pretty sure her gravitational presence would have ruined his work. Then again, miniature black hole issues were the sort of thing Epani normally dealt with. “I wanted to talk about how everything is so quiet lately. It has been a reasonably quiet pan-universal cycle so far.”
“Really?” Kairos blinked. “Because Yisini and Arkadin have both seemed pretty frantic, running around dealing with their godly duties. Poor Yisini’s dealing with a bunch of accidental plagues and idiots who won’t take the vaccines she made, and Arkadin… I don’t know what Arkadin’s doing.”
Epani shrugged, her tail flicking off into the distance, followed by a small cloud of astral dust. “I have not seen Arkadin in a while. How is he?”
“I don’t fucking know. I barely see him these days. He’s been trying to decide on a new form…”
“A new form!” Epani exclaimed, flapping with joy. “I would love him to make a new form! He was never happy in his silly Threanic form! Do you have any idea what he will be?”
“What’s wrong with his Threanic form?” Kairos huffed. “Do you not like it?”
“It is so small and tiny!”
“So?”
Epani circled Kairos, giggling as she did so.
“What is wrong with being small? Am I too small for you?”
“Oh no, you and Yisini are plenty large enough. But Arkadin is so tiny and… not at all god-like…”
Kairos rolled his eyes. “I am sure Arkadin hasn’t heard THAT criticism a million times before. We all have a go at him about his size and looks, he’s going to get weird about it all. Actually, he has already gone a… a bit weird…”
“Why?” Epani’s massive eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He is not going to make himself incredibly large to spite us, is he?”
Kairos shrugged. “Oh no. Not at all. The opposite in fact.”
“Huh?”
Epani fell silent, noticing that something was darting around, just outside her vision. Whatever it was, it was incredibly tiny. So small that she could barely comprehend it.
“Has Arkadin become very small, just to spite us?”
Kairos waved at the little darting thing, which then darted off and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Yep.”
“Hmph.”
The Whenvern smiled as he too flew off. “Well, what did you expect? Just let him be what he wants to be, sister!”
Epani grunted, not really sure what to say. “I… I guess…”