We have been here a long time. We don’t remember the beginning, but we were there, in the mix of swirling gases and rock and light. That was us, the light. The energy. The creation.

That is how you should think of us. Think of us like the sun. That ball of heat and light and *power*. That power has to go somewhere, and we put it into shaping the world before us. It started as just another hunk of rock, but we moulded it and added our own touches. Water. Stone. Plants. Animals.

Things changed when we made the animals. Trees were content to take the world as it was. Animals, though, moved, and in their minds there was an echo of our own… desire for change. We shaped them to encourage this, until we had created animals that used tools and told stories. We created you.

And in turn, you created us.

You see, we were like the sun. We weren’t fickle beings or moral beings. We were power and desire for creation. But you told stories about us, called us gods, and in doing so you shaped us. For our power was within you.

So when you told stories of how the gods were in the blackout trees, some of us became those gods for you. It is difficult to describe exactly how that felt. It is not something that happened within a day, but I do know that one day, I was the tree. The power of the tree, but also with the power to shape the world from where I was.

It was disconcerting to realise that I was no longer free. In a sense, though, this was where *I* began. Before, I had been *us*, one of many spirits of creation. Now I was confined but able to think for myself, as myself, apart from the others.

I could still talk to the others. Some also found themselves as trees, some in other things you people worshipped. Far north you sacrificed things to the flame, and so some of us became flame. In the mountains you worshipped columns of stone. Those of you who sailed the seas imagined gods beneath the depths, and so some of us became those depths. All the things you worshipped, you gave power to, all things we became.

Some of you gave power to the darkness. To your fears and doubts. You could not have known, but that was a mistake. We were created to be light. To be bound to darkness… it changed us. I was no longer all of us, but I was still aware of my fellow spirits, and could dimly feel the pain of those whose purpose has been twisted around. Not quite pain. Confusion. Confusion that runs through your entire being. Those spirits you bound to shadows, their minds were twisted. Their desire was no longer to create, but to destroy.

We fight them when we can. Their existence is wrong, and if we can break them, they will return to us, to the many to be light again.
This is where you come in.

We are limited, bound by the stories you told. I am a tree, as you made me. I cannot see too far past my roots. But I can stretch some of my awareness, separate my power from myself. If I drop seeds, they sprout elsewhere, and my awareness inhabits the new tree. Then, as it grows, it becomes a different me, something separate, but still something that was once part of me. I suppose you could call it having a child. I can speak to my children across great distances, although we cannot move. I think I can do more than this. I think I can place some of my power within you, if you let me. This would allow me to move with you, to be aware of all you are aware of.

It could be done. Especially if you believe it. It is your thoughts that have shaped the world, after all.

And together, we can find the darkness and banish it.

Are you with me?