It was Dawn, and the sky was awakening. Stars blinked their eyes open for the first time, and the great dark void of space yawned. The newborn stars stretched and rubbed the sleep from their eyes; in a nest of stardust and nebulae, a noble child of the universe was stirring. Amassed of stardust and nebulae, the being took the soft shape of a bunny. The stars of its eyes glittered spectacularly as it opened them for the very first time.
Somewhere, everywhere, in time, a bunny roams the stars. Made of planets and stars, light and shadow, this space bunny flickers through the sky. Space Bunny spends its centuries exploring new worlds: it roams galaxies, rolls in fields of stars. It bounds through nebulae and chases comets. Every few hundred years when Space Bunny grows lazy with sleep, it melts into the steady wells of gravity circling round and round the largest mass in its vicinity.
One fateful day, after many lifetimes of travel, Space Bunny reaches something. Or rather, it reaches nothing. Beyond its starry eyes lay something it has never seen before; sprawling before it is an immense, endless, gaping hole in the universe, devoid of all things familiar: light, matter, sense of place or time. Space Bunny rests at the edge of the universe and stares with its sparkling eyes into the deep, endless void, and the void stares back. And as it does, a deep creeping fear worms its way into what would be Space Bunny’s heart, if it had one. For the first time, Space Bunny feels small. Obsolete. Meaningless. It backs slowly away from that all-encompassing darkness at the edge of space and bounds back toward the fields of space dust and stars it knows so well. In that moment, as Space Bunny is fleeing from the edge of the universe, it vows not to return to that void until it is worthy of filling it.
Through time and space inconceivable to you and I, Space Bunny travels. It flits through the cosmos grazing delicately, yet determinedly, on first planets, then stars, and then whole solar systems. Centuries later, but soon enough, Space Bunny moves on to small galaxies, and then larger ones, as the dread in its not-heart blooms. Yet, its resolve maintains. All the while, Space Bunny draws laggard; that which was once the rushing water of a stream is now a heavy, sticky, flow, thick like molasses from the bottle. For as it consumes, its heavily growing mass slows.
Many a year, decade, century after Space Bunny first departed from nowhere, it turns back from the edge of the universe and begins its lonesome journey. Its bright eyes are no longer measly stars, but entire galaxies, and with its newfound size comes a lingering of its celestial body. But Space Bunny is determined, fueled by the existential fear of deviating from this sacred promise it made to itself. It keeps pace, as slow as it is, and continues on its trek to the Edge it had visited so long ago.
After hundreds of times as long as our sun has burned for, Space Bunny nears the Edge once again. And as it approaches that vast field of nothing, the trepidation seizes its being from the inside out. Like a twisting web, it reaches deep within its being, pulling and tangling itself into a mess of frayed nerves. Space Bunny looks upon the Edge once again, and the great being’s body flickers as a shudder runs through it. It stares, and it is but an insignificant blip in the face of the Edge of everything. Space Bunny turns away from the Edge of time and space — its dazzling eyes, made of so many worlds, glistening with unease — intending to return only when it can utterly encompass the very void that so terrifies it.
Space Bunny travels the universe, desperately building upon its already massive self, paying no mind to the Time that it devours quicker than any stars. Its galaxies grow into galaxy clusters, and its clusters into superclusters, until the eyes which once held singular stars become a trillion stars, like a never-ending field of flowers born from a single seed. A being that was once but a raindrop is now ten thousand hurricanes, and with its size, Space Bunny crawls slower yet.
As Space Bunny painstakingly turns toward the Edge for the last time, it’s almost certain its stupendous size will be enough now. Surely trillions of stars is enough. Surely nothing can overwhelm a being amassed of trillions of stars. But still its unease remains. Somewhere deep in its essence, it knows. Nothing can compare against the darkness’ yearning desire to consume.
Space Bunny hardly notices the passage of time as only its goal remains: to reach the Edge. By now, Space Bunny is archaic — as antiquated as the universe itself. After many centuries, even millennia, of its journey, now many thousands of times bigger than it began, it moves at such an excruciating pace that it itself can no longer perceive if it is in fact moving at all.
And so time moves through Space Bunny. Until one day, staring deep into the everywhere-horizon of space from its unmoving place, it sees it: the Edge. If it had a breath to catch, it would stop time to catch it. Except Space Bunny isn’t moving towards that void at the end of space and time at all — the Edge is moving towards it. In the not-so-distant distance, suns are darkened, galaxies are snuffed out of being, and nebulae are sucked into its pull. All the while the great being watches it near, for anything, however big, is nothing in the face of the great absence that is the endless void.
As Time folds in on itself, Space Bunny stares, for the final time, into the abyssal darkness as the lights that make up its magnificent being blink out. One by one, its planets and stars disappear from existence, leaving only the blackest black of absence in its wake. And as the void overtakes Space Bunny, along with the rest of the foreseeable universe, it finally feels at ease. Although it could never fill the void it so sought to conquer, at least in the way it convinced itself it must, it was now the very void it sought to fill. The tension in its heart melts away with the rest of its physical body. It no longer fears, or longs, or dreads. It had been all it wanted to be all along. Space Bunny was the universe was the void. Finally at peace, as it gets tucked into the dark fabric of the absence of space and time, it settles down for a never-ending slumber. And with that, it blinks its eyes for the very last time.
