In the Darkness before Time, Rigolei stalked through Existence wearing a smug smile. In actuality, he had no physical form, so you might question his ability to wear any kind of smile at all, or how he might manage to stalk. You might even be wondering how I can call such a thing "he," but that, I will tell you, is for simplicity's sake. There is no succinct word to describe him fully, excepting one: Rigolei.

Rigolei was an arrogant creature, and rightfully so. It was, after all, the Darkness, even before Time. Why, Existence was scarcely a step above Oblivion at this point. So Rigolei sauntered through Existence, for saunter it had become. There was scarcely anything to do, since Being was newborn and Time yet a fetus.

"Presently" might be poor word choice, since, as I have told you, Rigolei was not familiar with the concept of Time. It was a notion that had been conceived quite recently, and news travels more slowly than you would believe, when only one entity inhabits Existence.

Presently, (and I shall use the word again, for simplicity's sake) Rigolei began to hear voices. He was altogether unaccustomed to this, believing himself the only Being. Had he the vocabulary, he might have described the voices as unintelligible murmurs. They rose and fell, swelled and grew to what he would come to know as normal speaking level, then back to whispers. Rigolei stopped, forgetting in his confusion even to continue sauntering. As he stopped, a whisper became a shout, then was cut off abruptly. Rigolei turned. Actually, it was probably closer to turning Existence around him, so that he could look the other direction, but that's not the point. He turned, and could see nothing.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Of course he couldn't see anything! He was the only Being he'd ever come across," and you'd have a valid point. This, however, was not ordinary. By this Time, and Time there was, Rigolei had decided that he was no longer alone in Existence. He was delighted and morose concurrently at this prospect. He had often wished for other Beings to interact with, perhaps to lord over, but he did enjoy being the sole inhabitant of what he had begun to think of as the Universe.

As Rigolei contemplated this, another voice was added, then another. They were surrounding him now, and multiplying by the second. They used strange sounds, as if they were trying to attract his attention. He didn't understand. Why couldn't he see them?

Rigolei began to pace. It seemed the only thing to do. He could not identify the source of the voices, nor could he quell them. As he paced (and each trip was substantial, I'll have you know, for he wasn't just pacing across the living room and back, but across all of Existence) he began to recognize recurring themes. The voices had an odd quality to them on occasion. He decided to name it Panic. It was what he had felt upon first hearing the voices, after all, and that gave him the right to name it.

The voices not suffused with Panic, though, held another strange note. He couldn't name this one, for he had never felt it, being arrogant and alone as he was, but again, for simplicity's sake we'll call it respect. As he paced, he learned to identify the voices speaking to him. They called him by many names, as he began to realize, some of them ridiculously hard to pronounce, even in his mind, and some of them simply too obvious. Did they think to curry favor with him by calling him "Great One"? He knew he was great.

As Time went on, Rigolei began to experiment. At first, he would respond tentatively, with a well-planned response that took him what he came to think of as years to formulate. He began to feel more comfortable about this whole thing, though, and began sending his replies more freely. He answered as many as he could in a day, whether they called him "Yahweh," "Jehova," simply "God," or any number of a thousand other names he came to recognize himself by. In fact, he found it rather fun, though he still thought of himself as Rigolei. He was somewhat disappointed that none of these strange voices knew his true name.

Time went on, and the voices that he conversed with (and he learned to call the conversations "prayer") began to falter, and die out. He was puzzled by this, and soon grew despondent. Was he not answering often enough? Was the fault his own?

The prayers stopped coming altogether.

Rigolei tried to convince himself that it was for the best. After all, he had much more time to be himself now. The problem lay in the fact that he had forgotten what it was to be Rigolei without the voices. Time, it seemed, was an evil thing. Rigolei reached back as far as he could, and pulled back a solitary memory. Upon examining it, he realized it was the sum of all of his memories before the voices, compressed into one. They were all the same.

And so Rigolei attempted to recreate those primitive memories. He tried to stalk, attempted to saunter. It just wasn't the same now, after he had heard the prayers and been given so many names to call his own. It wasn't the same after he had explored all the problems of Life, and selected the best and worst answers of the lot. He had eternity to think. He had until Time began and his world had meaning once more.

Rigolei waited in the Darkness after Time. He waited for the voices to come back.

A/N: Hope you liked this. It's a one-shot myth type story, told from an outsider's perspective. Picture the story being told to the next generation around a campfire or something (unless you already did, reading the story). That's what I was going for.

This story is a thought of mine. I don't like to express my views on religion because people get confused (and occasionally angry). First, let me say that this is not my personal opinion on how the world is run. I'm a writer. I make things up. That's what I do.

This implies that God needs us just as much as we need Him, though neither of us really know it all the time. Just a story; nothing more, nothing less.