It watched Envy's face as the name landed, watching the flicker that moved through those eyes, the doubt arriving first, the surprise arriving half a step behind it, the two of them colliding in an expression that Envy clearly had not intended to produce but had produced anyway.
"I am a being born in the chaotic times before the Universe had finished taking its form," it continued, its voice carrying the particular quality of someone answering the question he knew was coming. "When existence was still stretching its limbs, still morphing into the nature and structure it had been designed to inhabit. Before the laws were fully fixed. Before the framework held."
The silence that followed lasted only a moment before Envy's voice broke it, barely above a whisper, the words coming out with the careful, reluctant quality of someone naming a thing they were not sure they wanted to make real by naming it.
"Primordial?"
