I · The song
Inside a star lived Ganymede.
At the star’s heart was Olympus: a vast, living presence of gold, whom Ganymede called Grandfather. When Ganymede found him sleeping, he wanted to wake him. So he invented a mouth, and began to sing.
Grandfather opened his eyes, recognized him, and laughed.
For Ganymede, that laughter was the most perfect experience imaginable. He returned to it again and again, waking Grandfather and delighting in his recognition.
But eventually, Grandfather woke without laughing.
II · The golden thread
Ganymede began making things to please him: vases, cups, plates, fish, crabs, dolphins, and octopuses. His imagination filled their world with shapes and creatures.
Then he accidentally stepped on a crab.
Its shell broke. Grandfather had not seen what happened, but Ganymede was distraught. He brought the broken creature to Olympus and asked for help.
Grandfather gave him a golden thread to mend the shell.
Gold entered the story as a way to repair something precious. Ganymede went on to make all his creations golden. Eventually, he turned himself to gold as well.
III · A friend
For an eternity, he entertained Grandfather. Then, growing lonely and bored, he made something for himself.
A friend.
With companionship came faces: eyes, noses, ears, hair—the differences through which one person could recognize another. Ganymede began creating places for people to inhabit: meadows, waterfalls, cliffs, castles, and rooms filled with instruments. His world grew elaborate, populated by dragons and extraordinary structures.
When he ran out of room, he asked Grandfather for great magnetic spheres within the star, around which he could arrange his creations.
Still he wanted to make more.
IV · The sister star
When Olympus would give him no more gold, he offered passage to a sister star. Ganymede traveled there, found no life, gathered gold, and returned.
His return set off a chain reaction. Other gods emerged, associated with the planets and formed from different metals. They saw Ganymede’s closeness with Olympus and became jealous.
They declared war on his kingdom.
The world he had spent an eternity creating became a place of destruction. In the catastrophe, Olympus exploded, scattering what had once held them all.
V · Sleep
Ganymede survived within a fragment.
His creations, his love for Grandfather, and the ruin of his world became memory carried toward Earth. Overwhelmed, he asked for help.
The answer was simple:
“Go to sleep.”
And so he slept.
Millions of years passed.
VI · Waking
In the dream’s final movement, Ganymede awakens into a human life. The golden kingdom survives in fragments of imagination: a living star, a grandfather’s laughter, a broken creature repaired with gold.
The name he wakes with is
James William Donovan.