Darkness.
      Roiling, churning darkness.
      In the abyss between the stars, gases and dust drifted in a vast murky cloud. Only the meager gravitational aura of atom drawn to atom kept the nebula from bleeding away into the vacuum of space.
      For eons the dusty haze heaved like a sea with no shores, a boundless ocean at midnight, its currents thick with helium and hydrogen. Through its depths swam motes of heavier elements, carbon and oxygen and iron forged at the heart of ancient stars and strewn to the galactic winds after their death. Here, swirling in interstellar night, brewed all the elements needed to give birth in the cosmic realm.
      Darkness, darkness upon the face of the deep.
      Light years away, a dim and aging star consumed its last dregs of hydrogen. Its fires sputtered. The outward-thrusting burn of energy dwindled to nothing, and the star collapsed under its own weight. Stellar matter smashed in on itself, crushing inward with titanic pressure. New fires ignited.
      And God said, let there be...
      Light.
      Blazing, brilliant light.
      The old star exploded in a spectacular burst of glory, spewing hydrogen and helium, carbon, oxygen and iron. Ever-widening spheres of matter hurled outward from the dying core, gigantic tsunamis speeding in all directions through space.
      And there was light.
      Night turned to noon on distant worlds. At the far ends of the galaxy the supernova shone like a beacon against the star-spattered universe.
      Close at hand, the tide of stellar debris hurtled through the silent sea of dust and gas. Shock waves left behind monstrous ripples in the nebula. In the rush of turbulence, atoms crowded even closer than ever they had in the earlier random shuffle and shift of the cloud. No longer weakened by distance, the gravitational lure at the molecular level drew motes and particles into clumps. There the merged masses bred stronger forces of gravity. The larger the mass, the faster it grew.
      Slowly the supernova faded. The spent star gave out its last flicker, died to a cinder -- and darkness returned. Roiling, churning darkness.
      But in the midst of the gloom, the deep no longer billowed in one vast fluid ocean. Matter spiraled inward to the hub of the nebula, and gathered in concentric rings. Conglomerates grew huge, sweeping up atoms in their paths and pressing them into new patterns of complex molecules.
      Throughout the long night dust and gases rained inward. Gravity packed the bodies of the lumbering orbs -- soupy, thick, dense, solid in the depths. At the heart of the nebula loomed the greatest sphere of all, its mass so swollen that at last its own weight, pressing ever to the core, lit once more the stellar fires.
      Dawn broke. Morning spilled onto a cluster of newborn planets gleaming in the steady, warm glow of an infant star.
      And darkness fled.

In 2000, this article took first place in the non-fiction category of the literary contest at Write On The Sound Writer's Conference in Edmonds, Washington.