I am a jolly old countertenor watching you from mein Snowpalace. I sing to you when you sleep. You will do good things to your fellow mensch. Be good people.

Santanomi came to Erde very long time ago, before even Mensch had come to look up at sky, or even out into der long arc of its horizon. I had never seen watery planeten before. Drifting, drifting, dancing in great leaps spanning miles between die tumbling asteroiden, cruising through systems from cometen to cometen until stars melt to glitterdust, I disregarded planeten as large balls of irritating gas, or hot rocks mit oceans of acid. In truth I had not seen many at all, und now know even moons which give wunder. But Erde was first. To meine eyes, when for the first time it rose over der white regolith plains of Monde, the blue was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Eine screaming, flaming ball of Santanomi plummeting into wide und smiling sea, eine enormous explosion of white vapor, und down I sank into den Ozean, warm und heavy, space eiscrystals melting to gasbubbles that trailed über meinem pointy head. Das Licht von der Sonne chased after me like ten million spent candles flickering their last dashes of life as ever deeper I went in fascination to the below, und even before meine feet touched seafloor I could feel the continents peeling away from each other, coaxed to activity by broiling heart of this young Planeten. I could feel creatures skating about near und far in fear und curiosity, though at first I could see none. Their vibrations came to me like eine neue language which tentatively I attempted to reciprocate mit meine own furtive gesticulations. How could ein Ort so dense und frenetic und hot be colonized mit so much life? Soon I would come to understand Erde’s heart beat life into its creatures in such great abundance that Santanomi is still in awe of its breadth und diversity.

After some time finally I reached sea floor, Meeresboden. The black of it could not hide its youth, nor to meinen eyes, which saw das Universum in many shades, its slow and rhythmic undulations, pulsing to a music I had not yet learned to hear. The sheer weight of this incredible shell of Wasser was impressive. Though at that time Santanomi had spent most time skating in voids between things, I was no stranger to gravity — indeed, from impatience for time to pass before particularly favorable alignment of Kometen, I had once entered into eine orbit around neu-formed singularity so as to speed up Uhr, sozusagen.

Still, I was surprised by initial difficulty I had adapting to this pressure. Sehr certain I am that I had been squeezed into nothing more substantive than ein stickbug, in real threat of slipping into some tiny crack in der Meeresboden und disappear forever, before I learnt to compel mein Körper to meet force pressing against it und was able to reinflate like ballon. Und then it became amusing to adapt to its influence, hoo hoo! I made ein Spiel of zipping about every direction as I would out in Weltraum, then allowing Erde to drag me back again as if in stubborn affection, und landing I would bring up clouds of particulate settled there. Ja, soon enough I had stirred up eine great, billowing cloud, challenging even meinen vision to pierce… und then one by one, silent, silent, pinpricks of blau und red light blinked at me through it. Was ist das? Konstellationen in the deep? Could some species of sterne live even in these depths, where not even der Sonne was willkommen? But no sterne that I had ever known moved in this manner — in fact they had begun to approach Santanomi, I realized, now pulsing, now fibrillating with ein growing array of complexity. They were creatures! Bioluminescent creatures come to greet Santanomi, speaking to me in their multichromatic brilliance to become meine ersten Freunde der Erde…