In the beginning ...

* best when read in a Carl Sagan voice.

In the beginning, there was a serene nothingness ... just a beautiful purplish mass, floating emptily on a cloudy cold sea of rock.  A setting so peaceful and quiet, you might even imagine it to be the floor of a suburban garage were it not for the civilization about to be created before your very eyes.

Small holes have already formed on the slightly wavy surface of this small world, perfectly sized if not crudely constructed to handle the channeling of power from beneath the crust, providing life to all manner of creations.  The landmass, flat and barren for the moment, will be significantly larger than anything the citizens of Shukuzu have ever experienced before, and promises to be ripe with wondrous amenities.

Sitting as it does, outside the boundaries of time and space, the citizens of Shukuzu will have the pleasure of a continual sakura, coupled with an everlasting Bon Festival and, if a specific piece of scale "equipment" can be found, maybe even a depiction of Kanamara Matsuri.  For now they have, much as the 8 little citizens of Old Shukuzu had, a bland expanse of pink foam.

Already, powerful forces are at work, carving and shaping what promises to be a dramatic rise at the western end of the ward, thrusting skywards to provide a welcome respite from the hectic city life as well as a perch for the local temple grounds. As we have seen with our own world, geological movements can be both spectacular fiery explosions and slow millennial grinds.  Hopefully, for the sake of the thousands of new inhabitants of Shukuzu currently sealed in stasis in ziploc bags, their world is born from more violent explosions of pink dust.