The Tragedy of Gaia

Written by Miranda Le from California, USA

I. A Guide to Crafting Your Own World (For Intermediate Creators)

Dear Intermediate Creators, 

As you embark on your world-making journey, this guide will lead you through the most essential steps. Every supernatural being must learn to weave their own dimension, but only the most skilled will create one that endures. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you read this pamphlet with care. 

I take pride in being among the most successful creators and urge you to strive for the same. Remember, my children: the only true miracle is when life brings forth more life. 

Yours sincerely, 

Gaia (also known as Terra, Geb, or Mother Nature) 

Step #1: Weave Your Own Masterpiece

A perfect world must be a tapestry of wonders, woven with mysteries stretching beyond the finite. 

Consider my own creation—Earth, a symphony of colors and forms. The ocean depths roar in hues of sapphire. Golden dunes shift endlessly beneath the sun’s embrace. And for the sky, our world’s bridge to the beyond, dawn begins as a whisper of purple, followed by golden yellow kissed with soft blue. White specks shimmer in deepening azure until fiery orange blooms, crowned with violet. Then, my splendid illusionist—Night—drapes the canvas in velvet darkness, sprinkling it with scattered radiance. 

I poured color into every outstretched corner of my creation, with a palette no one had dared imagine. Can you picture the stagnation of the Moon—always the same pale white?

No, worlds become miraculous only when alive with color. 

Yet true craftsmanship demands patience. Few have the time—or devotion—to perfect their worlds. Take Mars, the consequence of hurried work: barren red splashed across its lifeless surface

I spent 4.6 billion years sculpting mine, ensuring its beauty and balance.

Step #2: Breathe Life into Your World

A masterpiece is lifeless without its creatures. Beings who stir movement in seas, mountains, and once-silent creeks. Crafting barren worlds like Saturn or Uranus is simple, but it is far more wondrous to see your creations flourish—endowed with instinct and intellect, shaping the land in ways you could never script. 

I have gifted mine the power to evolve, adapt, and sustain the world. Creatures who crept. Beings who swam. Silent greens, scattered here and there. 

I urge you: create as many diverse species as you can. Watch how each slips seamlessly into the grand equation of balance—it is, indeed, the greatest miracle.

Step #3: Balance, Balance, and More Balance

When you stir countless forms of life into a single, simmering cauldron, you must wield great care—lest a single spark kindle catastrophe. The true grace of your creation lies not merely in its birth, but in its gentle stewardship. Every element must be held in perfect accord. 

I have allowed certain disruptions—slow-turning evolution, the rare fury of eruptions—but these serve only as quiet currents to keep the world alive. Evolution unfolds over eons; volcanoes sleep for centuries before their fiery awakenings. 

This is the essence of flawless creation: your worlds are so delicately poised that even a single misstep—a degree too warm, a season too long—may bring ruin. Each living being must have its destined place and purpose, bound together into an intricate web of life. 

All must remain in concert. Balanced. Harmonious. Enduring.

II. ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!

Diary Entry #1 

I made a mistake. I created the bane of Earth’s existence.

Intelligent beings who walk on their hind legs, and will deceive and destroy to gain. They disrupted my delicate balance. 

In the blink of an eye, they rose from creatures no different from my other children to avaricious species who have seemingly endless ways of destroying my creation. 

They bring machines that burn, cutting down 1.5 billion hectares of trees. The heat rises. Icebergs crash. Over 70% of recyclable waste is carelessly discarded. Sea turtles, once gifted to fish for jellyfish, now choke on plastic. 

62 million tonnes of used batteries and artificial waste are left to rot in the soil. They tear open the earth, extracting the remains of my long-buried children—fossils of once-thriving trees—without concern for the future. Sustainability is meaningless to them. 

Now, when I look upon their skies—my skies—they are no longer my living canvas, no longer streaked with the colors I once poured from my heart. Where are the gentle pinks, the shimmering blues, the soft purples that once conquered the dusk? Gone. All gone. Smothered by black smoke that coils around the world, turning everything to lifeless grey.

No, no, no… My world! My precious creation, once so full of color—now strangled, rotting, dying before my eyes. 

They burn the past to fuel their present, and I feel the weight of it all. I am terrified. I did not create my world to withstand this. The others will perish. Hundreds of thousands are endangered, wiped from my tapestry at an unthinkable speed. 

Why won’t they stop? 

Can’t they see that if my world collapses, so will they?

Diary Entry #2 

A quarter of a million of their own perish each year from preventable causes. Even though I feel the unbearable heat, my sorrow is not for myself—it is for my innocent children. 

The coral reefs, once vibrant, now fade into ghostly white. The creatures that once thrived there vanish.

Still, they do not see. They do not notice when one of their own collapses beneath the burning sun, when the sky, once a canvas of blue, becomes choked with blackened smoke—smoke even I cannot clear. 

They did not simply take the fruits from the trees I planted for them. 

They cut them down. 

I gave them minds to think, to reason, to conclude independently. 

Yet they remain ignorant. 

Or perhaps they know and are too arrogant to change. 

Do they think it is not their concern that Armageddon will come only after their time? 

But will their descendants still believe the world is a tapestry of green and blue, not a wasteland of dull brown and grey?

More importantly—will they still have a home?

Diary Entry #3 

I feel myself vanishing day by day, as though each breath I draw fades into the hollow hush of oblivion. I have surrendered every last flicker of strength, every trembling drop of life’s essence, in desperate hope of shielding my children from a fate that now seems inevitable. Watching them crumble—not by the hand of an outside enemy, but betrayed and broken by one of their own—splinters what remains of my weary spirit. 

Yet amid the ashes of despair, I cling to the fragile thought that perhaps, somewhere beyond this ruin, a spark of light still flickers. If only those humans might rouse themselves from their fevered dream of endless wanting, open their eyes—truly open them for once—and see, at last, what devastation they have wrought. 

I hope. 

I hope. 

I hope. 

And I can only hope. 

Now, bereft of all else, I have only the remnants of my dreams to cradle in these failing hands.

III. Eulogy Speech for Gaia 

(Note to self: Cry while delivering. Emotions were what Gaia adored.) 

Here we stand in remembrance of Gaia—known also as Terra, Geb, and Mother Nature. You may recall her patient lectures, teaching us the mysteries of life. 

Gaia was a resolute creator. She refused to abandon what she had so beautifully crafted, even at the cost of her own life. Through every disaster—earthquakes, scorching heat, the slow collapse of her creation—she stayed with her children. 

She chose to perish alongside them rather than exist alone. And we will remember her final moments: as Earth withered, Gaia’s own energy faded, drained completely into the world she loved. 

Let this be our lesson: never again shall we create beings so foolish they wield the power to defy their own creators. Gaia’s failed project reminds us: it was not their independence that doomed them, but their selfish choices, made despite knowing the consequences. 

They cut themselves off from Nature, tearing apart the balance Gaia worked so desperately to preserve. 

They chose to add firewood as their home burned. 

Rest in peace, Gaia. May your spirit endure. And may Project Earth be a lesson none will dare forget.