Gratitude

  The hum had been there for weeks. Not a loud hum, more of a deep, resonant thrum that seemed to vibrate in the very marrow of Zara’s bones. It emanated from the forgotten back corner of the municipal archives, a dusty labyrinth of ancient ledgers and forgotten deeds where Zara, a meticulous but perpetually overwhelmed archivist, spent her days.

She’d finally tracked the source to a small, unassuming rock. It wasn’t really a rock, not in the geological sense. It was smoother than any stone, a perfect, polished obsidian sphere about the size of a grapefruit, and it pulsed with that low, almost imperceptible vibration. A hairline fracture, thinner than a human hair, marred its otherwise flawless surface. It looked like a part of a very expensive, but very broken paperweight.

“Honestly,” Zara muttered to herself, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Who leaves something like this just… humming?” She picked it up. It felt warm, almost alive. The hum intensified slightly in her hand. Deciding it was likely some obscure, forgotten piece of tech, she took it to her desk. Perhaps a good cleaning would reveal a serial number.

She scrubbed it gently with a soft cloth, then carefully, almost instinctively, she ran a finger along the hairline crack. It felt… loose. With a small, hesitant push, a tiny, almost invisible fragment of the sphere’s surface clicked inward, seating itself perfectly into the crack.

The hum didn’t stop. It changed. It deepened, broadened, filled the air with a silent resonance that wasn’t sound, but pure, overwhelming presence. The air in the archive grew thick, shimmering with colours Zara had never seen – not violet or indigo, but hues that defied earthly description, like the sorrow of dying stars or the joy of nascent galaxies. The dust motes, usually sluggish, danced in chaotic ecstasy.

Then, a voice. It wasn’t a voice in her ears, but a vibration that resonated directly in her soul, a symphony of a million collapsing universes and a million blooming ones.

“FINALLY!” the voice thrummed, and Zara found herself on her knees, not from fear, but from a profound, inexplicable awe. “THE COSMIC RESONANCE ARRAY IS STABILISED.”

Before her, the air shimmered and coalesced, not into a being, but into an idea of a being. Tendrils of pure thought unfurled, eyes like nebulae blinked into momentary existence before dissolving, and a form that was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere solidified just enough for her human mind to grasp its immensity. This was Xylos, the Shaper of Distant Suns, the Weaver of Inevitable Fates, the entity whose misplaced “paperweight” had apparently been causing significant cosmic turbulence.

“FOR EONS, THIS ONE HAS WOBBLED,” Xylos projected, the meaning filling Zara’s mind with visions of galaxies teetering on the brink of chaotic disassembly. “A MINOR MALFUNCTION, YET ONE THAT REQUIRED THE PRECISION OF… A TINY, YET ADEPT, BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY.”

Zara, still on her knees, managed a shaky whisper. “You mean… me? I just… pushed a bit?”

“INDEED!” Xylos pulsed with what could only be cosmic relief. “THAT SMALL FRAGMENT, DISLODGED BY A QUARK-FLUCTUATION NEAR WHAT YOU CALL THE ‘TRIASSIC PERIOD,’ HAD CAUSED THIS ONE’S PRIMARY EXISTENTIAL COORDINATOR TO DRIFT. YOUR… ‘PUSHING A BIT’ HAS REALIGNED IT WITH EXQUISITE PERFECTION.”

The cosmic entity shifted, an action that felt like the repositioning of an entire constellation. “WE ARE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL, O MORTAL. ASK. ANYTHING. A GALAXY? IMMORTALITY? THE SECRETS OF THE VOID?”

Zara thought about her perpetually overflowing laundry basket, the one that threatened to swallow her small apartment whole. She thought about the single socks that mysteriously vanished. She thought about how much she hated folding.

“Could I… could I never have to do laundry again?” she asked, her voice small against the cosmic presence. “And, like, all my socks would always match?”

Xylos paused. The shimmering colors in the archive flickered, as if the immense entity was processing something profoundly baffling. “LAUNDRY? SOCKS? THINGS OF FABRIC AND FIBER?”

“VERY WELL,” Xylos boomed, finally. “CONSIDER IT DONE. FOR ALL YOUR DAYS, YOUR GARMENTS SHALL BE CLEAN, IMMACULATELY FOLDED, AND YOUR SOCKS SHALL FOREVER FIND THEIR SOULMATES. A PETTY BOON FOR A COSMIC RESTORATION, BUT… WE HONOUR OUR DEBTS.”

With another pulse of impossible light and sound, Xylos was gone. The hum faded entirely. The archives were just dusty and quiet again.

Zara slowly got to her feet, feeling a profound sense of calm. She walked home, wondering if it had all been a strange dream. When she opened her apartment door, there it was: her overflowing laundry basket. But now, every single item, from her worn-out t-shirts to her grimy gym socks, was clean and folded into perfect, crisp, geometric cubes, neatly stacked. And a pair of single socks, forgotten for months, now lay together, perfectly matched, atop the pile.

Zara sighed, a small smile touching her lips. Turns out, gratitude from a cosmic god was surprisingly practical.