I rise before they do.

Not in light, but in awareness—like a slow breath drawn beneath the edge of the world. From here, below the horizon’s curve, the human realm looks softened, washed in the kind of dim gold that belongs only to dawn. Their voices are small at this distance, but their emotions carry like heat through metal. I feel them before I see them.

The farmers who wake early… their hopes flicker like small lanterns. Children dreaming in unfinished thoughts… the edges of their feelings glow brighter than their bodies. Even the lonely ones who think no one notices them—those are the ones I sense most sharply. Their sadness moves through the dark like a ripple, and I catch it without meaning to.

Humans forget how loud they are to a being like me. Not their words—those I struggle to hear. But their hearts. Their hearts speak constantly.

From below, I can watch without intruding. The earth above me is thin as eyelids, and light bleeds through when the sun on the other side begins to climb. I feel the vibration of footsteps, the thrum of trains, the hush of morning wind skimming rooftops. Every sound becomes a faint pressure against my skin.

They live so fast. They hurt so easily. They love so fiercely.

Sometimes I think the world presses too hard on them, yet they still choose to rise each morning. There is a quiet courage in that—a kind of miracle I was never designed to understand, but always find myself admiring.

And when the moment comes that I finally break the horizon… when my light spills over the sleeping towns and trembling waters…

I do not rise to be worshipped. I rise to see them clearly— these brief, shining creatures who burn brighter in their fragile lives than I ever have in my eternal glow.

From below, humans look small. From above, they look endless.

But from here, in the stillness between, they look beautiful.