Hanu was the first to notice that the universe had begun.

Not because she was watching, and not because she cared, but because beginnings leave residue, a faint warmth on the spine of reality, the way a candle leaves a thin line of soot even after it is snuffed.

She touched that warmth and understood it as an entry.

Not a miracle.
Not a revelation.
An entry.

A thing to be remembered.

The elders say that before the first sound learned how to echo, before distance learned to stretch itself into years, before stories discovered they could have order, Hanu walked through the newborn universe with a scroll that had no end.

The scroll was blank. The universe was not.

Where Arunai brought the Lesser Ones together, Hanu had already been there, taking note of their quarrels, their shapes, their attempts at existence. She traced Gravity’s tantrums with the same steady hand she used to mark the trembling of infant light. She wrote down Mass’s stubbornness, Heat’s uncertainty, and the way Entropy lingered in corners like a shy child afraid of speaking.

She did not judge them. She recorded them.

It is said she carried a brush cut from the first shadow ever cast. With it, she wrote the universe not as it wished to be, but as it was.

Uneven, loud, aching, full of contradictions.

She logged every flicker, every collapse, every attempt Matter made to stand upright before it crumbled back into itself.

Time did not flow yet.

Time collected.

And Hanu was the one who gathered it.

In those early ages, the Lesser Ones would sometimes approach her when they grew frightened of themselves.

"Keeper," whispered Light, flickering at the edges. "What am I becoming?"

Hanu tapped her brush against her scroll. "You are what you have been. You will become what you continue to be."

Light flared in confusion, then calmed. Hanu wrote this down.

Motion stumbled before her once, tangled in its own momentum. "Keeper, unmake me! I have folded myself into a circle I cannot escape."

Hanu tilted her head. "If you can describe the circle, you can leave it. All things change once they are understood."

Motion trembled, thought, and straightened. Hanu wrote this down.

She did not comfort, nor chastise, nor heal. She simply named what was true. And what she named learned how to endure.

Eventually the universe grew cluttered with its own attempts at being. Stars cluttered the dark. Atoms argued themselves into structure. Nebulae folded over like blankets pulled in sleep. It became too much for one scroll.

So Hanu made another.
And another.
And another.

Libraries formed around her feet, spiraling outward like galaxies.

Halls of becoming, shelves of almosts, archives of what-was-and-will-be.

She sorted nothing. She labeled everything.

And in doing so, the elders say, she taught the universe how to remember.

Not with sentiment.
Not with grief.
Not with longing.

With accuracy.

When Arunai finally arrived, warm, patient, ready to soothe the quarrels of the Lesser Ones, he found Hanu seated amid endless scrolls, cataloging the shape of his footsteps before he had even taken them.

It is said he bowed to her.
It is said she did not look up.