The Seven
In truth, the Planets had forgotten after so-many thousands of years why they wandered across the cosmos. It was said that they had been placed there to rule over the Earth, they, the Sun, the Moon, and the rest. At first and for an eon, they thought themselves gods, creators and sustainers of all life, and demanded worship. It must be said they received it. For an eon they went on as divine beings, but inevitably doubts as to their claims to this greatest honor began to arise and—whether in spite or because of that who can say—they began to doubt themselves. Slowly that glorious self-perception began to wane until it had evaporated wholly and they could no longer recall for what reason or purpose they continued along their courses. They became listless and crestfallen, overcome with a desperate sense of emptiness, going about with no thought as to why it was that they did so. In turn, the awe and reverence they had been given, too, faded into nothingness and the very notion of their divinity came to be seen as little more than the foolishness of a barbarous age. Their long memories began to dissipate and disintegrate until they had no recollection of the millennia past. Cut off from everything, their minds slipping from themselves, so it was at long last that they stopped perceiving the universe and, devoid of thought or feeling, they ceased too to have any opinion of their own fate, or indeed of anything. Thus it happened that they became inanimate and insensate, great masses of rock and even greater masses of gas, merely hurling through the void of space.