[Same pov]

Years had passed after the great wave of destruction and life started to re-emerge from beneath the rubble, my children this time were many yet still small. As far as I could see I saw little trees and plants starting to root themselves deeply into the ground, this time sturdier than before, preparing for the unknown future.

But this day, when the Sun rose up from under the mountains that cover the horizon, I noticed something new around me. The closest tree near me, which surprisingly had survived the great wave of destruction, started to ever so slightly glow. It wasn’t similar to the light that the Sun gives off, it was more of an aura that completely covered its body.

Perhaps this was caused by it surviving the great wave of destruction, this light indicating that it was special. Something that confirmed this thought was when all the other surviving trees that I could see on the planet also started to glow.

There were around 3000 surviving trees from which 80% lived inside the deep waters. Six hundred of these trees were all nearby me, as they were the strongest out of all my children due to them being so close to me. So now, there were six hundred individual trees giving off some sort of aura that glowed under the Sun.

Each shining in their own individual colour giving off a sense of identity, some were as green as their leaves and others were as bright as the Sun, yet they all gave me a sense of kinship, as if these were my true children.

That’s when I first saw it, I saw movement and not the kind of movement that was influenced by the wind or water, it was as if the trees came to life. Their trunks split into two separate shapes, and what I could only describe as a face was somehow carved into their trunks.

Each of these faces were their own, none were the same though the ones with similar colours of aura had similarities between them that others which didn’t share the same aura colour hadn’t.

Slowly but surely, they started to unroot themselves from the place that they had been standing on for over a century. The shapes that their trunks had split into were used for movement, most who tried to move these separate parts of their bodies fell over, what I guessed was due to not being used to them, only to catch themselves with the other parts that their trunks had split into.

These trees, no, these people were completely different from how they were minutes ago. Now they were their own person, I could hear their voices better than ever before. They looked up to me, I could hear their adoration for what they called ‘Mother’.

My emotions fluctuated as I somehow felt my core tighten, my children finally looked at me as their mother, these children looked at me with their heads looking up towards the sky, to the top of my crown. I looked back and sent waves of genuine happiness and warmth towards all of them.

Seeing their happy reactions activated a feeling deep inside me, the need to protect the innocent.

…

[Normal pov]

Ben, who was still controlling time to move forward, noticed the events going on down on the planet. An event that had completely taken Ben by surprise, he had estimated that should sentient life first come to be it would be many years later but not this soon. Ben’s only reaction to this was to look at this with great confusion.

Of course, seeing what was happening below caused Ben to let go of time, it wasn’t as if he needed to continue doing what he was doing. All that he wanted to get out of forwarding time was to kickstart the growth of nature, and now that trees were starting to bloom once again Ben decided that he had done enough.

For mortals, it might seem like time moved normally, but for Ben it was an instant. When he had released his grip from the green light everything regained its original colour, of course the planet being more green than last time.

Ben’s construct, who wasn’t completely free from the grasps of Ben's time manipulation, looked around confused. In an instant its creator was done, as if he didn’t just move time forwards for many years. From the construct's point of view it was as if Ben waved his hand around erratically and mere moments later years had passed.

To the construct it looked like mere moments, that was all because he was powerful unlike any mortal being would ever be. Though even with this vast amount of power it couldn’t even survive being affected by the creator's power. The power the creator held was simply nonsensical, it didn’t make sense, even though you could try and explain the limits of Ben’s power it would only sound like the ramblings of a madman.

In simpler terms, the power Ben held was bullshit. No it wasn’t limitless, it could be, yet it isn’t. After all, a battery can’t store more than its own capacity.

As to why the construct only witnessed it as a mere moment, why would someone directly stemming off from the creator be bound by the shackles we call time?

...