The First Together

For billions of years life stays small and alone — single cells, drifting, dividing. Then one cell does something strange: it swallows another and, instead of eating it, keeps it alive inside. That swallowed guest still lives in you now, in every cell, turning your breath into power. Once cells learned to live together they could not stop — into colonies, into bodies, into you. And we are still not sure why it took life so very long to learn the trick of being more than one.