10-01-2018, 06:17 AM
Though I treasure the bonds I have formed in my lifetime, there has never been a moment I do not question them. Perhaps it is the result of my turbulent formative years, the lack of anything resembling permanence, but I am ever doubtful that anything will remain forever as it has always been. Our meeting is not the first time I have considered gods, but it is the first time I have met one in a physical manifestation.
He, of anything, might be permanent.
Not always the same, but at least omnipresent in a universe of universes.
I'm not naive to the hunger of men, and I have come to suspect that regardless of his deity status he is still a man like those I know. When he reaches out to my scars I do not pull away, but the ripples around my navy legs suggest I might have thought of doing so.
'I can help you fix this', he says, and I hold a breath in my lungs as long as I can. It burns, after a while, but at least it is something I am certain of, something I control.
"No," I say, releasing the word just after the long exhalation of the breath I had been holding. "They do not hurt me, not anymore." Nerine's debt had been paid not only in the healing of my broken wings, but also in the sapping of the phantom aches that ran along the welted ridges.
His breath is warm even in this temperate world. I close my eyes again for just a moment, and for a moment I see a different face. It lasts for only the blink of an eye, a figment of my wildly chaotic imagination. It is not who it should be in this moment, and somehow that comforts me. It emboldens me too, and strengthens the recklessness that I still hold firmly.
"I want to see the top of the Mountain." I tell him, and even though the words are simple it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I want to be at the top of a magical precipice whose glittering, low-lying hills I have not even dared approach. He says he is a god; perhaps now I will learn if he is something more than the gods I have already known. "Please."
He, of anything, might be permanent.
Not always the same, but at least omnipresent in a universe of universes.
I'm not naive to the hunger of men, and I have come to suspect that regardless of his deity status he is still a man like those I know. When he reaches out to my scars I do not pull away, but the ripples around my navy legs suggest I might have thought of doing so.
'I can help you fix this', he says, and I hold a breath in my lungs as long as I can. It burns, after a while, but at least it is something I am certain of, something I control.
"No," I say, releasing the word just after the long exhalation of the breath I had been holding. "They do not hurt me, not anymore." Nerine's debt had been paid not only in the healing of my broken wings, but also in the sapping of the phantom aches that ran along the welted ridges.
His breath is warm even in this temperate world. I close my eyes again for just a moment, and for a moment I see a different face. It lasts for only the blink of an eye, a figment of my wildly chaotic imagination. It is not who it should be in this moment, and somehow that comforts me. It emboldens me too, and strengthens the recklessness that I still hold firmly.
"I want to see the top of the Mountain." I tell him, and even though the words are simple it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I want to be at the top of a magical precipice whose glittering, low-lying hills I have not even dared approach. He says he is a god; perhaps now I will learn if he is something more than the gods I have already known. "Please."
