Time passes. It is slow and thoughtless, each moment the ticking of a clock unseen: the clock of the hunter's patience and hunger, the clock of his dying faith. When the Goddess of the Moon does not appear at first, he is simply surprised. But the night wears on and the moon slides every so slowly lower. Janos dissents and Manhattan, bitter and hurt, gloats. The Goddess of the Moon has not deigned to visit even one of her most loyal worshippers, and in that, has proven how tenuous his grip on faith is after all.

Knox is selfish. Despite the powerful way he walks and the magics he is blessed with, despite his age and travels now, he maintains some aspect of the child. And perhaps it is being in the form of young Janos, whose bitterness towards the gods is an unintended influence, but he finds his patience for his lady moon to be stunted.

The graying tail that Janos sports lashes in impatience. In the hunter's mind, the vengeful whispers I was right. But the Hunter dislikes, too, being wrong. He matches Janos' pacing with his own, bringing a ferocity to his step as it carries him in front of, around, and eventually, away from the shrine. How many times has he knelt there and accepted a curse? Has he not been blinded, maddened, and lost at this Goddess' whim?

And now, she cannot even show him her face.

When another appears his temper is short and his belief laid low. He regards her with a familiar apathy, one he sported for so long as a child, and stares her down with the piercing blue of a long dead one's eyes. She is, perhaps, beautiful, but the hunter has very little understanding of the concept. Beautiful to him is the inner kindness of Aylin, now lost to his selfishness.

The antlered mare's mythos is intriguing, if not altogether false. But there is an urgency with which she seems to believe in this lie, in this reptilian provider, that he cannot shake. He knows the Gods in Helovia are real because he has seen them. He has spoken with them, stood before their shrines and carried out quests for them. He has felt the effects of their magics and known they are true.

But what of this dragon? Could such a creature exist at the same time as his mistress? And what of this moment now, where his kindness is gone and his lover a distant memory? How is this proof that there has ever been a Goddess at all?

He cannot, in confidence, tell her she is wrong. He breaks gaze with her, turning away from her fine features instead. "Perhaps so," he says with a frown. He beckons Manhattan once more: it is only now, feeling that she has won, that she concedes.

There is a sort of anger burning in his chest, one borne of hurt and abandonment, from the fact that his Goddess has left him, but still he feels the old obligation of teaching this mare something. He was young, once, and he has grown up in this land long enough to know that without any knowledge, you will quickly find yourself suffering at the hoof of another.

He has, before, been the one causing such pain. Now, as he struggles with a rage in his heart, he tries to be someone else. For Aylin, his companion reminds--as if he does not already know.

"I only know that here, the Gods are four: each for an element of their own," he begins, unable to wipe the unfitting scowl off of Janos' features. "The Earth, the Sun, the Spark, and the Moon."

The night overhead is a mocking threat. Beneath its dim light, the hunter shifts and feels his magic stir. The uncertainty he feels becomes consuming. "At least, that's how it used to be."


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[[Tagged: @[Enna]]]