|
A crack in the air appears. Slim and ragged, it shines with light. A holy light, but a wild and violent one all the same. From between its lips steps the figure of a forgotten god; a lonely god. Ophelia stands before him, pure in body but tainted in mind. But has she ever been any other way? His wings spread carelessly across his hindquarters and his eyes turn downwards. He does not long to look upon her and see what she has become. It is too far from what she is. She is no longer Ophelia- she is a distant being, selfish and fickle. He misses the strong and quiet soul inside her. He curses himself for casting it away.
She has come too early. The final hymn of Birdsong has yet to ring through Tallsun skies. The season of his favor will not come soon enough, and yet he does not wish for its burden. Once he had extended it, carried it on and scorched the earth. But he is tired now, tired today.
He has lived for so long. Lived for so long and remembered every moment. As the self-hating child of the light before him feels pain of a memory lost, he longs for its relief. But the responsibility of knowing will never be lifted. Cursed as his banishment was, upon returning he finds it to be something he misses in a strange way. Were it not for the powerlessness of his punishment, for all that he had fought for in the past Tallsun, for the coats burned and the lives burned out, he might regret leaving it. For could he not have found power elsewhere? Were there not other lands huddling in shadow just waiting for a light?
No. He can muse all he wants, but the answer is simple and the choice clear. He stays, as he always does. Stays in a pit of fire and a sea of light, behind the shrine awaiting the mortals that call his blessed name. Stays standing before those that throw gifts in his face. Stays and feels for them all the same, love or hate.
It is the responsibility that stops him from turning away from her now, even knowing that she has come to him too soon. With a heavy sigh and a shake of his shimmering, adorned mane, he looks upon Ophelia. Looks into her eyes and sees her as she is: A stranger- a shadow of the truth.
"Indeed you have, stranger. But not the one you think," he begins with a silent sigh and a far off look in his eyes. His tail flickers tiredly, his regal eyes shut tight and stay shut to shield him from pain. "I once took from a mare her memories so that she might one day have the power to do the same to others. Her pain was great and the power her medicine. She was selfish, perhaps, to accept, but it was I that took from her her mind. And I do not make mistakes, stranger," the God of the Sun continues. Lids part and he sees her, or at the very least what is left of her. "Ophelia wanted nothing more than to tear herself from the minds of others- to make them forget as you have, knowing that when she returned to me she would be given back her mind, and with it her sorrow. Do you desire the same?"
The question is simple; the answer anything but. He stands with sunflowers woven in his mane, eyes too tired to show the sadness he may have felt upon seeing this shadow. In a silence shrouded in a weary white light, he waits.
|
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
⇒
Backfiring, Worth the Price? [Sun God]
