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Entry tags:
eschaton
I.
When you are alone, you string dying stars into the fabric of the universe and lay it like a blanket around your children. You love them and you hate them in equal measures, and you long for the end of things. Your teeth ache for the empty spaces. You want to taste the new, young world on your tongue.
II.
You are almost never alone. Always, one of the two are with you, calm and boring, one too concerned with pain and the other too concerned with stopping him. You are dragged along, story and story, and they try to catch your attention and hold it. You laugh that your followers understand better then them. You cannot be swayed for either, neutral in all things and always waiting.
III.
A man, a scientist, asks you the same question every evening for a week. You watch him begging from the third brightest star, rolling and laughing and joyful for it. The First keeps quiet like he does, his hands uncomfortable and strange in the air. He wants to stop you, you know because you are him, sometimes at least. The Third sneers, plots his ugly things, a knife blade, an explosion and blood. He's dull as often as he is a good plaything.
IV.
On the ninth day, you go to the man finally, touching his throat and his elbows and you kiss him full and deep so that you can laugh at the way his eyes widen afterwards. You tell him to ask again and when he does, you spread the universe through his bedroom, show him your dying stars and the slow rot, the way everything is always falling down and down and eventually it will crush under your hand. He gets this shine in his gaze, this terrible beautiful fear and you lick his cheek, whisper calming words to him, tell him how much time he has left before he dies.
V.
Watching is usually so boring, almost as bad as waiting, but you set your sights on him and you follow. He grows so desperate and so afraid. A year later, he's lost in your domain and when the First confronts you, you laugh and laugh and sing him the stories his followers learn so carefully. The man chatters in the dark, builds shapes out of metal and wiring and you smile wider.
VI.
April the next year, there is an explosion in a train station. Your followers sing the Third's praises, beg forgiveness, send encouragement and he accepts their attention like the greedy child he is. He casts you a strange, unhappy glance once the prayers taper off and tells you to be careful, to stop smiling.
VII.
The Twin Lady visits you and says these strange, guarded things. You know she knows, and yet she tries to hold it back. She tells you off and the First murmurs soft encouragement from beside you. He agrees, you know, but he also can't understand. The way these things happen is set, the circle ever circling. You approach the Lady and you capture her against your body, whispering IT'S TIME. She shoves you away, but she meets your eyeless eyes and she nods.
VIII.
You stand in the queen's shadow, still waiting. Below, in the courtyard, your man is shouting prophecies, waving plans. You whisper the name of the queen's kismesis, her rival across the water, and you tell her to go down, to take the plans, to build and build until she cracks the atom and wrecks her ugly hatred down on that distant country.
IX.
Decades later, the clouds of the war settle and you take your axe first to the Mother, coming away the destined winner, even if your belly has been sliced open by her shears. Then your other gods pass by turns, the beasts after and the plants, the whole planet cracking in nuclear winter. Time becomes strange after its gods fall too. You bleed and you bleed and the grey stains you leave in the snow become the symbol of death to the few who manage to survive in the centuries that follow. Even those stories die eventually.
X.
After everything else has gone away, you strike down your brother and your brother and their betrayal is graceful, lovely, like a dance. You feel empty afterwards, hollow, and you turn, smiling your last smile for this world as you slide to your knees. The Gardener does not get to break you down before you bleed out in the dark, laughing.
When you are alone, you string dying stars into the fabric of the universe and lay it like a blanket around your children. You love them and you hate them in equal measures, and you long for the end of things. Your teeth ache for the empty spaces. You want to taste the new, young world on your tongue.
II.
You are almost never alone. Always, one of the two are with you, calm and boring, one too concerned with pain and the other too concerned with stopping him. You are dragged along, story and story, and they try to catch your attention and hold it. You laugh that your followers understand better then them. You cannot be swayed for either, neutral in all things and always waiting.
III.
A man, a scientist, asks you the same question every evening for a week. You watch him begging from the third brightest star, rolling and laughing and joyful for it. The First keeps quiet like he does, his hands uncomfortable and strange in the air. He wants to stop you, you know because you are him, sometimes at least. The Third sneers, plots his ugly things, a knife blade, an explosion and blood. He's dull as often as he is a good plaything.
IV.
On the ninth day, you go to the man finally, touching his throat and his elbows and you kiss him full and deep so that you can laugh at the way his eyes widen afterwards. You tell him to ask again and when he does, you spread the universe through his bedroom, show him your dying stars and the slow rot, the way everything is always falling down and down and eventually it will crush under your hand. He gets this shine in his gaze, this terrible beautiful fear and you lick his cheek, whisper calming words to him, tell him how much time he has left before he dies.
V.
Watching is usually so boring, almost as bad as waiting, but you set your sights on him and you follow. He grows so desperate and so afraid. A year later, he's lost in your domain and when the First confronts you, you laugh and laugh and sing him the stories his followers learn so carefully. The man chatters in the dark, builds shapes out of metal and wiring and you smile wider.
VI.
April the next year, there is an explosion in a train station. Your followers sing the Third's praises, beg forgiveness, send encouragement and he accepts their attention like the greedy child he is. He casts you a strange, unhappy glance once the prayers taper off and tells you to be careful, to stop smiling.
VII.
The Twin Lady visits you and says these strange, guarded things. You know she knows, and yet she tries to hold it back. She tells you off and the First murmurs soft encouragement from beside you. He agrees, you know, but he also can't understand. The way these things happen is set, the circle ever circling. You approach the Lady and you capture her against your body, whispering IT'S TIME. She shoves you away, but she meets your eyeless eyes and she nods.
VIII.
You stand in the queen's shadow, still waiting. Below, in the courtyard, your man is shouting prophecies, waving plans. You whisper the name of the queen's kismesis, her rival across the water, and you tell her to go down, to take the plans, to build and build until she cracks the atom and wrecks her ugly hatred down on that distant country.
IX.
Decades later, the clouds of the war settle and you take your axe first to the Mother, coming away the destined winner, even if your belly has been sliced open by her shears. Then your other gods pass by turns, the beasts after and the plants, the whole planet cracking in nuclear winter. Time becomes strange after its gods fall too. You bleed and you bleed and the grey stains you leave in the snow become the symbol of death to the few who manage to survive in the centuries that follow. Even those stories die eventually.
X.
After everything else has gone away, you strike down your brother and your brother and their betrayal is graceful, lovely, like a dance. You feel empty afterwards, hollow, and you turn, smiling your last smile for this world as you slide to your knees. The Gardener does not get to break you down before you bleed out in the dark, laughing.