He had heard of them, of course.
The Gods. Living somewhere in an inconspicuous world unknown to the mortal, feeble creatures that scattered the earth they had created. Their powers tremendous, boundless, inexorable. Their beauty a merciless reflection of prestige and savage splendor. He knew of them through stories and rumors Chiron had spoken of, in an ushered and quiet voice that unsettled his protégé. Like even the dark that enveloped them was traitorous, ready to bounce and devour them at the wrong phrasing. Even though it probably was.
Since then, they had haunted his thoughts.
He sat in the dark forest in which he hunted most, and let images unfold in his wandering mind. Indestructible grace and appetite came to him in flashes, kaleidoscopic visions of a man-like shadow that hungered for something he couldn’t quite conceive. Loneliness piercing through his heart like one of his darkest arrows, and it made reality shatter in crystalline fragments, sharpened his senses. It captured him too profoundly, though, in a simultaneously addictive and repulsing twist of his talents.
The best hunter understands the world of prey and predator equally, can feel both delightful adrenaline and endless fear in his veins.
He hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep until his hounds, restless, started hovering around him and startled him awake. But he opened his eyes and realized the cloudiness of his dreams was not gone. The world was shifting strangely out of balance, out of focus. He wondered if it was ever gone, or if this constant veil had been there for so long now that he felt it was a part of him that couldn’t be cut out by the sharpest of teeth. It resonated in him like the very pulse of his heart, feverish, uncontrollable. The distinction between the stark shape of his dreams and himself was nothing but mist. Like the surface of a lake early at dawn.
He had heard of them, of course.
But he could never have been prepared to falling face to face with one of them. Collapsing into a tangible embodiment of poisoning magnificence and feeling his soul coalesces with the god’s, if it even had one. The form it had taken was harsh, cruelly intelligent, polished like a tableau. Lighting in summer storms. It welcomed him, mere mortal, to admire divine potential and sacrifice everything for it. The god would change him into a stag, would let his dogs eat his flesh, would allow him to become more.
Does cohabiting with a monster make it less than a home?
Where does the monstrous part end, when you let it into yourself? When you share the same loneliness?
yousharknotpass
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
origamiaround
vaporwave
gummygunk
romaincrisis
