#discon

Gaea, Deus, and Death deserved respect as the last of their kind, even kinship (should kinship be possible with gods) for bearing a tragedy shared now by so many, but there can be no worship where there is pity. Her people instead deciphered the patterns of the earth and tended to it like a death doula…or a dutiful child unwilling to betray their parent for the hardships it put on them. When a river turned brackish and foul, they followed it for miles to its mouth so it might tell them why. When all wind inexplicably stopped in the plains, they performed funeral rites for its last breath. A planet had millenia of burdens to lay down, and so this thankless task was carried out for generation after generation while its pained throes wracked the world.

Above Discon were the stars, unseen though they were beyond the choking smog. She recalled dreaming of them when she was young, those soft and iridescent things. They seemed mercifully indifferent in comparison to the hostility of a dying planet, neither here nor there, mortal nor divine. It would be they who observed the final death of this planet, and in this she found kinship also. An odd thing, to long for something never truly known, but her heart was still warmed by the comfort they brought her, even now, after it all.

She led a good life, honoring herself, her family, her clan. Married a man that would go on to become their leader. Had a child, and a child again. And then one day, the stars which she dreamt of so often began to dream of her.

A vain notion, but the only way she could describe the feeling of patterns being drawn on the backs of her sleeping eyelids. Look at this, look at this. Constellations, she knew they were called, which told stories and futures alike in the old times. Look at this. Incessant, night after night, until the shape finally revealed itself. Yes…she looked and saw. Fires sparking across a forest - see how their canopies clustered high above, and the smoke above them still? Her people were traveling through a forest soon. But, this fire, when? Soon? Now? Already passed? Look at this. The stars drew incrementally closer each night. She urged her husband forward, faster, tracking those ever-looming lights. Anything non-essential was delayed, and some in the group laughed at her husband for allowing himself to be directed by his wife’s monthly hysteria.

And then, once the stars were hung directly above her and the trees were a far smear of color behind them, a ferocious crack descended from the heavens, and the forest lifted up its flames in return.

No one suspected anything, particularly when she was as surprised as anyone. Relief of avoiding the forest fire overshadowed her odd insistence to hurry…except with her husband who asked, just the once.

He must not have believed her when she said she didn’t know, because he never asked about it again. He just quietly accepted the advice that the stars allowed her, and they both pretended it was nothing more than her acute survival instincts and womanly intuition. Life continued…as much as life could. She lost a child. Had another. Years passed. Stars came and went. And the world crept a little further into its grave.

Poor, overworked Death.

~

She woke with a headache and dry mouth. Eyes still closed, she could tell that her husband was awake next to her on their shared mat. He was waiting, as he had for several weeks, for her to speak her nighttime wisdom that would direct them away from this drought, but her eyelids had remained dark. The stars had pulled from her, and the silence that grew between husband and wife each morning turned the meager inches between them into an impassable gulf.

She was the only person who saw the strain that leadership put on him. He needed their clan to have absolute faith in him, because indecision killed almost as quickly as mistakes, and infighting more so. Even if they were to die, they could assure themselves that they had died having done all they could, so he said. Admirable, in its own way, and she, his wife, was supposed to be his support to bear it. And so, she would bear it. When he finally rose with a sigh, it was all she could do to swallow her guilt and misgivings and join his side.

It was a tricky thing, water. Starvation could make meals out of many indecent options, but one could not alchemize water from nothing. Some might, some could. She had heard of those who receive magicks in return for their care for the world, but her husband was no such man. Too much pity, perhaps, or too much fear. And so they remained dependent on mercy and luck, both gods of which had long since left them. Every day she rationed out their depleting water stores, and every day, her husband marked their levels with an exacting eye. It burned, his disappointment which day by day turned to resentment.

And then at last, a miracle. Water burbling up from the rocks.

Have you ever been desperate?

It has been said that one cannot “be” happy so much as “experience” happiness. Collect happy moments, if you will, but it does not become you, nor you it. Many can attest to the truth of this, especially here, but desperation is much greedier. It can bend any iron spin and fell the strongest heart, and makes reasonable people very, very stupid. They hadn’t found some secret treasure, and there was a reason that no other animals were here. And if they hadn’t been so desperate, they wouldn’t have been surprised when they started to get sick. Die.

Poor overworked- You get it.

She was, once again, as shocked as anyone, but her husband hadn't believed her before and didn’t now.

This decisive man tallied the dead, and he had a long memory.

Why did you, my wife, not realize something was amiss?

How could I have known?

Certainly, how could you have known. And why did you once lead us toward a flood that nearly swept us away, taking many supplies with it?

An illness, there was an epidemic the other direction.

And when meteors scorched the air we breathed, bludgeoning the earth? Several people were infirm after.

A madness had taken hold of the nearby town; they would have killed us.

The ice storm that raged over them? Did we not lose some of ours in the whiteout?

Undead, which howled louder than any wind.

And what of this poisoned water, wife.

How could she have known?

How could she not?

Their clan was shocked, horrified by the revelation, and demanded to know the veracity of her visions. What illness, what undead? Justify your meddling in your husband’s leadership. It was insane to think that she would have to contrive disasters to find them in this world, but they’d grown dependent on her guidance and had forgotten how hard it was without. Suspicion was festering. Her husband had to convince their people that he was not led astray, because if they no longer allowed themselves to be led by him, they would all die. Something had to be done…and is it not women’s lot to take on the burdens of her husband?

They finally came for her in the early morning. She had been kept separate from her husband, lest her corrupting influence continue. Her dreams, her stars, her guardians watched her from afar. This is not the end the end the end.

What else could be done? Banishment would be too slow, too cruel, and corpses were too susceptible to corruption.

This is not.

She thought of that first vision, with fire and smoke rising into the sky.

The end.

~ ~ ~

Graveyards are not empty.

It’s easy to see in retrospect, but when the gods were dying, many, myself included, expected a power vacuum of sorts to open up in their place. It was embarrassingly short-sighted, really, because instead, things closed in; just vacuum, no power. The three remaining stalwarts absorbed what could be absorbed, and the rest? Lost into the aether, I suppose.

There are fewer of us around, too. It’s difficult to keep track of what happened to them all, but I suspect that some of them went off to chase lost divine power as if it could be found again like the marbles mortals once played with, and they were never to be heard from again. Idiots. There was the slim chance that they were fabulously right and were now gorging themselves on the corpses of gods and dictating some distant world…but more likely, they destroyed themselves in whatever killed the gods in the first place.

The rest of us, meanwhile, had to put in work the honest way. There was desperation abound, make no mistake, but it could be difficult to make a meaningful offer to a person who believes that they will be the last generation to breathe on this planet. And people had been believing that for generations. They were exhausting, neither willing to commit to staying nor commit to ending it for good, so they let themselves be pushed along toward the next great cataclysm, ad nauseam, forever and on, till death do we part, amen. One had to be clever and quick on opportunities to make a contract.

This one, however, fairly leaped into my lap…or would have, had she not been tied to a blazing fire.

Call me lazy, but I never bothered with the innumerable little cults that peppered the world. I liked them urban; envy remained a fantastic motivator, even at the end of the world, and cult followers tended to let themselves be just too convinced of their own inevitability. They called me invasive or unnatural, some of them even blaming me for the most recent catastrophe, which was flattering but not always helpful. Studying the scene in front of me, however, I could see that I had neglected the loophole of internal politics. From the speech of the solemnly robed man - holding a staff that was no doubt very impressive to his little flock - this old woman was supposed to be some sort of infernal consort. How quaint! Delusionally so. Still, even in the small pond of this planet, I was far from the biggest fish, so I made a lap around her to be sure that there wasn’t anything I should be wary of interfering with, and found nary a shiver of otherworldly contact.

But, speak of the devil, as they say.

I stepped into the fire so that she might better hear me over her pained screams.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

She rasped and jerked her body toward the sound of my voice.

“You look in need of assistance.”

“Help me.” A good, commanding voice that skipped past the superfluous “Who are you?” and “What’s going on?” I could easily place her next to the robed man.

“A brilliant idea, and just what I was hoping to do. It will take some doing, however. What might you be able to promise me-”

Anything!”

Not anything I needed. Not anything I wished. Anything was a beautiful, bold word. Whether or not she had anything was besides the point, I had all the time she didn’t.

“Then let us make this official, my dear.” I reached a hand to her elbow to guide her down and let the bindings fall away. Noises of surprise, anger, and fear swelled behind me, but before she could throw herself from the flames, I tightened my hold.

“Your word, pet.”

“I-” she choked. Smoke and pain had almost overtaken her, but there was no mistake in the power of my grip nor the threat in my voice that I would just as soon put her back. Desperation alone carried her long enough to choke out, “...I- I give you my…my word.”