#kmmba

♢*   —   @kmmba ​ /  𝐆𝐎𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐖𝐀𝐑: 𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 

❝ defy your prophecy at your own peril. ❞

   〈✟*〉 ┊  His own galloping heartbeat thunders in his ears as he stares in muted terror at the desolation wrought where the skeleton of a village once stood. The world began in a burst of light upon divine command. Now, one would end in the same way. A small world, an echo of one, the ashes of one– but a world nonetheless, no more than the smoking after image left behind in a blast radius. He blinks both dust and sorrow from his eyes. He doesn’t need to cry for the wasteland yawning down in the valley. He’s done that once before, when his own fire had ravaged the fertile farmland and gutted homes with a terrible vengeance, when the heat had boiled flesh and prayers into the final offering of incense that would blow away with the spring winds. At the time, he hadn’t known if he wept for the unlucky few to stand in the way of the self-righteous cleansing or the suicide of his innocence. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet. Two birds, one stone, heaped onto an altar that once served as the bed for a little angel bound by nothing but his own fear. 

     Twelve years for the earth to reclaim this corner of the countryside back to itself, new vegetation fertilized by ashes that could not be swept away by maelstrom or fair-weather breeze. Gone in an instant.

      The heart that does not belong to him squeezes tight inside his chest. 

      Gael doesn’t turn to look at the god when he addresses him. He doesn’t need to gaze upon that stolid face to know eyes as desolate as the circle of nothing scorching away all traces of life will stare back at him. His brother already drowned in those bottomless pools of apathy. He was not keen on chasing Crane down another path leading into a demise and a mantle to uptake. He was already his brother’s keeper. Perhaps that was the prophecy this exalted one spoke of with such hollowness. If that was the case….

      A strained laugh falls, stiflingly loud in this place where birds no longer sang. “There is no peril for me to become a prodigal.” Not anymore. Not now that the original prodigal had returned to dust, heart safely tucked away in the ribcage of his keeper. My selfish  little brother never liked leaving me with much choice on what to do with myself in his absence, you know? “I would be rewarded for leaving things as they are.”

     But a man who did not accept the gift of love would never understand what he meant. And did he pity this affectionless god? Did he loathe? Gael scrubs puffy eyes and laughs again. It’s just too fitting that his brother spent so much time with a being that had never once honored all the thoughts and feelings poured out at his feet without need of reciprocation.  They were fitting for each other. A god with no capacity and a heart hemorrhaging for everyone that would never drink from its overflowing fountain.  

      It could have ended differently. You had all the power to leave, but you didn’t. 

      The observation no longer angers him. It only makes him ache. There hadn’t been a need to come back. Yet he had, hoping against hope that something would remain, that he could deliver the message gasped out on dying dregs. Because of course, even four years after their reunion, Crane did not think of him in the last moments he had left. He thought only of the messes Gael would have to clean up for him. Even the act of passing away hadn’t absolved Crane of his sins or the covetous nature of that which had given him life: the tumor shaped like a heart carried in the body of the kin left behind, again, again, again. This would make a perfect grave for it. Surely a being with this much power could tear his chest open and seal away this unbearable burden beneath the wastelands. 

     No. No, he could not. 

' can you imagine it? ' the ancient once-king's gaze casts wide over the desert's horizon, ruins sticking up like dry bone carcasses, squatted upon and endlessly picked at by vultures and foolish treasure seeking thieves. the faintest hint of a narrow is made out by gilded eyes, the rest of him still, towering and dark. ' ... men do not build their castles and cities in places none can inhabit. but the waters have long dried up, and so have our pastures and homes withered and crumbled. ' he once believed in paradise; how foolish the very thought seemed now. ' iwiw. surely you were born into this time. when you gaze upon this desert ... what do you see? is it home or a hollow, or does it mean nothing to you, you who have nothing? ' ( @kmmba )

     ‘WHAT DO YOU SEE?’ Sometimes he could not wholly comprehend the mind of this being – this KING – who so looked like him but with colder gaze and lonelier continence. He was one who remembered endlessly the lands that had existed in the past, while Ozymandias recalled nothing save for his name. In a way, it was almost laughable how similar the two were, yet dissimilar at the same time as if this king was another him, a different him with a wholly different history. Silent, he said nothing for a time and merely watched that grand expanse of sand with a pensive stare; pondering the response that he could give to the other that would be…satisfactory. ❝It is both,❞ he finally replied, his darker gold sliding along dunes and ancient buildings long since fallen to time’s cruelty. ❝Being here among this sand reminds me of something that I miss, though at the same time, it makes me feel hollow.❞ But he felt that a great deal of times in his life as he wandered from place to place, selling wares and hoping, hoping, that something would fill that hole in his chest left by an intense sense of longing he could not quite understand.

             an expression just as expressive    (   or perhaps the proper word would be   —-   inexpressive   )    stares right back,    but there's a clear dinstinction between the king's narrowed golden hues and her own innocent doe - eyed stare.    there's a clear difference between the two,    despite the surface - level similarity of stoicness.    to those acquainted,    or even familiar with the   ..   un - altered sun king,    the stark difference in disposition is uncanny;    the silence telling a thousand words.    though without that piece of information in mind,    it's a curious thing to hakuno.      ❝⠀ mm   . . .   alter,    i mean this in the best way possible, ⠀❞      it didn't have to be boisterous laughter,    and it was not like the words had come out as a result of the intensity of the servant's gaze or anything   ——   no,    no.    it was a simple thing,    perhaps a silly little thing the other would deem utterly pointless.

             her upper body tilts to one side in a playful manner   (   a relaxed motion that paradoxically had a great deal of enthusiastic vigor in it   )  ,    head canting similarly as her fingers rest against each side of her cheek.    a cheerful,    almost childish kind of show   —   the intent behind it still unknown   —   but it had a great contrast against her still vacant expression,    and even more so when she says :      ❝⠀ a smile   ..   would be nice. ⠀❞     

​ why should i, as a king, be in a kitchen anyways

it's not like he got curious and touched things and fiddled with knobs and whatnot he wasn't supposed to and almost lit the house on fire :|

a sound of contemplation. the callous gaze of god, searing from a distance. ' you lack ambition, ' a deep, steady breath, ' and so will you die. ' a lesser amongst the rest, and the alter is no man who remembers the name of every insect, whether or not it was his own self who trampled upon them. even so, he does not speak with malice, but the frankness of someone outside the cycle of human lives, an observer stationed with a lens, watching the world's inhabitants squirm or remain still beneath it, even without entirely understanding the intricacies; their meanings. yes, there are things about the kento that certainly puzzle him. ' should you not wish to be immortalized? and yet, it would seem, you do not even wish to be known. '

     ❝EVERYONE DIES. MY DEATH will be no different from any other's.❞ Nanami didn't fear the Reaper's touch. If anything, he felt apathetic to its approach. Truthfully, he was partially surprised that the Alter cared enough to even speak to him like this, let alone in this manner. He must have intrigued him enough to come forward, to allow callous words to pass his lips when normally they hardly ever allowed their gaze to linger on any one person for overly long. Such was the manner of those who considered themselves 'gods'. ❝I will be known...just not in a way that would immortalize my name for all time. The people I helped, the individuals I granted advice to...they will not forget me.❞ He would remain in their hearts. Perhaps to some, his name would never be known, never be recalled, even, but what he did would be.

     He could ask for nothing else.

     Just knowing that another lived -- survived -- because of him was more than enough (it had to be for one who’s life was constantly on the line). Ah...but he did not expect the other to understand. They lived for themselves and only themselves; a distant observer who looked upon humanity the same way one would a beetle stuck on its back upon hot cement. Would they move the beetle? Or would they watch to see if it helped itself? If they were unable to do the latter, then that was how it was to be. The beetle would inevitably die, and ants would carry its carcass away if birds did not find it first. Alter's mind worked in this manner, and thus, he knew they would only see foolishness in what he offered as a response.

kibby

“... that is a nasty change for you.” makes him want to use a spray bottle, really. “then again. it’s not an unfamiliar one either.”