#venaenum

     In no way did restraint have a place in the formulaic assembly of the universe. Stars would burn, a radiant paint trail that seared their color on the galactic canvas, for an allotted time, and then send themselves off in theatrical finales terrifying to experience, but wondrous to behold. But as a star burned, it lived without shackles, the only rules encapsulating it belonging to the numerical consistency of natural law. And a comet felt no need to soar beyond the horizon of existence; an asteroid did not succumb to the temptation of shattering the hierarchy of gravity. All objects reclined in the harmony of motion upon the pendulous humming of thriving creation.

     No other progeny of the stars yearned for a view higher than their own, for a crown larger than their tiny heads could comprehend. Yet they took their coronation of Aurelion as a sign that if they could adorn his head with gems, red giants and white dwarves in praising orbit, then they could shatter that title, and render him obsolete.

     And no one could invent a word despicable enough to identify the nature of the chains they had wrapped around his arms. This confinement to the will of secondhand beings, who would not last a single second before drowning in the primordial seas, did not belong to the language of the constellations. These shackles, the lion tamer’s whip of ambition, were no components of the symphony of the universe.

     Aurelion remembers the few priests that lowered their heads in true reverence, the kind of men who did not kneel at the altar with fingers crossed behind their back. They named themselves ‘god-fearing men,’ and how fitting it was to equate worship to trepidation.