Old Gods
Sand. More sand. Get’s everywhere, sand. Like a virus, it spreads and spreads, seeping through any little crack in the glass. You can feel it between your toes, tucked away as they are, in your thick leather boots. You can feel it creeping through the folds of your trench coat, past your armpits and into your sleeves. It had even found its way past your goggles, the only thing keeping it out of your eyes was your steady balance and the lack of wind. It’s a never-ending sand, whenever you think you’re about to get rid of it, it just stretches further than the eye can see. How long has it been sand? How long have you been dredging, dragging your feet through the parched powder, and for what? You hold the bag closer, afraid the yellow fog might strip that away too; then you really would be lost. Focus. It doesn’t matter how far you have walked. This journey mattered so, so much less than the destination.
Out of paranoia, you pat the side of the satchel. Feeling that spherical glass beneath the mass of pockets and straps. It was still here. You were nearly there, nearly home; any second you’d take that next step onto the grass lands, and you’d walk in peace all the way to those- clang!... doors. Enormous doors, the size of brothels you liked to frequent. Carved out of stone, rich with metal ores and gold. You had walked headfirst into them, the shock, sending sand into your eyes as the wind piled up more of the disintegrated material around your ankles… it shouldn’t be this close. If the sand had already reached them… you push the thought out of your mind, rejecting the very idea of failure. You had lost too much, suffered too much, they would not do this to you, not after everything, he would not… he would not be so selfish as to leave you with no options.
With a mighty shove, the doors swing open, blasting you in the nose in thick smog and dust, your mouth only saved by the cloth you were using to protect from the sand. It smelled old, not rotten, no, just old; like a leather-bound book found beneath the shelves of a library, forgotten. You slip through the small crack in the doors and shove your weight against it, pushing the door back into place before the yellow creep can pile too high. You look down at your footprints in the newfound darkness, the only light coming from… well you weren’t entirely sure, you could just about see everything but there was no light source to be found, just a general glow to the palace. That settles it. This is the place. You could almost feel the bag shaking.
After the moment’s rest, you pick up your pace again, your tired, and blistered feet kicking up layers upon layers of dust. Eons worth of it, like every dust bunny across all of time had somehow found its way here. You walk, past pillar after pillar, barely glancing at the ever-changing murals between them. On one side was a beautiful woman, she never looked the same in each rendition, but it was the same woman, no matter how frightening or adorable she appeared. On the other was a monster, feathered and taloned, two small white dots for eyes, the only thing that changed about him was the environment he was stood in, and the expression in those lifeless eyes. Fearful, enraged, cautious, happy, awestruck. You paid them no mind, instead focusing on the sound.
A gentle melody whispered in the air, it was barely audible, with nonsense lyrics; no recognisable language of any kind, yet the feelings of the rhythm were already there in your brain. you found yourself humming along to the tune, even if you couldn’t speak a word of it, it just spoke to you as if the song was written into your very DNA. With every passing footstep, the melody grew louder, its feeling growing stronger and stronger within you. The feelings would change, just like the murals. From sorrow, to elation, anger, disappointment, forgiveness, love, anticipation, and then nothing.
You took a single step into the room, and the meaning cut out. you could hear her voice, hear the tones and rhythm of her song, but you couldn’t make sense of its tune. You could feel the highs and lows in your bones, but… not a single sound she made could be comprehended. You looked up at her, her arms outstretched, waiting. Shockwave after shockwave of sound emanating from her open jaw. There was blinding light at the top of her head, her hair shining so brightly that her eyes were impossible to see, the countless wings sprouting from her back and ankles. You had run out of words. She was… everything. You lost track of what you had been expecting as she was more of it. You had expected grace and found beauty, you had expected beauty and found heaven. It didn’t matter how you tried to describe her, no word could possibly come close to how overwhelmingly everything she was. Even perfect seemed like too small a word.
Fear. That was the next sensation, despite the blinding light, you felt cornered by her gaze. She was staring directly at you, she had to be, no she saw through you, she saw your every regret and sin and deemed you unworthy, no she didn’t even recognise you, you were that far beneath her, why would she possibly pay attention to someone as weak and helpless as…the bag. You gasp for breath in the dust filled air, as you realise her attention was not on you, but the bag. Despite her unmoving posture and unnerving nature, you could tell she had been waiting. You opened the bag, pulling out the purple glass from its safety. You almost feared it would roll away under the pressure of her attention.
You place the small sphere on the pedestal the goddess stood upon. The grapefruit sized marble of purple and magenta swirls, sitting motionless amidst the dust. In a way it was almost as unnerving as the goddess herself, despite her towering over you, the size of a large mansion at least. The marble, like the goddess, remained unmoving, perfectly smooth and glossy, as if the very world itself could slip off its surface. Those spirals, frozen in time and yet never looked quite the same way as remembered. Two frozen yet ever-changing entities, together again at last.
As if activated by your anxious waiting gaze, the dust beneath the glass began to swirl. You are forced to close your eyes as your goggles are torn off your face by the sudden ferocious wind. All of the dust in the palace swirls into a tornado, big enough to swallow even the goddess, the eye of the sudden storm centred on the small melon of an object you had carried for so many miles. Then, just as fast as it had begun, the dust coagulated; interlocking hands with the awaiting princess lay the monster, the only equal of the world. A deity in every sense of the word and more. Her one and only counter. Wings, just as horrifying as hers were magnificent; eyes that bore into the blinding light as if they could see her in her entirety; and taloned hands that pressed against her own, designed to hold her in place.
Her tune felt completed again, as if meaning itself had been returned to her existence. They exist solely because of the other; gods among the living, kept in balance by each other’s struggle. Once again, you felt their eyes upon you, her anger competing with his gratitude as the old gods came to a mutual agreement. You blink the sand out of your eyes to find yourself in the desert. The smaller desert, the sand only reaching a few meters around you, and beyond lay the grassy meadow they had promised, a pair of mountains in the far distance beyond the cities.
