38. The （Re） Birth of The Worlds
Theos
He’d failed to maintain balance in the universe. Failed to watch over and tend to the souls of the mortals. All his noble, beautiful duties had fallen by the way in his eagerness to court Haera. And he had failed her miserably even then. Risking the universe, all his creations, for the one creature he hadn’t created.
His one task had been to heal her. It was what he wanted more than anything. To erase her every memory of pain until it oozed out of her cells – until the very atoms that made up her form vibrated with joy long after the eternities were complete. Until she finally gave in to him – until she finally gave into love . He was a miserable excuse for a mate. A miserable excuse for a god.
Failure was not an acceptable quality of the divine.
As he floated around through the realms, planets and timelines, healing the worlds as he went, he was overcome with a sorrow that he was ashamed to feel. He should not feel sorry for himself. He couldn’t. Kheos had warned him. More than once. That was a rarity. The first instance in all the eons already gone that The Fates had repeated himself. And borne the weight of anyone else’s bond. And pleaded with anyone. And interfered with the already unfolding destinies to stop the universe from collapsing on itself. This was the first time The Fates had ever wagered himself to save someone else.
The thought of it drove despair into Theos’ chest like the cold blades mortals used to dispatch their enemies. It made him sick. Undone by his brother’s sudden swing from indifference to care for him, Theos let himself crumple into a heap for the first time in dahys. He was kneeling in one of Lecreia’s wide open fields, the blue grass and pale purple blossoms a beautiful contrast to the golden sky .
Green dirt pressed into his palms and fingertips as his grip closed around a handful of it. He let each particle fall through his hands as the wind danced through his hair and turned the laminar flow of dirt into fine spray. He wanted to go back to Olympus. To be alone with his thoughts so he could think through every moment, every segund that had led him to this point. But there was one planet left to heal. One world still lay in ruin, teetering dangerously on the verge of going obsolete. He rocked back on his haunches, sighing heavily and preparing to stand.
“W-w-are you god?” a frightened feminine voice asked. A small, Ruvian female with coal-coloured fur. Her horns were small – not more than three notches in them.
Theos watched her nose twitch as she tried to make sense of him. “ I am .”
Her navy eyes filled to the brim with tears at his confirmation, and she rushed forward, stumbling through the waist-high grass with her arms wrapped tightly around a bundle. She tripped, hooves worn and broken. Crashing to her knees at his feet, she looked up at him through tear rimmed eyes. The gold liquid strained down her cheeks, the colour of the sky. He searched her eyes before she finally spoke, knowing what she was about to ask. Impossibly, his heart broke even further .
“Please,” she half sobbed. “Can you make this pain stop? My mate – he died last nigh and this mrnug I found my baby dead beside me in bed,” her voice broke. “I have no more reason to live. Please .”
Theos closed his eyes, wind swirling around them as he tried to still the roiling sadness in his chest. “What do you need, mortal?” he asked quietly.
“Death. Please . My village refuses to do it. They want me to marry someone else and have more children because I have more childbearing syrises left but I have nothing left to give. All I love is gone. Please .”
The atoms around him shifted as Regos answered his silent call. The female’s eyes widened, her entire form going rigid.
“My brother will escort you,” Theos said again, sensing Regos’ presence beside him.
Gold tears dripped down her cheeks as she nodded. Lunging forward she hugged Theos around the waist briefly before pulling back. “Thank you,” she cried. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Regos reached for her hand, and she eagerly put hers in his, still clutching the wrapped body of her mohn old baby in her other hand. Her thank you still rang in the air around him houyras after they had disappeared. He stood. He couldn’t delay healing Earth another moment.
***
Long houyras later, the strain of the healing that was taking place pulsed through his veins. The damage to Earth was extensive. He tried not to think about the lump in his throat as he went this way and that, throughout the regions and realms of the Earth, healing the atomic structures that upheld the planet’s reality.
He was straining under the weight of this healing more than he should be. His body was tense, muscles trembling as his strength dipped and waned. Clouds formed above where he hovered in the sky, stretching and expanding until darkness covered the whole Earth, as in the beginning before it’d been formed by his hands.
Bolts of hot energy ripped through the clouds and split the air around him as the heaviness of rain prepared to break. His breaths came in laboured puffs as the oxygen levels dipped to accommodate the water vapor. Theos’ eyes searched the world as the first drop of rain broke free from a low cloud over the Gabkquran. It slid through the wet air until it struck already soaked ground. The island he’d most recently created was the first to welcome the rain.
Droplets careened to the sea and the Earth in earnest. It would rain for wouxs, to nourish the rivers, lakes, and underground deposits – resetting the water cycle that the searing burn of the suns behind his throne had interrupted. The soil was thirsty, burned mercilessly by his careless wrath. His head fell back, focusing on the black sky, droplets sloshing onto his face until it chilled his bones within.
He tried not to, but the memory of a limp Haera in his arms swelled back to life. Limp. Weak. Cold. So, so cold. Her skin had been icy, almost brutally so. White hair tangled, wrists and ankles bruised, skin a pallid shadow of the glorious golden tones her rich melanin reflected.
It was also how the Earth felt. He’d fixed the suns, righted the axis, assessed the molecular structure of it all and set it into motion again, but something was missing.
Theos lowered, concentrating on the air around him. When his feet touched the Earth on the islands he’d watched Haera hunt on, the abject silence threatened to destroy him. There were no powerful sounds of waves clamouring for her attention. The eagerness of the air around him had dissipated. All was still. He sagged to his knees in the rain, digging his hands into the soaked, clay like Earth, listening to its hums and sighs.
A flurry of whispers collided into each other like wind in his ears. Everything was speaking at once. The wind, the Earth, the plants, the sea… and as they tried to outdo each other with their voices, a lilting, sing-song voice separated from the din and pierced him so sharply it captured his attention. His brows furrowed as he tried to trace the creation that the words were coming from.
Father, we are cold.
Father. Fuck . He was undone. None of his creations spoke to him that way, though they all knew that that was exactly what he was to them. They were all grumbly teenagers, averse to his affections, not clingy and affectionate the way they once were. But the young, fearful voice that kept desperately trying to get his attention, trying to get him to do something, was coming from one of the universe’s newest forms of life.
The crystal flowers. Glittering blue, the shade of his mate’s icy eyes, born from his passions for her. Sprouting in honor of her. His head turned to find them, and when his eyes settled on their shivering stalks, their voices grew loud above the rumbling clamour of the other voices.
Father, we are cold .
Their desperation was palpable. They were stricken with fear, trembling and growing weaker. He launched himself upright, fear that they would die propelling him forward. He cupped his hands together around them, trying to shield them from the cold wind that blew just above the soil.
An almost indiscernible sneeze echoed through his mind, and one of the flowers trembled particularly violently at that moment. Theos’ brows furrowed.
“Did you…sneeze?” he asked aloud, willing himself not to feel ridiculous that he was talking to a tiny cluster of three flowers. He spoke to his creations all the time.
I feel so unwell. Cold. It is too cold.
His head jerked upright. That’s what was missing. Heat. He searched through the Earth with his mind, testing the temperatures all across its surface. Everything was out of order energetically. The same way Haera had been. He leaped to his feet, anxious to fix this new problem. But the pleading voices from the ground reached the front of his mind again.
Where is our mother? Why can’t we feel her?
Theos’ knees trembled, but he forced himself to stand through the pain that rocketed through him. His ribs ached from the pounding in his heart. Why did hearing his creations call his mate mother send pleasure and grief through him in such a powerful wave? Was all of creation wondering the same thing? Could they all sense her absence? Gods, no.
“We’ll talk when I return.” Theos made himself say, then he was fading into the phantaron.
The faint words of the flowers reached him still. Please hurry.
***
The planets all had a delicate makeup. Earth, was the most fragile. It was the youngest of all his creations, still a baby. Still his baby. As he flit this way and that, healing and re-regulating, the full weight of the past dahys settled into him. He had created the universe in an instant. And yet, it was taking him dahys to heal it. Why was it pulling so much out of him? Why did he feel so helpless to the strain that was in his bones?
More than anything else, he wanted to abandon his current duties, return to Olympus, and hold Haera in his arms until his body throbbed with relief. He was heartsick being away from her. Enraged about what had happened to her; what he’d failed to protect her from. His heart was breaking, and there was nothing he could do but face it. He would not let himself be a coward. He was a failure. The most incompetent of the gods. The most foolish of all sentient things. After he was through, he would return to Olympus and grovel on his knees. Beg her forgiveness. He hoped that she would be awake by then. For now, it was just him and the Earth around him.