#* i don't think crane would've brought him to meet alter

[phantasmaw]

♢*   —   @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. 

      “I am my brother’s keeper.” He could not say what it was, then, if not prophecy. It wouldn’t matter. Whatever it may be, it lightens the weight on his chest and allows him to speak freely. “You… overcompensate the same way he did.” Smothering everything, devastation left in absence. “I loved him and he didn’t care. He loved you and you didn’t care.” His hands tremble as he lowers them back to his sides. He has not felt this free since he first melted that shackle off his ankle. “Not even the weeds defy their prophecy. Who are you to think that I would?”