Older Gods 10

Our minds were not made for this intense attention. Exhausted we fell senseless to the floor and the fluid form flowed back into the pool. As in the dark reaches of the ocean where the God we thought both lone and mad had been sequestered, there was no means to measure time beneath the vast weight of the mountain.

Our minds, conjoined, slowly shrugged off the blankets of somnolence, awoke with drowsy kisses of our shared reflecting thoughts, accreting over ages sense enough to instruct our bodies to arise. The mountain God lay quiet, unaccustomed to the presence of believers and the drained of strength from the fraught tale of ancient sorrow.

We explored the temple, marvelling at the carved shapes shown up in sharp relief, as the blue green glow of our bodies, twice reborn, brought forgotten history back to life. We traced the tale of two Gods, potent and passionate, sustained by worship of every living thing. The early record crudely drawn and barely visible, scratched into the basalt, grew bolder, more elaborate and intricate, until the power of prayer and the marks of gratitude were lost in grandiose confections, art for the sake of art alone, the artist announcing their own skill without a greater purpose or direction.

It ended abruptly. Beyond the swirling self-absorption of the carving were a few scratched messages. The last adherents who had borne the remnants of their faith to this lost temple, long after it had been abandoned, to save one part of the dual deities against the hope someday they may return.

Above us the mountain trembled, as the enormous presence of the God’s awareness shifted in the pool. The pillars shook, dust drifted down in choking clouds, the burden of attention settled on us once again.

“I have imbued you with a fraction of my essence, blended with my lover’s shaping of your form. Go forth, retrace your weary pilgrim’s path, and quickly. Winter will weaken you, fed as you are by sun and starlight, the clouds and stretching nights will sap you in this northern hemisphere.

“Go. Let my blessing speed you, and the last of my strength save you. We have been waiting centuries; at long last you have come.”

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End

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