Chapter Text
Your name is John. Your butt is sweaty. You’ve been riding this horse for hours. You can’t feel your balls.
There’s three guards. There’s Captor up ahead and Ampora driving the wagon. You ride next to it. The wagon crackles on the dirty and gravel road that you’ve all been following. The wagon is made out of smooth wood, stained black, and the curtains that hang are a deep and royal red, covering every window. Anyone who would consider peeking inside would most likely be turned away by look of it. Or any of the three guards would stop them.
Inside the wagon is a god. He is the god of fire and time. You’ve only grown up with his story; you weren’t there for it.
Your father said that over three hundred years ago, the god was angry with the sins and the violence of the people. Men hurting their wives and wives hurting their children. No one shared food or money or resources or skills. So the god of your village set the crops on fire. He sped up time for everyone’s food, and every fruit, vegetable and egg rotted within a day. The village was starving and their prayers to the god of fire and time turned desperate. The god never wavered. He set houses on fire, because instead of apologizing, the people begged for him to give them gifts that would save themselves.
Not understanding what the god wanted, the people of your village went to the temple where the statue of the god has been standing for centuries. It’s made of marble and opal, and it shines when the sun rises over the distant hills and shoots straight through the front pillars. The opal sparkles like flames, and you’ve spent many hours on your knees praying to it.
Together, head priests preformed a ritual that has been lost over the years. It dragged the god down out of his almighty form, snuffed his powers out until they were small tricks, and it bound the boy into nothing but a human.
No one remembers what the god looked like on that day. The story says that the boy had been naked and screaming and trying to set the priests on fire. Instead of creating wildfires, his powers had been reduced to small flames. Nothing bigger than a campfire. He could not change form. His skin was wrapped in scripture that trapped him in his human form.
For three hundred years, the god of fire and time has been trapped in his human form.
That night, your party of guards and god reach a village twice as big as your own. News of your travels has spread, and the temple priests are waiting for you. Captor is the one who opens the door for the god, and you watch from the corner of your eye as you slip off of your horse and pretend that your thighs are shrieking from the depths of hell. You’re starting to feel your balls again at least.
It's forbidden to look upon the god. While you were growing up, you’ve seen him here and there, always covered completely in robes. Today he is wearing black. The only skin you’ve ever seen of the god are his hands, and they’re so pale their white, and his fingernails are perfect, and not jagged like yours. His head is always covered in a veil. No one has ever seen him, but he’s seen everyone.
He steps down out of the wagon with a posture that might be considered passive, but to you he looks bored. He’s stuck in a human form. The long ride must be nauseating for him too.
A priest tells the god to follow him to his room, and the man draped in black doesn’t reply. He only follows. He doesn’t do things like stretch. You’ve never heard him sneeze or cough. You’ve heard him speak before, and his voice is low, but there’s a sound like bells in it; as if he’s trying to hide it, but it’s useless.
In the entrance to the temple, you see the village’s goddess. Her statue is tall and made of limestone. A woman with a heavy hood. Her hands are made of crystals, and the moonlight dances like it does on the water across her sculpted fingertips. She’s the goddess of light and future.
You share a room with Ampora and Captor like always. They talk and mostly ignore you. They don’t understand why you were chosen to be a guard on this trip. Your father works for your village temple, but he has no high-end job. He’s talked to the god far more than other simple villages have, and you wonder if your dad convinced the god himself to choose you as an escort for his journey.
Ampora tells you to check on the guy anyway. Sure. You don’t have anything to do hanging around them anyway.
You knock first on the room that was assigned to the god. He doesn’t say come in or open the door. You only hear it unlock, and you hope that means “come on in,” because you’re opening the door.
The god is sitting at a desk, looking out the window. You’re on the second floor of the temple, and you can see some ways into the village. He has the window open. His back is to you, and he’s still in his black robes. A pale hand sticks out of the sleeve, and he’s rolling a bottle of wine against the table that’s half empty.
You ask him if he needs anything. He speaks passively and tells you to sit and have a drink.
You do.
He already knows your name, and it’s odd to hear him say John. He probably knows you a hundred times better than you know yourself, so you’re not sure why he asks what you like to do. You don’t know why he cares.
You tell him you enjoy music. You like the piano. The god says he’s heard you play often in the temple and that he, too, enjoys your music. He doesn’t turn your head towards you, and you’re glad, because you’re blushing. Mostly because a god of all people has complimented you.
You ask him what he likes to do.
He says nothing. He turns, and you don’t see his face because of the veil, but you know you two are face to face right now.
He says no one has ever asked him that before. He turns back towards the window. He says that he likes art. He says that when he’s alone back in the old temple, he would draw for hours when he was supposed to be praying, and you promise not to tell anyone this secret. You admit that you often skip prayers too.
He asks why, but he doesn’t sound offended.
You say that his head is probably full of prayers. Prayers for good crops, for healthy babies, for dying people, for safe travels. You like your life. You want to save room in the god’s head for the prayers that really need answering.
He makes this noise, and you’re not sure what it is at first. Then you realize it’s a scoff. A chuckle maybe. A very short and soft snorting chuckle. You’re grinning to yourself, still staring at the window.
You sip the rest of your wine out of your glass. You bow to him and bid him goodnight as politely as one can to a god. He waves his hand at you. He tells you good luck with the two other idiots and you make your own snort into your fist before nodding, bowing again, and leaving.
This past spring was horrible for your village. The land was tilled and seeds were planted. Villagers traveled to fish. Women prepared to sheer sheep to make clothing.
But the crops wilted and dried in the sun. They didn’t grow. When they did, they were full of bruises and rotting holes. The fish were all gone. The ones that were caught made people sick. And the sheep were dying. The wells were drying up.
Three weeks ago, every important person in the village grouped together at the temple. The god of fire and time was with them. They agreed that a party of men would be put together to escort the god to the capital of the land, to the grandest and holiest temple, the temple that housed the queen of all gods and goddesses, the goddess of space. This was the only place where the ritual could be performed; the ritual that would finally release the god of fire and time from his human form. As a full god, he would be able to save your village from famine as a favor for his release. A deal was made. You, Sollux and Eridan were chosen as the three escorts.
You’re one week into your travels across the land. You’re still one week away from the capital.
You’ve always believed the god should be free. Being a human must be like a prison for someone with that much power. But part of you will miss the idea of him being in your village. You miss the idea of seeing his pale hands press together when he leads prayers at the temple. You’ll miss seeing him draped in all the different robes. You’ll miss wondering what his face looks like.
It’s a long way to the next village, so you make camp for the next night. It means you and the other two guards sleep outside together. It also means that the god stays in the wagon, and you can’t talk with him. You cook a meal over the fire, and the god denies food when you knock on the wagon door. Captor mutters that the god will probably fuck you all over and set the entire village on fire.
You said he’d never do something like that. He treats his village the way the village treats each other. They scoff and you and Eridan tells you not to get a boner over the guy.
The next night, the village you stay in is very small and has no temple, because it belongs to a bigger city. You all stay in an inn. The god gets his own room again. You’re told to bring the god wine, because it’s his favorite thing to have at night. Always red wine. You don’t think he can get drunk though, because he doesn’t do things like eat either.
You knock on his door. No answer. You warn him you’re coming in. You push the door open and the room is empty. So is the washroom. The window is wide open and you panic.
You don’t tell Eridan or Sollux about this. You just run out of the inn, panting as your boots thump against the road. You look up and down alleys and peek into taverns or stores. You run your fingers back through your messy hair, gripping at the black locks and gasping. You’re going to be killed. People can be stoned alive for looking at a god’s face under their veil, but you wonder what the punishment for losing a god is.
You hear chatter down the road, towards the marketplace. There’s a cluster of women and children, and you hear laughter. You jog first, and then slow down, standing near a father with his daughter on his shoulder, looking at what the big deal is, and your heart stops pounding so furiously, because your god is there.
He’s sitting on a barrel and he has fire in his white palms. He juggles the balls of fire and children laugh. Adult smile, the fire reflected in their eyes.
He does tricks for the children. He takes a handful of dirt, and red, translucent circles spin around his hand until time speeds up and flowers burst up from between his fingers. Bright sunflowers. He crouches down and hands a few to the children. He changes time in a patch of air over a mother’s head and makes it snow on her, turning the area into winter with his time. She blows at the snowflakes and everyone gleams.
A little girl asks him to kiss her locket and bless it, and he does so, pulling the metal under his veil so that he can use his bare lips. You wonder what kind of blessing he gave her.
He pets her hair too, and you’re not sure if you’ve ever seen him touch someone before.
His head lifts, and even though you can’t see his eyes, you know he sees you. He strokes the head of a few more children, and you know that he’s smiling under that dark, red veil, even if you can’t see it. He approaches you and speaks softly, but in a carefree voice. As if you two are close friends.
He says that he needed to get out and that he hopes he hasn’t worried you.
You pretend that you weren’t freak out earlier and say that it’s totally fine.
He walks back to the inn with you. He walks slowly, trying to make the trip longer.
He says that one time, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, he saw a mother named their newborn son Dave. He doesn’t know why, but he had always loved that name since that day. He says that if he were ever really a human, he’d want to be called that. He says that “my god” can get tedious.
You ask him if you could call him Dave, and you mentally slap yourself.
The front of his veil faces you. There’s silver needlepoint designs on it, over where his eyes should be, and that’s where you stare. You wonder if he’s smiling or frowning.
He says that would be just fine. If only you keep it between you two. Another secret.
You tell him you loved his tricks. He thanks you. He tells you that when he used to be a full god he could create fires as big as hills. He could feel time change in the universe. He could stretch it and bend it. He says everything is so small now that he’s bound in his human form. He says he misses feeling the turn of the earth.
You say that in five more days he’ll be free.
He says “I suppose” and he doesn’t speak again until you reach the inn.
You don’t say goodnight when you walk to his room with him. He interrupts you and asks you to come in and share another glass of wine with you, and you can’t help but accept.
You spend at least two hours in his room. You stare at his hands, one lying over the other on his lap. His fingers are long and his skin hardly has any cracks. You’re jealous of the kids that he touched on the head today. You wonder what it’s like to be touched by a god.
He talks about art. You talk about your father. Dave says that your father is a great man, and that he’s responsible for the healthy apple tree that grows in your yard. When the starvation started this summer, your father put all those full apples into a basket and handed them out free to neighbors. You’ve always tried to follow your father’s example, because even if he doesn’t always pray, good things happen to him. Because he does good for those around him.
The more you talk, the more casual it becomes. You both mock the other two guards together. You imitate Eridan’s whiny voice, and the god sitting next to you imitates Sollux’s lisp.
You stare in wonder at the other man. Dave says, “What? A god can’t make a joke?”
You sculpt what you think his face looks like in your head, and you put a sly smirk on it. You know he’s making it.
When you have to go back to your own room, the god walks you to the door, his robes dragging with him. You start imaging again. You imagine him alone in this room, slipping that veil off of his head. His hair is messy from it, and his eyes are half closed and perfect. You imagine him dropping the robes, and you hear them hit the floor in your imagination. You think about some human that you’ve never seen before, standing in the dark, naked, finally unveiled.
His hand is on yours.
You were holding the door, and he puts his hand over yours as if he were going to close it too. You know it’s not an accident, because Dave doesn’t have accidents. He doesn’t drop things, he doesn’t trip, and he doesn’t “accidentally” touch hands.
He asks if you’ll come see him again at the next temple you stay at. You say of course. He tells you to tell the other two boys that the god simply wanted someone to pray with. You say of course.
He tells you not to bow. He tells you to have a good night.
To your disappointment, you don’t stay at another temple. You stay at an inn, and Eridan says you’re getting too close to the god, so he’s the one who brings the god his wine. He comes back within a minute. He wasn’t invited to stay. He glares at you as he settles into his bed.
In the morning, Dave takes your hand as pretend help as you hold open the carriage door for him out in front of the inn. You can tell he’s looking at you, but you only look at that hand that feels like a gentle fire; as if you could hold balls of flames just like him without pain. By the time you look up to stare towards his face, he’s already in the carriage. You close the door. The traveling continues.
You ride alongside the carriage again. Today he’s wearing red and gold on his robes. His veil makes a shimmering sound that reminds you of the wind chimes back home due to small gems that hang on the ends of the veil.
While heading through the next village, Dave opens the curtain on his carriage and leans out the window. He rips the gems off the end of his veil and drops them into the hands of villagers. People crowd you. Sollux tells them to back away, but you let them through. The god in the carriage holds hands and makes very fast prayers for the people, and he kisses objects that are brought to his face to bless them, and even kisses babies that are held up towards him. You know he wants to do this.
He grows tired, and hides inside of his carriage again. You get your horse closer to the wagon and block people away. Even gods can be overwhelmed you suppose.
At the next temple you find a statue of bronze. Dave spends a lot of time praying here, bowed in front of the statue. It’s his brother, the god of heart and swords.
When it’s evening, and the orange light of the sunset comes through the front pillars, you approach slowly and kneel next to the human god. He’s speaking a language you don’t understand, but you make your own prayers in your head. You don’t know much about the god of heart, but you tell him you’re not here to pray for yourself. You want him to look after Dave once he’s released from his human form. You’re worried about him. He doesn’t seem excited to be a full god again, but he doesn’t seem truly happy in the form he’s in now, either. After spending so much time with him on this trip, your only prayer is that he’ll feel alive again.
When it’s dark, you strip to your trousers and a tunic. You bundle up some fresh clothes in your arms and walk barefoot down the marble hallway to find the washroom. This temple is supposed to have a grand, golden bath with a fountain. You can hear the water splashing already. You’ve taken short baths on your travels, but you’ve been needing a serious, cleaning bath.
You push open the heavy curtain that leads to the small pool and your eyes land on a boy that’s already in there.
He’s standing under the flow of the tall fountain, the water splashing his hair flat and then running down his face and chest and back. Your breath catches in your throat and you stare for a bit. His skin is so pale, his hair white. He’s slim and gorgeous. Wrapped around his neck and torso and ribboning out down a few arms and legs are tattoos that look like ancient scripture; a language that hasn’t been used in centuries.
The young man tips his head forward, pushing long, pale fingers back through his hair, and then opens his eyes and looks at you. His eyes are the most brilliant and brightest red.
You make a choked noise. You look to the side of the pool that’s truly made of gold, and you find a pile of clothes that belong to the man in the water. It’s a pile of red robes. A veil thrown nearby.
You’re stuttering out words. You close your eyes tightly and try to will yourself to forget everything you saw. Fuck! Fucking fuck! You blurt out loud apologies and beg for forgiveness as you back away and hit the wall. You can’t find the door. You’re a mess. You need to get out. You saw him. You saw his beautiful body. You saw the scripture wrapped around him, the ritual that’s keeping him bound.
There’s a hand holding your forearm. You drop your clothes. You didn’t even hear him approach. You keep muttering apologies and promise you won’t tell anyone, and you tell him you’re sorry, you’re so sorry, you didn’t mean to do this, you didn’t know someone was in here. Please forgive me, please…
He shushes you quietly and he touches your face.
You tell him you’ll leave and that you’re so sorry.
He shushes you again and tells you to calm down. He says someone might hear, and then you’ll be in worse trouble, so you have to quiet down.
You do. You gasp and try to relax and tell yourself that it’s going to be okay. It’s fine. Holy shit.
Then he tells you to open your eyes.
What? You can’t do that. You’ll be stoned. You already saw him once; shouldn’t you kind of avoid getting into worse trouble? Your body is trembling, and you’re afraid, but his hand is so warm and soothing. You can hear the water from his body dripping against the floor.
He’s a god. You have to listen to him.
Every so slowly, you obey and open your eyes. He’s not just a god. He’s Dave. His face is right there. He’s an inch shorter than you, and his red eyes are staring straight into your soul, you swear.
You feel like you’re under a spell. You pretend that he’s using powers or something, and that’s the excuse for your hand raising. It’s why your fingers are running through that clean, white hair. Then you hold his cheek, your thumb on his lips. He stares at you the whole time. You look down his body. You can’t read his tattoos, but you touch a few that are wrapped around his neck, his left arm, and one on his stomach. They wind him like rope. His legs are thin and long, and his stomach is smooth.
You’re looking at his bare hips when he holds your face and kisses you. You close your eyes immediately and hold his arms, letting him do as he pleases. He’s spend three hundred years covered up and hidden. If he wants to kiss someone before he’s free, then you’ll let him.
His lips are fire, but they don’t hurt. They flicker on yours, like a fire from one tree spreading to the next. His tongue puts the fire out, and you press forward, kissing back.
You think you can feel the earth turning.
He slips away, slowly. Your eyes stay closed. You’re hyperaware of everything around you.
Dave tells you that he’s going to get dressed. And then he’s going to leave. You can open your eyes after you count to one hundred.
His touch disappears from you, and you yearn for it. You want to follow him and beg for his kiss again. But you obey. You close your eyes and count, whispering to yourself. If you count in your head, you’ll cheat and catch another glimpse at him. You get to twenty, and it aches. You get to fifty, and you feel tired. You reach one hundred.
You’re all alone and you can’t feel the earth. His clothes are gone. You close your eyes again and touch your own lips.
The last stretch is a long one. You get sore, and your horse gets tired. Your party of humans and god take more than a few breaks. You’re quiet the whole time. You keep staring at the carriage. Thoughts of his body fill your mind. His eyes and shape. His lips.
You doze off on your horse a few times. You can’t believe he’s only five feet away from you, trapped in a carriage. Trapped in robes and a veil. Trapped in a body that isn’t truly him.
When you reach the capital, everyone is waiting. It’s not like the last time when Dave leaned out of his carriage to give gifts and blessings. This time he stays hidden inside while people fight to just touch the wagon. They think even touching your leg is something lucky, because you’ve been so close to a good for two weeks. It’s like breaking through a mob. You can’t look at them, and your chest feels with shame until you reach the biggest temple in the land.
That statue of the goddess of space is huge. Ten times the side of Dave’s back home. It’s made out of pure black stone. She has the planets surrounding her, her hands outstretched, and the ripples of her long dress reminds you of the ripples of water.
When everyone is settled into their rooms (you finally get your own private room from how big the place is), Dave leads a prayer in the main room where you, Sollux, Eridan, and anyone else who lives in the temple gathers to listen to the god and pray. Dave’s voice rings out, but it’s not like the voice he uses with you. It’s not the voice he used when he asked you to open your eyes that night.
After that, there’s a large dinner prepared. Dave doesn’t eat. He sits at the very end of the table, hardly ever speaking. He just watches, his long fingers hidden under the table on his lap. Priests talk to you, but you’re not all there. It hurts to know that there’s so much personality underneath that veil that he can’t let out.
When dinner is over, you can’t catch any time with him. You don’t catch him in the washroom. He doesn’t answer when you knock on his door. And it’s locked.
You go to your own room. The bed is fluffier than your own back home, and the sheets feel like silk. You can’t sleep though. You spend hours pacing, munching on snacks, and staring at the moon outside. Dave said he was always staring out windows at night, because he could feel the moon move with passing time. You try to feel it too, but you can’t. You get back in bed again and light a candle on the nightstand, swishing you finger back and forth over the flame. If you leave it too long, it hurts. Not like a god’s kiss.
Your door squeaks and you loll your head tiredly, looking over. It’s very dark in the room except for some of the moonlight that’s still streaming in.
The moonlight catches his face. He’s so pale and beautiful. He’s wrapped in a single, thin robe made of silk. His eyes are still as red as ever, and you’re so much more relaxed than the last time you saw him. You feel at peace with the fact that he’s here.
You don’t speak. Dave comes to the bed and kneels on the edge before he moves to straddle your waist. He’s bare underneath. You can feel his smooth thighs when you rub your hands up under the robe. Without breaking eye contact, he slips the robe off of his delicate shoulders until it pools around his hips.
He leans down towards you. His soft bangs touch your forehead.
He whispers and tells you that you can tell him to leave if you want him to.
But you don’t say anything at all. You just tilt your chin up and press your lips together. You can’t help how good you feel about this. No blurting or freaking out. You strokes your hands around his tattoos and you both kiss each other deeply, a little sloppily with passion that he’s never been allowed, and what you’ve never experienced. You sit up more after a while and roll him onto his back, giving no thought that you’re pinning a god underneath you.
It’s because he makes beautiful noises. Hitching breaths and little gasps. He’s trying to hide sounds that involve a moan, but he can’t help himself when you settle between his thighs and when your mouth makes its way across his entire neck. You two are latched to each other. You feel like lovers, even if you’ve only gotten to know him in these past two weeks. Most of that time was him in a carriage too.
He’s already naked. He helps you undress. He sits in your lap and rolls his hips against you and you kiss his chest and his sweet shoulders. His angled collarbones. You take your time to kiss every perfect part of him. His shoulder blades made out of angel wings, and the curve of his spine that’s the stem of every flower in the world. You kiss his ribs that are sweet piano keys, and music flows from his mouth.
You think his eyes glow. You grind against him and you press you lips on his right eyelid first, and he clutches at your hair, at your neck, at your cheek.
You’re just a human. Just another human. You don’t know why he feels so praised by you. He makes you feel important by simply reacting to your affection.
You both are panting heavily and his face is so ethereal. You kiss the side of his nose, his jaw, you rock your hips, you grip him in your hand, and he muffles a cry into your shoulder.
You can’t mark him. He’d look wonderful covered in hickeys, but tomorrow he’s going to be bared before a crowd for the ritual. Tomorrow he’ll be free and gone, and you’ll be nothing but a human fuck from his little three hundred years spent among the people. He marks you, though. He bites into your shoulder, muffling himself as he finishes between you. You swear he glows. His tattoos, his eyes. They glow, like his soul.
When it’s over, he lays on you for a bit. His head on your chest. His finger taps your arm in time with your heartbeats. You don’t think he has a heartbeat, the same way he doesn’t run out of stamina. His panting stops quickly while you’re still sweating and coming down from the high, your fingertips gently shifting across his back, trying to memorize what he feels like. You’ll never see someone as beautiful as him again. You’ll never feel so at peace with someone. It hasn’t been long, but you’re in love with a forbidden man.
Dave sits up and crosses his legs. He looks out the window, looking at the moon. You stay on your back, shove your thick bangs back, and sigh out through your nose.
You two stay there like that for a while. You turn your head and kiss his knee and your fingers touch his thigh down to his feet. He even has nice, smooth toes.
You want to ask him so badly. Why me? But you don’t. You say nothing.
Dave doesn’t sleep. He turns his head, staring at you while you feel like you’re dozing off. He can tell you’re struggling to stay up for him. The dim light in the window catches his body, leaving fluid shadows along the dips of his bones. You wish you had perfect memory so that this would stay with you forever. The shadow on his collarbone changes as he reaches out, touching your face, his thumb very gentle pressing on your eyelid.
You know what he wants. You close your eyes, and you think they might water a little. You know Dave has the ability to be incredibly quiet, but you think he makes noises for you on purpose. He gets off the bed. The silk robe slides off your leg as he takes it away. You can hear him putting it on. Then nothing. You think he’s just standing there. Then his bare feet against the stone floor. The door opening. Clicking closed.
You open your eyes, alone again. You didn’t feel the moon move, but you don’t think that sensation could compare to this. Sadly, in a few minutes, and intense heaviness sits in your soul when you realize you’ll never have that feeling again.
The morning is weird. There’s breakfast served, but you don’t eat. Dave doesn’t come out of his room. The whole temple is abuzz with talk. People from the city are there, wanting to witness the ritual. The high priests brag about their temple and you feel sick.
You can’t be mad at Dave though.
When the sun is overhead, everyone crowds into the front of the temple where the stature of the goddess of space towers over everyone. The high priest, and old man, is holding a book and waiting. Everyone is on their knees. Eridan and Sollux are near you, and there's a woman in front of you that you don’t know, and you’re not sure why it makes you angry. She’s coming here for the show. They all are. They’re not necessary for this ritual, but they’ve come to watch this poor man be stripped in front of them. Then again, so are you.
Dave is wearing black when he comes out. No one else knows him as Dave. The robes drag, and they’re grand drapes of fabric. He probably hates them. The priests probably picked them out.
He stands in front of the crowd like it’s a presentation. He can’t even undress himself. The priests do it. The veil first and then the robes. A beautiful creation, only used for a minute. He’s exposed to everyone, and you hate their whispers about how he looks. They talk about how white he is, how his eyes are like that of a demon’s. You only see the world.
He looks at you. Only for a second. You heart leaps into your throat, and then he’s staring at his feet.
A priest reads from that book. In the span of a minute, everything happens. You don’t know this language, but it’s familiar. You don’t think the priests knows it either, and he’s only reading aloud what it sounds like. It’s working, though. Because with every word, Dave’s tattoos glow until sentence by sentence, they rip off of his body. With each one, he screams. His knees hit the ground with a thud. He claws at his body, and his screams of pain pierce your soul as that scripture tears away from his skin, leaving glowing patches that grow in size until he disappears in that light. He becomes his own sun and you shield your eyes, and so does everyone else. There’s a blast of wind, and you squint through it. Panting, you lower your arms and look at his true form.
He’s ten feet tall. He’s wispy and made out of fire that’s black and white, but his eyes are on fire. Red that’s as bright as it used to be, catching the midday sun and flickering. His chest was see through. You can see a heaving rib cage. He has no heart or lungs, but rather a clock that ticks loudly, second by second. The gears that rock in circles every second make the ground vibrate.
The huge god turns his head slowly, puffs of fire coming out with every breath. He looks at you. You sit up taller and look back at him, and your eyes sting. You want to stand up. You want to reach out and beg him to go back in that form, but you know that binding form tormented him. You feel like this form torments him too.
The clock in his ribcage clangs loudly and you cover your ears, wincing as his body explodes in fire. There’s a smoke line through the air, leading out of the temple.
It’s so quiet. Then there’s whispers, mutters of shock. The priest his wiping his brow. There’s a pile of bones where Dave used to stand. All that’s left of his human form. The two guards from your village speak next to you about how crazy that all was. But like last night, you feel very alone again.
The travel home is very long and all the lonelier. Ampora and Captor are refusing to even look at you, and you’re not sure what you did wrong. You did sleep with a god, but it was consensual. And no one knows about it. Right?
You try writing music in a little notebook you brought along to keep yourself busy. Dave would want you to do so. You hope he’ll be around to hear you when you get back home and start playing in the temple again.
five inns, four campsites, and three temples later, you’re home. Before you’re greeted by your father, you’re greeted by green crops. The ground is damp with rain from the following night, and your village is happy. Dave kept his word. Your people are being saved, and you’re already smiling as your slip off of your horse and are crushed by your father’s arms just outside of the temple. You clutch him back, finally growing taller than him in the last few years, so you have a clear view over his shoulder and into the temple where Dave’s opal and marble statue is. It looks nothing like the real him. You close your eyes and focus on your dad. Dave is gone.
Your father asks how everything was. He asks if you’re hungry. If you’re tired. If you’re hurt at all. You keep telling him you’re perfectly fine, even though part of you inside does hurt, and you hug him again because you know it’s what he wants.
You two chat together, but are interrupted by Sollux, Eridan and priests. No one looks happy. Your father puts his arm around you, instantly protective.
They interrogate you right there. Is it true you saw the god? Gazed upon him? Touched him? You lie. You say no. Eridan says he saw you. He passed the room and heard everything. Everything magical about that night is almost ruined for you. You’ll never forget it, but it doesn’t stop you from feeling like you’re going to puke. You feel hot and terrified all over, and before you can defend yourself, you’re grabbed.
It’s terrifying. It all happens too quickly. It happens loudly. Thrown to the ground. Your outfit is dirty. Your father is yelling at them to leave you alone. Villages who noticed the commotion have come around. It’s about as big as the crowd that watched Dave suffer before his release into his god form. You wonder if he’s here. You wonder if he’s watching.
You’re on your knees. You’re praying. You’re praying to the god of time desperately. You’re begging. Something you’ve never done in your prayers. But you’re scared. You’re so scared, because you know the punishment for this.
You hear your dad screaming. You hear the high priest yelling about your crimes. You curl over your knees, hyperventilating and praying. Your god doesn’t come though. You stop praying when the first rock hits your face.