It was cruel to leave something for dead without finishing the job. I did not delight in suffering. Even a dog would have been offered a kinder death.
Another tap of my fingers as I lingered by the woman.
After all, I was not born to need humans, nor they to need me.
Vultures began to circle, and I made a decision.
Unlike Gula, or Heaven’s King, humans didn’t source my power. The battered woman gave me no offerings or temples or books written in my name. But as I looked into her badly swollen face, I was compelled to offer this innocent mortal who refused to denounce her faith, even when her god did not arrive, the gift of death.
It was merciful. Perhaps mercy wasn’t my first nature, but these impulses were intriguing, at the very least. Between Gula,Aea, myself, and the bloodied husk on the shore, no one would get what they wanted today.
In a step, I moved from my place on the cliff to the space above the human’s mangled remains. To my horror, I saw that not only was she alive, but she’d remained conscious. Her cheek was swollen and split. Her jaw was broken. Buzzards descended, lower and lower with each pass, as they grew closer to the promised meal of twisted, raw meat.
“It’ll be over soon,” I murmured. I extended a hand toward her bruised, swollen face, kneeling to take her pain away.
Her eyes fixed on mine.
My hand froze an inch from her face as she looked not just at me, but into me.
She was so close to death that I could practically see the soul crackling beneath her skin, ready to escape. Its pretty, pearly quality would wink out shortly. Then, she’d be just another dead body without a grave.
Her lips moved silently at first, then with a crimson gurgle, as a small stream ran from her mouth down her throat. I remained immobilized in shock that the human had perceived me as she managed three slow, clear words.
“Don’t leave me.”
A black vignette swirled at the edges of my vision.
It was like I’d been punched with the fist that had forged time itself.
My lungs, my stomach, my heart dropped and twisted.
Fragile, broken, innocent, tragic, pathetic—the words assaulted me as another drop of blood escaped the corner of her lips.
This was unacceptable. What I felt was beyond pity. The words on my tongue were furious, hateful, downright demonic, but this human was not the target of the fury burbling within me.
She hadn’t cried for me to take the pain away. She hadn’t begged for help. She’d asked only that I stay with her. My hand remained frozen an inch from her face, as pale as the salt that crusted the water’s edge against the sandy brown of her skin, the purples and reds of her wounds, the black of the hair plastered to her face. It was all I could do to keep a tremble from my fingertips.
“Don’t leave me.”
No. No, no, no.
For the first time since I’d been breathed into existence, I was at a loss.
It’s not your business, gnawed the voice in the back of my head. If I was mortal, I might have called the voice a conscience. Duty was an irritating beast, and I didn’t care for its intervention. I was a god in my own right, by mortal standards, and as such, duty could take a back seat as I did whatever I wanted.
Was this what Gula wanted? Could this be her doing?
No, I would not use this woman—scarcely more than a child—as a tool in the war. This pitiful human would not be a martyr for my cause. Gula be damned, I would not let her bones turn to dust as her shattered faith became the poster for Hell’s cause.
What are you doing?
I didn’t even know how to categorize these thoughts. Did these musings, these prodding questions, belong to me?
I may not know humans, but I knew anger. A new, potent wrath perched within me.
Rage alone told me that I would do more than stay with her. I couldn’t make this right, but…I wasn’t without ability. Surely, I could do more than feel. I could do more than stay, even if I’d never found a need to rise to such an occasion.
A small eternity passed between her simple request and the time it took for my world to shatter. It couldn’t have been morethan a second before I cupped her cheek with my hand. Her swollen eyelids fluttered shut as I urged a deep and healing sleep to course through her veins.
