NOTHING
Teach stillness to the ocean.
Describe cold to the sun.
Explain mercy to the blade.
When they learn the impossible, perhaps, at last, I will know how to express what it means to see the face of love, and then lose that love again…
And again.
…and again.
Chapter Ten
184 BCE
Men and immortals had more differences than likenesses. Each juxtaposition was stark, jarring, and when it mattered, godsdamned infuriating.
Priorities blatantly contrasted, to be sure.
Their wink of a life expectancy made their choices, their priorities, their driving force incompressible to those of us who could see the bigger picture.
Gods found pleasure in dissimilar things.
The woes that plagued mankind were vapors, murmurs, and dust compared in the eyes of the Divine.
We received our energy and sustenance from astronomically different sources.
And of grave importance, when the gods procreated, it was a big deal.
The population among gods, angels, demons, fae, and the like changed so seldomly that each death and birth was etched into a tablet and echoed through the lands.
Butfuckdid humans reproduce.
There were at least thirty million more lives to sift through between the time I’d found my human in the Arctic Circle and the moment she took her last breath on her one-hundred and thirteenth birthday. As an eternal being, three lives with my human were little more than bubbles and froth in my timeline. It was hardly enough time to establish a method on how best to discover her soul, in whatever body it had landed.
Combing the earth was my all-consuming frenzy.
Decades passed as I scoured every town, village, home, for my opalescent soul. I spared the minutes, an hour at most, to visit my kingdom and check in with my duties.
I was frequently met with a, “What the fuck are you doing?!” from Izi. “You can’t keep this up. Peopleknow, Amagi. Father knows of your weakness.”
Her dark form faded against the black marble as I shot her a fatal glare. Venom dripped from each word. “Are you that desperate for his approval? You have to try to undercut his relationship with his only son?”
But her threats landed. I trekked across the palace, past the Soul Eater, straight into my father’s worried gaze.
Before the door closed behind me, I asked, “How may I assuage your fears?”
There was a gentleness to his eyes as his lips turned down. “Before I answer: I suppose asking you to detach from this obsession with a single mortal is off the table?”
My expressionless silence was answer enough.
“Then…I trust you know what you’re doing.”
There would be other visits, other days, other talks. Now, I needed to return to the surface. I offered the stiffest of shallow bows before pushing through the double doors.
Izi was waiting just beyond the Soul Eater when I exited his royal hall. I flipped my sister a vulgar gesture at her goading over the war, the stakes, my role, the metal-on-metal screech of her endless harping, and then returned to my search.
