(№4.4)

In the end, she would have probably destroyed herself, as she began living alone near the river, eating what she could find on sparse days of self-reflection where her bare fingers felt like severed stumps of gore and maimed flesh, not visiting her dozens of sisters and brothers, rid of the parents who astonishingly passed at their irritably young age just like most of them back then, regarded as a slaughter of the plague and nothing more. In reality, they had died of a broken heart, for the head of their army of children wandered now the corrupted paths of hell, of demons tempting and they died howling, intentional to the fact there was nothing they could ever do to have their beautiful daughter, princess back, contained from the banks of madness no one could ever be retrieved sound and hale.

An idea robbed her of quality and forsake her of her loved ones.

But on the other end, every time she'd play, there was this nervous, tingly feeling inside of her that was filled with joy and gratitude for each day in her life she was able to play her little pieces in peace, let the pressure be released for the lit hours, until her misery would overwhelm her in the night and the game continued on, the vicious cycle a vice she enjoyed only half-heartedly.

After all, it was with a lot of things we do in life; What brings us pain and suffering might give us the equal measure of joy and happiness, even if it finishes us off in the end. Though that's not important to us, the bad, the negative, the advantages are rather more observed and treasured than the unwanted, horrific horrors.

The only thing you have to be careful of, is if your contentment is worth your suffering and that of others and the fixated necessity of attempting to only return your well-meaning.

Mostly children sometimes gathered around there, the place ripped in time and space, down the river and enjoyed the girl's playing, the tales along the way, being bewitched by flames and warmth and smoke and notes, lovely music basically out of another dimension. They were innocent, inculpable. They could hear the magic living in it, canalised through her reborn, enchanted figure seemingly that of a muse, an angel, a witch, protecting their village, while their guardians, parents were too old, too cut out, weathered down, outworn by existing themselves to put much thought in that and too caught up with their own problems to care or even listen.

Understand the hidden message, magnified in a dream, simply mesmerising.

But once they irreparably went through the line of growing up, they never returned, so the girl long sauntered over the threshold of becoming an adult also clang desperately to her naïve youth and halting the loss of her own magic, cluttering down as hard and fixed as capable, serenaded none now save herself. Broken as predicted, the path of no one but her own dismantling pretension.

Her death would spare others certainly, her obsession wearing her down day and day more, to the verge of death even. Perhaps this manuscript would have never needed noting down, engraved with comprehension and muttered mercy, the cries of thousands and thousands of people, if it had just never come to this, as it did.

Whilst no one on the earthly globe bothered themselves onto what she was up to these days much, there was ever the more significant an entire world tugged away out of everyone's sight, fueled by naught than fervent credence, a whole hidden audience had the means and the ability to listen to her violent shudders of help sought in her music and so one of the gods decided to listen to her playing much too frequent and swallowed perhaps some of this outbursting, everlasting enthusiasm literally radiating off that stubborn redhead, in theory delving further than he should have.

One of the third generation of gods born, much brought forth like mortals, hidden in grass, descended from actual heaven, solely several yards away spent entire afternoons, nights, mornings and forenoons, only listening to her successes and her important failures, setbacks which she always came past, that after all claimed her virgin nympholepsy.

A young soul, fated to live for aeons yet and survive many human lives, lured in more and more with every sound protruding out of her heavenly instrument, falling deeper and deeper from the walls of serenity and divine equanimity he was advised to erect for safety, crippling to dust by the countenance of his rising affection, abut to reflect the same ardour of hers and the unknown distance between them issued his heart to only grow fonder of her, till every waking moment shaped her countenance and every blinking star reassembled the twinkling of intelligence in her eyes.

The boy with hair deeply enriched brown like the trunk of an exalted beech, respectively always in the shape of a young human, watched over her, protected her from any hazardous events, and relished on the sounds a simple mortal with the lucky components of physics on her shoulder could produce to entertain his ears and mind. Simple no more she was to him, though. Until he would favour her now like a dearest friends, a queen to his eyes, aloof his grasp, just as one would be to commoners, only this time he could dissect and straddle the longing distance of their one-sided relationship, for unknown a stranger he yet was, getting involved by the second, yearning ever for more.

Lost like her, here rather of choice than the tranquilising compulsion of a fellow, he wandered away from the grand midst of the dwellings constructed in the clouds, away of his ignorant family, headed with a mightier father and an even more powerful mother who was in fact one of the first gods to ever be created.

As the continuation of their species was as necessary as to keep up with human standards, a good to cultivate. The gods were ruled not out of emotion and feelings but of far more logical mechanisms such as reason and consistency, yet if one emotion must have been assigned for them to possess even in the puniest concentration, it would be exulting, corrosive pride or either bitter, barbaric envy.

He was already promised for procreation to an older goddess of the second generation even with whom he was most compatible and likely to produce heirs of exquisite, salient quality, certain to excel, these lovely god-infants, even in the matter of their appearance with the skin colour of roses and eyes extracting the sun, lids the hue of pinkly faded mussels. Done, already finished, polished, the second consciousness ripened and came to fruit, all of them final gods.

His domains, the legitimate aspects of the universe, what he was to reign, govern and rule over, were yet to be found and something he didn't like concerning himself about.

Sometimes he'd hang from a tree, behind her studying her nice form, her vibrant red hair and gallant back, slim neck and even her mutilated fingers adorned with slashing red scars were a piece of art. Everyday he fell more and more and lost a part of him on the hunt to gain the other fitting piece that naturally could only be found in her pockets.

At first, when he was younger and verdant to the ways of the world, for gods grew up faster than humans, he was to be assured to only fancy the music and the art, not to take a deeper liking or even going as profound as loving such simplicity spun by mortal, inferior creatures. The more he matured, the older he became, the more he understood what he already knew from birth, he lost the capacity convincing him as badly as needed, that there was really nothing behind his benevolent, trained eye for beauty and the slight feeling of an overwhelming tempest approaching facing him when he heard her strumming chords from afar, the ache when he had to turn from her, steadily swelling with every pace more and his heart, beating and clapping like the grandest audience after each of her pieces, giddy and excited in expectancy for something he was acquired to do, every smarting beat endowing more life on him, that all of this experiences were only chemical interaction. That this wasn't more.

Gods weren't alive, they're dead not either, rather beyond the confinements of life and death they gleam, eternity still too early, infinity what they would have.

Particularly, it was the greatest art to mirror humans and living beings as closely as possible, without actually becoming them, manipulating the surroundings meanwhile, tricking them to be also humane, alive, with breath and heart, that was merely a facade, a decadent ploy for naught mere than pure enjoyment and cruel entertainment.

They had no emotion, no compassion, no mercy, no joy.

Then why then, as he was lying on the warmed back of a tree branch, shuffling leaves tickling him, was it contingent for him to believe his heart was really beating there in his chest, more than simple allusion to keep up appearance, each and any time he listened to the lost girl with fiery hair in the woods, feeling the excruciating pain of imagination, like a treacherous knife piercing and boring him through any passing second, imagining what it would be to draw these lush curls behind her ear, caressing her cheek, brushing that immaculate skin doing the unthinkable and gladly picturing all of this in his head with his heart in utter accord. Laying way more than pathetic interest beneath his plain curiosity.

Love.

Was he in love? Could he even feel something so powerful behind the shell of being merely a vessel of hot energy with the spark of a conscious? Had he fallen for a human girl, towards all?

It was time to put it to the ultimate test, in doing something he had dreaded and longed for all along.

One Sunday, a wonderful one to recollect, the breezes silky and the air clean. He had put on his best human form – how he thought he looked most appealing, alluring to the very verge of exaggerating, matching the loveliness standardised at present times, prior to feeling the glinting spike of guilt and shame for deceiving his potential lover foully like that, quickly switching to the contour he probably would have assumed when born a mortal and ventured on the grounds of that radiant priestess of his temple consecrated with the shoots of his juvenile, tender love, clenching the blossom of an aloe vera plant in his right fist, the orange of its blossom brilliant.

The girl almost dropped her instrument to succumb to the strong and profuse currents inhabiting the river, as shocked and stunned as she was to see him here, her territory no one dared enter for a very long time.

He didn't say anything, placing the flower to her feet as a sign of truce, sitting down on the ground carefully as if to not scare her away and waited carefully, eager soaking in her contours and form from close up, even better than he could have guessed.

She continued only to play blocking her listener out, wildly and rampantly, borderline disruptive thoughts plopping in her mind like poison taking effect soon after swallowing it in masses as a castaway of the city lusts for water and would gulp down any liquid discovered in the hostile desert, insignificant if it would deaden him in the end, avoiding his searching, intense gaze completely, staring incessantly only at the hands so scarred, they might as well belong to a man who endured a millennium.

He remained by her side throughout the whole afternoon, being quiet and emerging almost perfectly coherently, as it would only be her wandering and resting on this clearing, plunged profoundly in her world matter of factly, when she really wasn't alone at all for once, consumed into her artistry. She could ignore him for as long as she favoured, it wouldn't bent reality to suit her wishes, to amend her commands, to make his trained amber eyes sparking with the glint of hissing embers avert, his tranquilising, soothing presence distanced, his offering in form of her preferred flower removed.

Companionship was a rare, lowly privilege for the commoners, yet she still didn't want him gone after getting used to his rare company.

When dusk interrupted the peaceful concert and smouldering swaths coloured the sky pink and orange, the fall of anticlimactic pressure dropping down was as tangible as frustratingly infuriating to the both of them.

She stood up, tensed from sitting for hours, cheeks pink and eyes illuminating paths to his heart as a gentle invitation for him to walk the grounds of these routes, her heart-shaped lips smirking at the edges into the triangular tips of the tongues of snakes and as much wit and genius glittering eyes as he foresaw, bowing humbly for her only listener for a longer time she could fathom.

Without saying much, the boy stood up gingerly, leaning in slowly, as alarmed the figure in front of him would act like reserved as a doe with fawns in her belly, shrieking ahead of the silent predator hiding in the bushes, running away on any curious, unnatural sound penetrating the reticent, lazy sun-warmed air around them. He grabbed her hand and planted a soft kiss, softer than the brush of a morning breeze and even more tender than a drop of rain splattering on your forehead. They locked eyes calmly, before he turned around serenely and left the scene, not a speck of dried skin cells, a clump of dust giving away he might have ever been there and not a singular witness to prove her mind anything, except it being left torn and mad.

She waited for nearly twenty minutes, an inferno of whooshing and bouncing hues of magnificent light behind her, the festivities brought to celebrate in ecstasy in favour of the living, having them survive another day. A sincere smile loomed her face up and she ran to the flower, picked it up to place the sticky thing behind her ears.

The next day, he didn't come.

Like the day after and that one after, and then another day without him.

The girl was disoriented, frequently questioning her performance to be shockingly horrible and dwindling to lose its perfection with each night passed if she was able to scare a gentleman such as him away with a sole concert and concerned herself if he'd ever return, if she'd ever see him again.

After a morose week, he came back late afternoon and leaned against a tree, arms behind his head, eyes closed.

To the girl, he looked brazen and arrogant, mischievous and threatening her career, her mission to spread inspiration and recovery to those capable souls seeking her out, she a cure replacing gods who were not able to act on positive behalf of mortals, forbidden by olden rules and even if not, they resented involvement.

Unfortunately, she had no clue of him being only exhausted by the couple of days, where his family discussed boring and unnecessary matters in never ending congresses of made-up, confusing problems he cared to have no part in, whatsoever. In reality, he sought out her magical healing music much for the same reasons enlivened humans did: To dream in the ugly light of day, independent to the strange, veiling flutter upheld by darkness and the night, for in forlorn blackness might the most interesting, wonderful things born, things fearing the light and wincing on the prying buds of the sun. Her music had rough depth to conjure any hole, any ditch to disappear from any biassed predicament, a canopy to even the omniscience detectors of his family.

When the night hit and safety hollowed in entirety, he was about to leave, enchanted and enriched, perhaps even equipped to tolerate for another day the endless bickering and mandatory quarrels his relatives liked to conduct in the evening hours, when to his surprise, the girl stood up from her place quickly, her alcove of cushioned soil with sleeping feet and itchy hands as if ants crawled all over her skin spraying their fervent, galvanising poison. As if the decision she made now would set the tone for everything, was to determine the very base of the future and the carved direction destiny would take. She trailed behind unhesitatingly, tripping over roots dimly lit, vicious roots practically invisible to her feeble eyes, a last desperate attempt for the universe to compose self-preservation, to defeat the very happenings about to occur, attached to terrible, terrible suffering. It was to no avail, for nothing could have stopped that stubborn redhead, tumbling over the shady clearing quaking and enthralled.

"Wait a second, please! Pardon me to intrude, but can I count on it to see you tomorrow?"

He turned shocked as if whittled out of all certain smugness, surely not expecting this, scantily nodding, before merging with the saturnineness of the night, as if his literal form had bled black into the shadows, objectively being the first person to ever master the fine artistry of commanding the literal ground and swallow one at a stretch.

He would not be gone for long though, as on time like mechanised clockwork, he was right back besides her in the morning.

She played better than ever, with red, long hair flying behind her back trapped in a breeze and notes dancing away from her hand, conjured, melting with the air like soothing caramel, so sweet like the deep first cold breath in spring, full of promises and expectations, of flowering perfume comparable to the smells emitting from her skin, lovely and pure.

Captivating pieces and melodies, rebellious, and revolutionary, crafted by her clever mind.

Incredible.

Hypnotic.

Other-worldly.

She played so well, he'd give her the world and destroy the universe, rather than letting her stop, hell, he would kill himself if he was fathomed to do so to only hear the flickering, trickling, twirling whiles of this overpowering vortex not even him, a god was girded to withstand falling.

She gave her heart up for the music, and her passion, her will to live, surrounded and circumvented in the instrument she made, her version of the knight in shining armour, protecting her from her own darkness, making her lose pieces and bits of herself whenever she tended to the wanting of the raging spirit guiding her hands and animating her heart.

For him, the young god's son, it was the loveliest of sounds he's ever heard, so he came by every day and listened, something no sane person hardly ever would gather his pretentious time to do for someone.

Maybe it was rather easier managing that with an infinite window of time.

If he wasn't already well on track of falling for her, this might have done the trick after all. She had bewitched him, entrapped and captivated in her tentacles, gone any possible opportunity to escape, and when being honest, it wouldn't be his precedence to ever come loose of her.

They bonded over her music, talking for real and openly, discussing even the most simplest, daftest topics in the presence of each other afterwards, bubbling and bursting with the tensioned zeal and passion found in the company of each other, so that outsiders might as well credit them to tend to matters the importance of waging war and international politics, perhaps Fate after all assessing with the one or other string pulled in their favour, as undeniable and simultaneously, they both fell for the other, short after long, otherwise undoubtedly hopeless to crave for any other outcome.

He marvelled at her beauty that would last merely during a snap of fingers, and anytime he laid eyes upon her again, she was lovelier even than seconds before. The freedom she possessively claimed about expressing the fundamental remnants of her art to a ruthless, unforgiving, hostile environment in her playing and catching the most fordable tang of emotions right when it rose and exposing it to the judging nature of scrutinising daylight, while being passionate and stuffed meanwhile with the jaunty confines of a youngster's flourishing life.

Where his point of view was limited by the ice-cold frame of indifference, put on in years of tedious exercise of protection, as everything would die and fade away, while he'd stay strong and healthy, untouched by life, she could progress elegancy in the ugliest wrinkle of an old forgotten leave laying rotten in the ground, with its demanding auburn colour, fainted by sunlight and crispy in texture, hints of yellowness and the small crawling of desert bugs tempted to dispose of that square lively matter and kick cycling a new season.

In her sense, viewing behind that confusing, fragile human veil, she was torched on fire by his fascination of analysing things, a curious mind to learn everything the sky from above could not offer him to teach and the sweet charm, the exhilaration of knowing you'd wake up every day only to discover a novelty, the discovery of yet new things, marking every day a milestone, unique and beautiful all together.

The one summer they had was filled with compassion, warmth, and love. Hot and stirring. Spelling him to have the protective, embracing shell he had erected in cocky apprehension after the numerous foul tellings of his parents, the constant staggering annoyance radiated off the other gods to care for anything mortal in this world, that vigorous embodiment of vigour to stay intact merciless and without exception losing that vicarious solidity for eager determination to be kept in place, now dissolving with any loving glance he received from his partner dangling at his side, fingers dashing over the board towered with chunky strings and set decision of perfection. The walls he had built getting smashed and shattered anytime chills glided down his spine and his heart leapt at animate passages, just as it would beat him life with any more infused music, her love dissolved in a dreamy smile and a talented piece for him to greedily absorb like a dry, hungry sponge longing for contact with water to finally swell and augment and fulfill a purpose it was meant to accomplish, melting even the icy skin from any God. Gratitude and joy and love and affection and harmony... The list could go on forever, while he revelled in the gradual commitment conferred to him, picking him fair and square for the person he was.

Starting by greeting the sun at her awakening, praising her loving, wondrously beautiful form for rising at yet another beautiful day, where they talked and laughed and fought playfully, and sharing their affection for each other in small gestures, in allusive physical touches and smiles when examining the face of the other, concluding by her playing and him developing his drastically preeminent for drawing sketches, an unison of artists doing side by side the things their hearts desired and loving each other unconditionally.

They'd eat wild berries from her garden she contemplated not long to don, for tasting your own crucially sweet fruits was a privilege she yet had the pleasure to experience, rounding up every single moment of perfection spent together. It was completely impeccable. That simply.

They might as well have been friends, best friends, though their compassionate fire burned already far higher than any flame provoked by human hand, complacent passion in twin motion further cultivated by every gentle twinkle, every easy word, every plucked string, every greeting, even every good bye and at every deliberate touch.

The nights, to her demise, he'd usually leave to let her rest and sleep, while carrying her dreams and floating above cushioned clouds in the illuminated sparse night sky and guiding her nightmares and fears away to let her slumber relentlessly, while she dreamed relentlessly of him breathing inspiration into her uncoordinated collective of grand, crudely gnawing ideas and hinted shapes of future melodies.

Until one night, she asked him genially to remain at her bedside and he'd stay on her accord.

On the exclusive night of the New Moon, where darkness cloaked the planet arrantly, they figured out how to express their love a little bit differently. Rather corporeal, to imply the least.

It's true what they say, you know, the impending, looming, creeping promise of fated love.

From a crush to affection.

From affection to lust.

From lust to truth.

From truth to love.

From love to them.

And unfortunately in their case, from them to doom.