(№4.5)

After two wonderful months with his one and only, finally admitting to be converted lovers, he quit and stopped lying, coming out clean about what he was, his dubious existence, that he was a god among mortals and the thing he mostly feared in his young existence, the nearing arranged marriage inching closer, an ill impossible to outrun and defeat, the unthinkable so horrid, he might as well stop indulging in the maddening, craving fantasy that was his lover, the girl, just accepting his irresistible, relinquishing destiny.

After all, his father would consider the things he did with this mortal to be a fleeting bubble of intensified lust found in many young gods, a fling short lived and even shorter fully forgotten and chopped off, a love for the sporting stimulus, rather more game than reality, a first love for experience and nothing more, but yet how come something this intrinsic and thrillingly compromising, forbiddingly enticing, could feel so good, while the very thought put to mind of a wedding induced immediate shudders?

His red-haired angel took it rather well and accepted him for she didn't fall in love with a god, predestined to last longer than this Empire and many to descend as well, yet she loved a charming boy with a smug grin, a love of burning, bursting properties that would prove to never be incapacitated, to be shut down and consoled him as much as she could, that they would find a solution, no matter what.

Yet not even her could change the undeniable fact of his menacing marriage, a ritual of unification between him and his promised goddess only months ahead of them.

Their love, their song, their overture was about to die and crumble to fairy dust of those unlucky ones who never experienced what they did, those singed and transmuted to be dust of a real, relishing fire.

Was she to give up and let her significant other be taken aback and forced into a life he doesn't want nor deserve, the god whose emotions she forced out once and for all, the best of them to be stripped back of the scrapes of humanity he cultivated?

No, and to hell with it. To hell with these gods!

The idea smuggled itself in her dreams, her, the conduct of deranged eyes, the muse of lunacy and the puppet hid in the gowns of a queen with threads still pulled by one mischievous other god, bored for nothing but misery and tragedy, poisoning her mind genially, infiltrating her conscience until it ruptured on the surface, and she shared it with her lover-god.

He neither seemed distraught, not disgusted by her point of view yet admitting her to be right.

She wasn't gonna let the gods, the oh-so-higher beings, the hail of mankind, destroy their futures just for moronic power-schemes, for smart-aleck politics, maniacs desiring to gain the energy formed by the marriage of those two powerful youngster gods and honestly deprived of just yet another glorifying, elegant event to attend to, languid in the face of continuous eternity.

They chose the wrong mortal to mess with in the first place.

How unfortunate both for him and her, that this would be their death note. Well, not really, but the decision that would even bereave them of the small time left to delve and embrace the comforting communion, to never see each other again, and still suffer for the greatest deal imaginable.

They planned everything painfully accurate.

Pictured and commanded in her brilliant, adamant mind, noted and to be executed by his firm hands and blessed by the devil himself to collapse beautifully. Still that they wouldn't know.

The scary, eerie murder of his proposed fiancée, supposed to defy the laws of the very universe and shake the reigning grasp of the gods high above in heaven scowling down on the humans ought to worship them while doing simply nothing to ameliorate their quality of life, their metering eternity, counted finitely, yet unsure when it would end, thus possessing at least a sliver, a tinge of infinity the gods unreasonably took ahold of with the endless need for raging wars no one ever really won, besides the divine spectators for sating the constant need for bloodletting and splashing of body parts, whilst they watched contemplatively safe and sound, amused by the imperious nature of human's feelings so easy to trigger, to morph, to manipulate from pretty to gruesome, the way of clipping intense love to acute hate. But no more of this. No, the poor goddess designated to be his gorgeous veiled bride would be the one to take the hits for the marching, battle-hungry, inclement gods. The nemesis of the rule of the gods had begun.

They had a plan, they had a vision to let the dark entity of the gods stop, to have the humans stay on top of the world, none in ranking higher, but even if their scheme was to founder and gloriously bite them back, it wouldn't be mattering either, for they would have each other forever at last.

The girl would still play for the children in her village and now with the aid of their fathom god friend could now even boost a little bit of that trust and let others enjoy her company, a slight compelling, alluring, manipulation nonetheless, accepted only for the last opportunity offered to serenade the ears of the young and verdant, inspiring them to seek perhaps another avenue for the unknown future. One last time...

Even reconnecting one last time with her sister, who wished to emigrate out of old Egypt and enter new horizons at the Aegean Sea, far, far up in the north, where the Greek civilization still lay in the cradle.

It might have been the last time she'd ever see her.

The night of the odds came and quickly passed, with a glorious miracle's success on their behalf and an unbalance of nature at their heels. For one immortal down, another must rise, or the world is to collapse in its axe and rigid in the spinning tracks of its ellipse orbit. Somehow, they killed and eliminated something supposed to last forever, a curse swallowed wholly into nothingness and its bearers, her creators and other Gods quickly to be instructed about this treachery.

Energy simply couldn't be destroyed and gods were nothing but, yet they somehow managed to and won against all chance, disobeying the very rules of nature and resisting the principles of basic physics.

Why would they do such a thing?

How?

Why?

The answer was apparently as facile as it was unsatisfying, Love. Selfish, hot-burning, ever-lasting love.

And a mortal bestowed with more or less lusty abilities on top of that. Unstoppable at last, together.

Might I remind you, regarding the circumstances permitting such temporal imbalance of nature, where under the conditions someone must fill in the place of a missing immortal and soon on top of that, and bethought they were, intending to render her eternal and turn her a goddess for the one that was lost among the rank of gods.

They would then proceed to crack the very base of the gods extending hands from the inside and be the Queen and King of the world to judge and prevail over any Empire, being the only one worshipped and ensuring possibility and lucky chance, happiness and safety, in a world plunged and knee-deep dipped into injustice and overwhelming darkness, at times irresistible despair.

Together hand in hand, they were marked to be unstoppable, both the missing parts to a wholeness otherwise partial broken, split into fragments, adding each other's strengths and repeal the other's weaknesses, together meticulously perfect and simply, the world ought to either be grateful they wandered the paths of heroes or should fear the day they chose destruction and become the tyrant villains they originally challenged. Alone they would succeed in naught and nothing, albeit unified in love and dedication, not even the rising end of everything might thwart their goals. Or even furious gods with a tempering lust for bloodshed and rightful vengeance for the child lost and murdered by those brutes.

They were furious to the degree the world stripped bare, earthquakes and plagues and misery pooled among any dwelling unconditionally the distance or inaccessibility. The mountains shook, the soil screamed, drought unbearably charring, waves of blizzards shockingly nerve-freezing, the vulcanoes spewing the announced commencement of fray with halos of ash, blocks of scorching, crimson-red rocks and currents of lava devouring all, every living thing suffering for a couple of horrendous weeks, floods severely pouring in, always searching, kin to find the culprits responsible for such crimes, these two half-baked children.

And Earth contributing in futility, mimicking the most intrinsic, the deepest aspect of bottomless grief even almighty, equanimous gods can't help feeling.

Of course, they wished to be found and proclaim their long-reasoned ultimatum, but they feared what would doom on the Egyptians and the entire Mediterranean region are if they were to be discovered there, whilst the over-sprawling, overwhelming, rampaging sensations of the divine detected no other vessel to reflect their anger, their wrath but dawning it on the humans they once marvelled at and envied on. So they gulped down all noble reservations and illustrious promises of a doomed plan that seemed to fail at last and ran away like coward dogs, running far, far away, for as long as he could teleport her gone, until he broke out in oozing sweat and panting for breath as if his lungs were made to flesh and he trembled for his survival with every inhale, marching then along the vague contours of their path, half stumbling, half cursing for as long her mortal feet could lead her way, through desert and next to oasis, through drought, and thirst and biting hunger, the world a place a lot bigger than a human mind and inexperienced young god conferred to believe in.

They ran and hid, always on the lookout, paranoid to the untenable, unachievable, until the delusion of persecution attained the status to lay awake wide-eyed in the middle of the night and think the partner next to them breathing slowly and peacefully, a vacant facade of a god sent out to strike, unalert in slumber, desperate to find a place where no human soul or animal shape would be pulverised if the exasperation of the gods would grow grander and more vindictive than anticipated, while simultaneously gaining the impression to be so close to victory and yet still to threatened to lose. And it even affected their passionate, all-enduring ardour for one another, where not a moment of affinity could pass without the looming menace of the surveilling premise of getting caught, fearful for the fate of the other, he for her life and she for the punishment he would have endure, while the Gods probably turned her bones into gigantic toothpicks, a quick death, whereas he was to live through it forever.

Time and odds against them, running at a clock totally against their favours, losing the endless game of all, the predicted conclusion finally happening, just as it was to go down. If you play the game of gods, expect to fail tremendously.

They played and mixed with fatal outcomes as not only their time was falling apart, in fact the whole universe was collapsing, thanks to their crime of murdering a constant of the universe.

People suddenly disappeared, swallowed by the starving darkness or woke up in the middle of the night with torn open torsos, blood leaking everywhere and screaming until cold death saved them the pain, some on the other hand convulsing and trapped in violent seizures, triggered by an all ominous disease, no shaman nor any healer achieved to cure, succumbing after a painful weak and taking along their afraid loved ones closely nearby for support and profound care, for the illness carried contagious via air respirated.

Times were mixed up, trees and plants and animals and microbiota, basically everything dying for no reason, the air becoming toxic to breathe, smoke eddying in entwined bows of stark fumes, a greater mass mortality hollering out aloud for the sweetening justice, enlarged and stressed to bravura mightier even then the downfall of dinosaurs in response to a fatal meteorite crash.

That wasn't just simply a reaction to a cause, it was slaughter no one could stop and would take out each and every one of them. Demanding balance, a black hole became devastating reality.

Eating and feeding off some molecules, until there was not a piece left, until shattered the fore form of existence.

The instant of an ending. And not even the gods could stop the snowball rolling down the hill, hollering only more in size with seized up problems in tow, the snake eating its own tail perpetually, like the perennial destruction, demise of an entire universe piece by piece.

Uncertain times it was.

Glorious and silent, sweet, and unforgiving, strong, and forced, majestic, and eternal Oblivion. That would await them all.

The requiem of a shorter story no one begged to hear nor asked to create. That's the thing with blunt, blatant reality: No one asks anything of it to see it comply.

Even their heaven turned red then black, like menacing nightfall, a dark ink stain spreading like blood on white impeccable cotton, shrouded in blackness and hope long banished along with many more things.

The girl and her immortal lover ran and ran and continued until her lungs gave out, legs quivering and toppling down beneath her weight, the steady creeping of waiting and expecting their prosecutors to assume them around all corners, hiding in paranoia all along, nightmares soaked in gore and monsters, the dread of what the God's would do, of what they would evince to be capable, meanwhile attempting to outlive with rations dangerously tilting to a final decline, or at least attempting to poorly survive on a planet ready to bite the dust. Plants turning as blackened and ashen as volcanic cinder, inedible for her and even seemingly hale and sound animals collapsing down the next day, with intestines shot up their noses, eyes red buds, tongue cluttered with blisters and fur dampened and rather tarnished, uncommon.

It was ugly, it was horrible. It was slaughter. If one wouldn't be taken by the arbitrary violence, it still mattered nothing, for in the end all mortal creatures simply would starve.

If you took something, you also need to replace and give back and unfortunately only the aggressors the two feared to face in retrospect could be accounted for being able to do such.

No matter how further they walked, sprinted, the girl had to suffer through other human's deaths, watching them painfully go, as they clung to life and were nonetheless clipped away from their friends and beloved unceremoniously. A place where they might as well follow suit, minding the current status of how things went down.

And she might as well always be the next one.

They visited the farthest places, the fanciest islands, the warmest oceans, travelled in 80 days around the world, watching it shrivel, enduring abnormal, cruel pain, based on their will to be together, against all odds, reigning about this dying realm they dared to jeopardise simply to prevent him to be married and her wasting away.

That did play out well, didn't it?

The supposed summer of their lives, where they fell in love turning more and more into pure, palpitating horror.

The Gods faithfully searched and turned every stone over, leaving not one intact, until - it had either way been only a matter of weeks - they were found. The boy crying on a distant and deserted island with nothing more than grains of sand and a coconut palm tree present, weeping buckets over his dying lover, the love of his life, that in devouring, eradicating guilt and embarrassment, maddening shame and madness had brought a blade to her chest and pushed through numerous layers of skin, perfectly missing the ribs imprisoning her smarting, throbbing heart, pained by the death and loss it applied to list, all in the name of love. Sweat slicked and itched over the minuscule hillocks of her spine, limbs sore, head full and stuffed with plenty of prunes and blood boiled to be cooled down from the apex, ice splinters ripping apart her veins, sins bleeding openly in her scarred, exhausted body, the blade piercing her heart mid-beat right in the centre.

The Gods saved her life in the last second – as that was a much too easy way to die for a meagre mortal rogue – and let her wounds heal in thick and ugly scars, decorating her breasts in heavy curls impeding her to fully breathe in and out, yet heart was restored back to beating incessantly. 

Beating so they may resume with earned torture.