She simply hadn't expected this reaction. Now it was she who didn't understand. He pulled away from her again, and he was aching, he was hurting so badly, and she didn't understand.
It was crushing her.
She looked at him, and she knew this pain could cease, for her at least. She knew that this rending, horrible tear in her heart, in her soul, in every fibre of her infinite being, could be worked through and disappear. She had learned to meditate and release it - and it would take years and years and years, but ultimately, this would not hurt the way it did right now. She would not feel rent from everything that mattered - she would be alone and at one with everything simultaneously.
But she was killing him.
How could she be killing him? She didn't understand. He wouldn't look at her, he wouldn't... and he was going to leave, and she didn't understand.
But she wouldn't let him leave.
She should let him go; she should continue on the path that she'd set, she should find the answer, the answer that was so, so very close. She was sure it wouldn't take much longer, she was sure that in a few more decades, she would be utterly transcendent.
But then it would be too late.
Right now, at this very moment, it might be too late.
"No."
The word was low, and definite, and a growl.
She didn't need to understand why this hurt him so much - the very knowledge that it did was enough, had to be enough. For no matter what, for whatever insane reason, he loved her more than he loved peace, more than he loved being without pain - to the very point that by taking herself away, even just for now, she was breaking him apart.
Again, she pulled him back; took his hand, placed herself in front of him. Her hands reached for his face, lifted it to look at her, to look into her eyes. Because he would understand. Before she would give him this, before she would stop this and go back to the way that things were, he would understand.
"Erebos," she said, very quietly, but very clearly. "I have done this for our sake, for your sake. I have done this to understand myself, to stop fearing my need for you, to stop fearing myself. I have done this to stop hurting you, because since the day I was brought into existance, I have been hurting you."
Her voice registered a tremor, but she continued.
"I don't want to hurt you," she said fiercely.
Gently, lovingly, most tenderly, her fingers now caressed the contours of his face, the planes of his cheeks. Her thumb skimmed over the softness of his lips - one of the very, very few soft parts of him.
"Our life would be easier, Ere, easier if I could transcend, if I could be above my childishness, and my fear, and my constant desire," she said very softly, her voice heavy with shame.
"But," she said, taking a breath, "if that is not what you want, if that is going to hurt you even one moment more than I already have, then I will have done."
She had moved in closer to him as she spoke, and her thick, wild, dark hair growing, was already almost at her shoulders. Her body was mere inches from his, but she did not break eye contact. Her gaze was cemented to his, and her fingers were in his hair, rhythmically stroking it as she awaited his response.
"No," she said, and so he did not go. He let her hold to him, rather than simply disappear. But he wasn't there with her. Nyx's gaze held his eyes with hers, Nyx's hand touched his fingers, his face, the back of his neck, his hair, and he let her. But he was fragmenting inside, and he couldn't let her see, so he shut down. Just. Shut. Down.
Because it wasn't just sex that he was asking for. Had it ever been just anything between them? No. It was a joining he wanted from her, a reassurance that they still belonged to each other. A reminder that, despite everyone else, he was still her Ere, still her tricksey beast, and Erebos needed that. She was gone for mortal lives at a time, and he made it through because sometimes, sometimes, when they were all alone, he could sometimes touch her and be with her and know, know that she was his. He was hers. They were theirs.
She had never said 'no' before. She had never denied them. She had never refused them. She had never wanted to. And now she did, and she did, and she did.
The basic meaning of her words were communicated to him directly, even though he may not have caught all of the details. She thought she was ultimately doing this for them. She was doing it for herself, to try to understand herself. She felt like she didn't understand herself. She believed she was helping, and she wanted to do this. It was good for her. And she would stop, for him.
The perception was what mattered. She percieved that this was good for them. She perceived that this was good for her. She perceived that this was what was best for him. He couldn't. He couldn't.
And even if he could let her, the bitterness would be more than it was worth... bitterness on both sides. She'd be leaving something she wanted to do. He would have asked her to leave it. Both things were unacceptable.
Something flickered in his eyes. Though they seemed to grow glassier, awareness crept back those orbs of his. And then it hurt again, viciously, because now he could feel her hand against his hair, and he could smell that distinctive scent that always drifted off her form -- the scents of sky and hiacynths and rainstorms -- and she was there, just there, and unreachable.
It was as if they were at the edge of the world again, and she was asking him to stop following her around.
"Stay."
It was choked, that word, and it did not sound like Erebos when he said it. But it was all he could manage.
And then he did disappear, because he wasn't free to fall apart in front of her, not now, not with what she had decided. He forgot his corporeal body and dispersed into his element, forsaking the mortal flesh.
The feeling that filled her was more acute, more hot, more intense than anything that she had ever felt before. Every iota of sentiment that she had ever felt toward him, about him - love, desire, tenderness, frustration, anger, hate, pain, betrayal - everything - had focused into a pillar of white-hot, burning fury.
It was not like India - mute frustration at her own weakness, at the damage that she'd wrought. It was not like when he'd taken other lovers, where it was tempered by her own responsibility for the circumstances.
Oh, no.
The Christians would say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
And the feeling kept growing, burgeoning inside her chest, filling her physical body, and no amount of meditation could tamp it down. The nuns said to let it take you over, to let the negative emotions roll through you, and thus, they would lose their power.
Of course, none of the nuns were primordial goddesses.
She let the rage course through her body, and her robes burned up into flames. Her hair grew madly, swirling around her body, and her dark wings spread as her body flamed brighter than a star. Rising above the earth, higher, higher, up through the atmosphere, up to where there was only Darkness, she screamed, her voice echoing through everything, despite the oppressive silence of space.
HOW. DARE. YOU.
Everything. I have done EVERYTHING that I possibly can; I have forsaken power for this, I have forsaken luxury for this, I have forsaken life for this, I have forsaken all things I love for this, for YOU. I have left everything I know behind in the slim hope that I might be able to make you a better wife, in the slim hope that I might be able to spare you pain, in the slim hope that we could spend an eon out of our endless existances happy - happy! Without hurting each other, without jealousy or pain or anger!
And you turn your back on me? You walk away? You don't speak to me? You run and hide like a coward?
How. Dare. You.
Her eyes were blazing, looking into the infinite darkness as keenly as though she were looking into his own eyes.
If this is how important we are to you, if this is how much you respect our bond, our marriage, then I have nothing left to say to you. Stay here in your coward's Darkness, stay here without a body. Or go find a body and find some mortal cow-wife who can please you - because it is painfully clear that I will never be able to.
And with that, she nosedove toward the Earth, re-entering the atmosphere, shooting down below the surface, into the Underworld. Not to the home that they had shared; no, not there. She found some corner, some chamber of her own making to hide - a place with no Darkness, and no Light, where she truly was alone. And there, shuddering, she sank to the floor, her wings folding around her protectively, and violently wept.
But still, he returned to physical form. He followed her down. He entered that retreat of hers (for Night without Darkness was not a Night). He stood before her as she wept. Because she asked.
Nyxie didn't fall apart. She got angry sometimes, she wreaked beautiful havoc, she elegantly snarked, but she never broke down.
He had no words he could offer her, no words he could manage. It was all he could do to stand there, to be there with her, and know that either way she chose, it would be soured somehow.
Silent, then, he removed his shirt, lengthening it to a cloak length, and swished it over Nyx's shoulders so that those ruined robes could be replaced. Then he stepped back.
And she felt him - she felt him here, here where she had gone to hide, to lick her wounds, to be away from where anyone might see her in her ruined, pathetic state. She couldn't stop; the sobs were wracking her so violently that if she could have thought on it, she would have been sure that they would rend her in two. Nothing made sense, nothing fit, and she couldn't fathom why, if they had been made for each other, they couldn't simply make each other happy.
She had walked the earth for eons, and she had seen many, many couples, of all different paths and colors and places, and she knew that two people could be happy together, they could be with each other without ripping each other apart. What was inside of her for him, the connection they had, was so utterly pure, and yet it seemed to be the very thing that tore them apart - both from each other and individually.
He had covered her, spread his shirt over her wings, over her body, and he stood there, and it was many moments before she could look up at him, her face wet and blurry with tears. And he was still in pain, and he was here, and it broke her even more, because it meant that he had not given up, not yet, but that she was still breaking him.
"Why, Ere," she said, her voice still choked with tears. "Why, why can't we be together? Why can't we be happy? Why must one turn away from the other at the very moment when the hand should be accepted?"
He hated how the sight of Her tears would drop him to his knees. But they did. His face showed no expression -- it was cold stone, no hint of emotion one way or the other -- but his fingers were gentle under her eyes and across her cheeks. He wiped away those offending tears.
It would be inordinantly foolish if he let her back in, after this last blow. She would hurt him, she'd always hurt him, and she'd very nearly driven him completely over the edge, this time. He could be without Nyx. He could do his job, let her pull him across Her half of the world, constantly draw him across the sky and down into the mortal plane, and could still remain absent from her apart from her duties. It could be done. It was possible.
Damn him, but he was a fool.
He could do his job without interacting directly with Nyx. But the thought of losing Nyx, of walking away, was impossible. He just couldn't. Not permanently.
Centering himself, he opened his arms to the pain and to the betrayal and to the foolish hurtful actions and to the long stretches of time without her and to the future of watching her go with others because she could not be tied down. In short, he opened his arms to Nyx, drawing her slowly against his chest.
Even touching her was a torment. A sweet, horrible torment. He couldn't help it; he dropped his face into her hair and inhaled. Her scent burned his throat and his lungs and branded him from the inside. This was Nyx. This was pain.
She asked him a question, and he had no answers for her. All he could say was what he had always told her.
It wasn't conscious, she wasn't aware of it. They simply dissipated into the air, leaving her bare and naked. It never occurred to her to consider why this happened.
When she was with Him, she didn't need them.
What was left of the ruined robes disappeared as well, leaving only what he had given her, his shirt, which cloaked her frame.
He had taken her into his arms, and she was a trembling girl again, this goddess, this Night brought low by her Darkness. She closed her eyes as she felt him against her, as she breathed Him in. And control didn't matter anymore, and freedom didn't matter anymore, because she didn't want to be free of him anymore, she didn't want to be without him.
She didn't want him to let her go.
It had been so long - too long - since his arms had been around her, since she had felt him, truly felt him. She pulled away just enough, just enough to stay in his arms, and look into his face, into his fathomless, beautiful eyes, and she put her hands to his face, slipping them back, back, gripping his hair with her fingers. She didn't try to make him understand, she didn't try to explain herself. Her eyes looked straight into his and told him everything.
That was the moment before she kissed him.
It was hungry, and it was angry, and it was passionate and lustful and loving and she wanted, wanted, wanted. The cloak slipped off of her shoulders because she wanted it to, and her bareness was pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around him tightly as she kissed him harder, shifting her legs so that she was astride his thighs, tasting him, wanting him, giving herself wholly and completely to him for perhaps the first time since they had first done this, so, so long ago.
At least this time he had braced himself. She was the cruelest of goddesses, cutting with words, wounding with pride, and stabbing with her kisses, those sweet hungry needy kisses that others had emulated but only his Nyxie had mastered.
He wanted. He wanted so badly to give in and let this kiss, let this desire pave over the festering mass of what was once his heart. He wanted her so badly, he wanted to be inside her, and he wanted to be with her.
And he couldn't.
His hands were rough because he didn't have the inner reserve for the gentleness this task required. He wanted to be gentle, he wanted to be careful, but it just. was not. there.
The unfair thought that any man in his place would have sufficed passed through his head. He knew it wasn't true, but it was there, planted like an ancient tree after his lifetime of seeing her take her pleasure from those only too willing to share her bed. He thrust that thought out of his head at the same moment he thrust her away from his chest.
"You are not permitted," he said. His voice was gravel and steel, filtered through longing and anger and frustration. Still expressionless, he forced himself to continue. "And I cannot permit you, now."
Any union they could form would be tainted now, dirtied by the happenings between them. He stood quickly, before he stayed any longer.
"I came to you because you asked, but I did not come for this. Do what you must do, Nyx. Call for me when you have found what you were looking for in the human cult."
She had lain herself bare, literally and figuratively, and he had pushed her away.
There was only a moment when her eyes reflected her utter vulnerability, her sheer hurt, the true import of what he'd done.
From the first day, from the very First Day, she had submitted to him. She had given herself over, she had been in his thrall. And she had fought it, violently at times, less adamantly at others, but ultimately, she had always known that she was His.
And now... he had rejected her.
Slowly, she rose, picking up his shirt as she did. She handed it to him, standing naked before him. She met his gaze, her eyes shrouded before she was. Clothes, a traditional, Greek, midnight-colored, starry chiton swathed her form, and her hair bound itself into braids and curls - also traditional.
"It seems you haven't such a hard time letting me go as you thought," she said with the most even, cool, unreadable tone with which she had ever spoken.
He stared long, and hard, at his wife. They were both fools, then.
She commanded, and he obeyed; it had always been like this. He didn't bother with his shirt. He didn't bother with words that would not be heard. He simply bowed once, low, took a step back, and then turned.
His first step away had his form dissolving into tendrils of darkness that quickly writhed and twisted and floated upward and away. He would not take form again until she called him.
As the last of his consiousness filtered out of her haven, he realized that he would not see her again for a very long time. The darkness during this time was dark indeed. In the next years, a plague swept Europe, and Erebos was there, working in tandem, harboring the evil germ and letting it fester within his blanketing influence.
It was crushing her.
She looked at him, and she knew this pain could cease, for her at least. She knew that this rending, horrible tear in her heart, in her soul, in every fibre of her infinite being, could be worked through and disappear. She had learned to meditate and release it - and it would take years and years and years, but ultimately, this would not hurt the way it did right now. She would not feel rent from everything that mattered - she would be alone and at one with everything simultaneously.
But she was killing him.
How could she be killing him? She didn't understand. He wouldn't look at her, he wouldn't... and he was going to leave, and she didn't understand.
But she wouldn't let him leave.
She should let him go; she should continue on the path that she'd set, she should find the answer, the answer that was so, so very close. She was sure it wouldn't take much longer, she was sure that in a few more decades, she would be utterly transcendent.
But then it would be too late.
Right now, at this very moment, it might be too late.
"No."
The word was low, and definite, and a growl.
She didn't need to understand why this hurt him so much - the very knowledge that it did was enough, had to be enough. For no matter what, for whatever insane reason, he loved her more than he loved peace, more than he loved being without pain - to the very point that by taking herself away, even just for now, she was breaking him apart.
Again, she pulled him back; took his hand, placed herself in front of him. Her hands reached for his face, lifted it to look at her, to look into her eyes. Because he would understand. Before she would give him this, before she would stop this and go back to the way that things were, he would understand.
"Erebos," she said, very quietly, but very clearly. "I have done this for our sake, for your sake. I have done this to understand myself, to stop fearing my need for you, to stop fearing myself. I have done this to stop hurting you, because since the day I was brought into existance, I have been hurting you."
Her voice registered a tremor, but she continued.
"I don't want to hurt you," she said fiercely.
Gently, lovingly, most tenderly, her fingers now caressed the contours of his face, the planes of his cheeks. Her thumb skimmed over the softness of his lips - one of the very, very few soft parts of him.
"Our life would be easier, Ere, easier if I could transcend, if I could be above my childishness, and my fear, and my constant desire," she said very softly, her voice heavy with shame.
"But," she said, taking a breath, "if that is not what you want, if that is going to hurt you even one moment more than I already have, then I will have done."
She had moved in closer to him as she spoke, and her thick, wild, dark hair growing, was already almost at her shoulders. Her body was mere inches from his, but she did not break eye contact. Her gaze was cemented to his, and her fingers were in his hair, rhythmically stroking it as she awaited his response.
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Because it wasn't just sex that he was asking for. Had it ever been just anything between them? No. It was a joining he wanted from her, a reassurance that they still belonged to each other. A reminder that, despite everyone else, he was still her Ere, still her tricksey beast, and Erebos needed that. She was gone for mortal lives at a time, and he made it through because sometimes, sometimes, when they were all alone, he could sometimes touch her and be with her and know, know that she was his. He was hers. They were theirs.
She had never said 'no' before. She had never denied them. She had never refused them. She had never wanted to. And now she did, and she did, and she did.
The basic meaning of her words were communicated to him directly, even though he may not have caught all of the details. She thought she was ultimately doing this for them. She was doing it for herself, to try to understand herself. She felt like she didn't understand herself. She believed she was helping, and she wanted to do this. It was good for her. And she would stop, for him.
The perception was what mattered. She percieved that this was good for them. She perceived that this was good for her. She perceived that this was what was best for him. He couldn't. He couldn't.
And even if he could let her, the bitterness would be more than it was worth... bitterness on both sides. She'd be leaving something she wanted to do. He would have asked her to leave it. Both things were unacceptable.
Something flickered in his eyes. Though they seemed to grow glassier, awareness crept back those orbs of his. And then it hurt again, viciously, because now he could feel her hand against his hair, and he could smell that distinctive scent that always drifted off her form -- the scents of sky and hiacynths and rainstorms -- and she was there, just there, and unreachable.
It was as if they were at the edge of the world again, and she was asking him to stop following her around.
"Stay."
It was choked, that word, and it did not sound like Erebos when he said it. But it was all he could manage.
And then he did disappear, because he wasn't free to fall apart in front of her, not now, not with what she had decided. He forgot his corporeal body and dispersed into his element, forsaking the mortal flesh.
Darkness could not weep.
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He. Was. Gone.
The feeling that filled her was more acute, more hot, more intense than anything that she had ever felt before. Every iota of sentiment that she had ever felt toward him, about him - love, desire, tenderness, frustration, anger, hate, pain, betrayal - everything - had focused into a pillar of white-hot, burning fury.
It was not like India - mute frustration at her own weakness, at the damage that she'd wrought. It was not like when he'd taken other lovers, where it was tempered by her own responsibility for the circumstances.
Oh, no.
The Christians would say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
And the feeling kept growing, burgeoning inside her chest, filling her physical body, and no amount of meditation could tamp it down. The nuns said to let it take you over, to let the negative emotions roll through you, and thus, they would lose their power.
Of course, none of the nuns were primordial goddesses.
She let the rage course through her body, and her robes burned up into flames. Her hair grew madly, swirling around her body, and her dark wings spread as her body flamed brighter than a star. Rising above the earth, higher, higher, up through the atmosphere, up to where there was only Darkness, she screamed, her voice echoing through everything, despite the oppressive silence of space.
HOW. DARE. YOU.
Everything. I have done EVERYTHING that I possibly can; I have forsaken power for this, I have forsaken luxury for this, I have forsaken life for this, I have forsaken all things I love for this, for YOU. I have left everything I know behind in the slim hope that I might be able to make you a better wife, in the slim hope that I might be able to spare you pain, in the slim hope that we could spend an eon out of our endless existances happy - happy! Without hurting each other, without jealousy or pain or anger!
And you turn your back on me? You walk away? You don't speak to me? You run and hide like a coward?
How. Dare. You.
Her eyes were blazing, looking into the infinite darkness as keenly as though she were looking into his own eyes.
If this is how important we are to you, if this is how much you respect our bond, our marriage, then I have nothing left to say to you. Stay here in your coward's Darkness, stay here without a body. Or go find a body and find some mortal cow-wife who can please you - because it is painfully clear that I will never be able to.
And with that, she nosedove toward the Earth, re-entering the atmosphere, shooting down below the surface, into the Underworld. Not to the home that they had shared; no, not there. She found some corner, some chamber of her own making to hide - a place with no Darkness, and no Light, where she truly was alone. And there, shuddering, she sank to the floor, her wings folding around her protectively, and violently wept.
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But still, he returned to physical form. He followed her down. He entered that retreat of hers (for Night without Darkness was not a Night). He stood before her as she wept. Because she asked.
Nyxie didn't fall apart. She got angry sometimes, she wreaked beautiful havoc, she elegantly snarked, but she never broke down.
He had no words he could offer her, no words he could manage. It was all he could do to stand there, to be there with her, and know that either way she chose, it would be soured somehow.
Silent, then, he removed his shirt, lengthening it to a cloak length, and swished it over Nyx's shoulders so that those ruined robes could be replaced. Then he stepped back.
He wasn't sure what he was waiting for.
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She had walked the earth for eons, and she had seen many, many couples, of all different paths and colors and places, and she knew that two people could be happy together, they could be with each other without ripping each other apart. What was inside of her for him, the connection they had, was so utterly pure, and yet it seemed to be the very thing that tore them apart - both from each other and individually.
He had covered her, spread his shirt over her wings, over her body, and he stood there, and it was many moments before she could look up at him, her face wet and blurry with tears. And he was still in pain, and he was here, and it broke her even more, because it meant that he had not given up, not yet, but that she was still breaking him.
"Why, Ere," she said, her voice still choked with tears. "Why, why can't we be together? Why can't we be happy? Why must one turn away from the other at the very moment when the hand should be accepted?"
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It would be inordinantly foolish if he let her back in, after this last blow. She would hurt him, she'd always hurt him, and she'd very nearly driven him completely over the edge, this time. He could be without Nyx. He could do his job, let her pull him across Her half of the world, constantly draw him across the sky and down into the mortal plane, and could still remain absent from her apart from her duties. It could be done. It was possible.
Damn him, but he was a fool.
He could do his job without interacting directly with Nyx. But the thought of losing Nyx, of walking away, was impossible. He just couldn't. Not permanently.
Centering himself, he opened his arms to the pain and to the betrayal and to the foolish hurtful actions and to the long stretches of time without her and to the future of watching her go with others because she could not be tied down. In short, he opened his arms to Nyx, drawing her slowly against his chest.
Even touching her was a torment. A sweet, horrible torment. He couldn't help it; he dropped his face into her hair and inhaled. Her scent burned his throat and his lungs and branded him from the inside. This was Nyx. This was pain.
She asked him a question, and he had no answers for her. All he could say was what he had always told her.
"I could never let you go."
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It wasn't conscious, she wasn't aware of it. They simply dissipated into the air, leaving her bare and naked. It never occurred to her to consider why this happened.
When she was with Him, she didn't need them.
What was left of the ruined robes disappeared as well, leaving only what he had given her, his shirt, which cloaked her frame.
He had taken her into his arms, and she was a trembling girl again, this goddess, this Night brought low by her Darkness. She closed her eyes as she felt him against her, as she breathed Him in. And control didn't matter anymore, and freedom didn't matter anymore, because she didn't want to be free of him anymore, she didn't want to be without him.
She didn't want him to let her go.
It had been so long - too long - since his arms had been around her, since she had felt him, truly felt him. She pulled away just enough, just enough to stay in his arms, and look into his face, into his fathomless, beautiful eyes, and she put her hands to his face, slipping them back, back, gripping his hair with her fingers. She didn't try to make him understand, she didn't try to explain herself. Her eyes looked straight into his and told him everything.
That was the moment before she kissed him.
It was hungry, and it was angry, and it was passionate and lustful and loving and she wanted, wanted, wanted. The cloak slipped off of her shoulders because she wanted it to, and her bareness was pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around him tightly as she kissed him harder, shifting her legs so that she was astride his thighs, tasting him, wanting him, giving herself wholly and completely to him for perhaps the first time since they had first done this, so, so long ago.
His. His. His.
And only His.
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He wanted. He wanted so badly to give in and let this kiss, let this desire pave over the festering mass of what was once his heart. He wanted her so badly, he wanted to be inside her, and he wanted to be with her.
And he couldn't.
His hands were rough because he didn't have the inner reserve for the gentleness this task required. He wanted to be gentle, he wanted to be careful, but it just. was not. there.
The unfair thought that any man in his place would have sufficed passed through his head. He knew it wasn't true, but it was there, planted like an ancient tree after his lifetime of seeing her take her pleasure from those only too willing to share her bed. He thrust that thought out of his head at the same moment he thrust her away from his chest.
"You are not permitted," he said. His voice was gravel and steel, filtered through longing and anger and frustration. Still expressionless, he forced himself to continue. "And I cannot permit you, now."
Any union they could form would be tainted now, dirtied by the happenings between them. He stood quickly, before he stayed any longer.
"I came to you because you asked, but I did not come for this. Do what you must do, Nyx. Call for me when you have found what you were looking for in the human cult."
Reply
She had lain herself bare, literally and figuratively, and he had pushed her away.
There was only a moment when her eyes reflected her utter vulnerability, her sheer hurt, the true import of what he'd done.
From the first day, from the very First Day, she had submitted to him. She had given herself over, she had been in his thrall. And she had fought it, violently at times, less adamantly at others, but ultimately, she had always known that she was His.
And now... he had rejected her.
Slowly, she rose, picking up his shirt as she did. She handed it to him, standing naked before him. She met his gaze, her eyes shrouded before she was. Clothes, a traditional, Greek, midnight-colored, starry chiton swathed her form, and her hair bound itself into braids and curls - also traditional.
"It seems you haven't such a hard time letting me go as you thought," she said with the most even, cool, unreadable tone with which she had ever spoken.
"Leave me."
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She commanded, and he obeyed; it had always been like this. He didn't bother with his shirt. He didn't bother with words that would not be heard. He simply bowed once, low, took a step back, and then turned.
His first step away had his form dissolving into tendrils of darkness that quickly writhed and twisted and floated upward and away. He would not take form again until she called him.
As the last of his consiousness filtered out of her haven, he realized that he would not see her again for a very long time. The darkness during this time was dark indeed. In the next years, a plague swept Europe, and Erebos was there, working in tandem, harboring the evil germ and letting it fester within his blanketing influence.
It seemed right and just.
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