HE FELT HER AS A PERSISTENT, humming vibration in the air, a frequency that grated against his nerves like a dull blade scraping a whetstone. She was an annoyance, a shimmering, silver-tongued distraction that refused to simply vanish into the night. As she strolled beside him, her presence was a constant, fragrant pressure, the scent of ozone and ancient starlight, that tried to fill every gap in the silence he so dearly cherished. Every time she spoke, it wasn't just sound; it was a ripple in the fabric of the world, a reminder that she was a being of immense power who was currently choosing to play the part of a curious housecat. He hated how effortless she made it look, the way she glided across the silvered earth without so much as bending a single blade of grass, while he had to put in the honest work of chewing and swallowing.
“Worthless and annoying, who is the real ass here? Hm? Not getting your way, you want me to awe at you, no thanks, you're not impressive at all.”
He didn’t know what she wanted from him, and frankly, he didn’t care to deduce it. To an entity like Selene, existence was likely a series of puzzles to be solved or games to be played, but to him, the puzzle had already been solved: the answer was grass. Being A Human Had Been An Exhausting Cycle Of Endless Fighting, A Relentless Climb Toward A Peak That Offered Nothing But A Colder Wind And More Challengers. He had spent a lifetime as a sword, a living weapon that people either feared or worshipped, but never simply liked. The weight of the Heavenly Sword had been a burden of a different kind, a spiritual gravity that pulled every eye in the room toward him, demanding that he be the strongest, the fastest, the most lethal.
BEING A DONKEY, HOWEVER, WAS A REVELATION IN SIMPLICITY.
As a beast of burden, he had discovered the exquisite luxury of invisibility. He could walk the length of the continent without a single soul demanding a duel or a blessing. He could drink from the crystal veins of hidden rivers and graze upon the most secluded slopes of the world, and the only thing anyone ever wanted from him was for him to pull a cart slightly faster. He was nothing, a gray, unremarkable creature of coarse hair and long ears, and he loved that nothingness with a passion that would have baffled the man he used to be. Peace wasn't the absence of noise; it was the absence of expectation.
“This clover is hard to get too, I would have taken, ugh effort to get here, so yes, you have my thanks, and having sat on me, your entertainment is filled, right, so leave.”
He pondered the cosmic cruelty of his condition and decided that, all things considered, HE HAD ACTUALLY WON THE LOTTERY. Had the curse been less imaginative, he might have woken up as a dog, and the thought of having an owner, of some pampered noble scratching behind his ears in exchange for a few tricks, made his stomach churn with a phantom nausea. A horse would have been a mistake; horses were far too valuable, their lives measured in the quality of their stride and the depth of their lungs, forever tethered to the whims of a rider. A cow was worse, a mere vessel for milk, a creature defined by its utility to a bucket. Even a chicken, a twitchy, feathered thing existing only to produce eggs and be eaten, seemed a plausible tragedy. He had briefly entertained the irony of becoming a dragon, a creature of gold and fire, but that would have just been more of the same: more hoard, more pride, more people trying to kill him for his scales.
NO, BEING A DONKEY WAS THE GOLD STANDARD OF CURSES. It was the perfect middle ground of the animal kingdom: sturdy enough to survive anything, unremarkable enough to be ignored, and just stubborn enough to be left alone. He had spent his human life as the ultimate jackass, a man who looked at the world’s most powerful figures and saw only obstacles or inconveniences. It was only fitting that the universe had finally given him a physical form that matched his personality. This humble, simple life, devoid of the suffocating weight of the "Sword Saint" title, was the first time he had ever felt truly honest. He didn't need a blade to be strong; he just needed a good patch of clover and the ability to tell a goddess to fuck off.
“I wanted to get here; you were a free ride.”
He let out a yawn that was less a breath and more a full-body event, his jaw stretching wide enough to reveal a row of sturdy, grinding teeth and a tongue that seemed far too large for his mouth. It was a slow, luxurious release of boredom, the kind of yawn that usually signaled the end of a very long day of doing absolutely nothing. As his jaw finally snapped shut with a wet, satisfied click, he tilted his head back to look at her.
“Listen, I know how this goes, if you want to kill me, go for it, you can do as you wish, but you will be disappointed, I am not as weak as I appear, you won’t be able to hurt me, so the bets thing is, for you to fuck off, I have nothing to offer you, your boring me, and I have had my fill here, time to find somewhere else that is meant to hold good ground to find.”
germansingergirl
stormborns
2087
gracieabrams
snowghoul
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
