Look, I’ve lived a good chunk of my childhood in a halfway abandoned mountain village in the middle of nowhere. Which meant wildlife galore whether you liked it or not.
And that meant sometimes we saw a deer in the middle of the road at midnight and the majestic motherfucker just stared us down until my mom shredded our tires to stop from hitting him. Once we stopped he did a little half-bow as if saying ‘You have not committed an act of godslayer this night. Your bloodline shall bear no curse of mine’, and walked away chill as you please.
The next day a neighbor told us a deer with fucking big antlers got tangled in his fence because it was trying to steal his grapes.
I went on a hike with another neighbor to collect yarrow for tea. A bear came out of the woods towards us, went on its hind legs and inquiringly roared. And he pushed me, tiny as I was back then, behind me out of sight and spread his jacket wide to make himself seem bigger than he already was. He let out a sound I had not known humans were capable of making. He and the bear looked at each other for a moment, and came to an understanding. The bear went down and walked away, respecting a powerful opponent protecting its young.
A week ago, there had been a bear that completely tore apart our trashcan and gorged itself on half-fermented apples we threw away. My cousin had to chase it away, drunk out of its tiny fucking mind, with an umbrella that made weird noises when opened. The bear ran for its life, crashed into our wall, fell on its ass, and scampered away.
I was playing on a swing once, all alone, and a fox came up to me, the most beautiful animal I had seen in my ten years of life. Thinking it wanted to pass, I stopped swinging and sat still not to spook it. But instead of passing, the fox circled the swing, found it wanting, and came to sit before me perfectly poised and looked me in the eye, and I could swear it wished to tell me something but I could not understand the language spoken before human time.
Then my mom came out of the nearby inn, shrieked at the fox and swung her purse to chase it away. The fox jumped, ran off and fell into a ditch, all notions of grace gone with the wind.
What I’m saying is: the old gods are absolutely idiot animals who embraced the life of constant sex and hedonism in return for losing their higher power. Whether or not they regret it, we’ll never know.
