A birthday gift
Belle picks her way along a narrow deer path, deeper into the steppe forest near Bayt than she usually goes - she'd found this place months ago, on an early morning run she'd taken while Tolya was busy, and it called to her. The flat circle of wildflower-laden clearing surrounded by enormous trees, the way the sunlight seemed to glitter as it passed through leaves and scattered across the ground in dancing spots. When you can feel the future, there are certain new places that feel unmistakably familiar, and in this case there had been an overwhelming feeling of reverence and importance that she only associates with one person.
Her bare feet sink into the soft grass as she crosses to the center of the circle, where a little stone building stands. It's not grand, but it is beautiful. Pietra gray marble - more black than gray - is webbed through with streaks of white veins and carved into intricate patterns that only take shape if you get close enough. Geometries from their home, thick lines woven throughout the outer and inner walls that almost beg for a vine to nestle into it. When they do, it will form an elaborate latticework that highlights the scenes hidden within it. Images of growth, of decay and death and creation and the threads woven between them. She gave most of the art direction, did most of the carving, but she happily let the others add symbols that felt meaningful to them and tied to the not-god that they cherished (and worshipped) just the same as a provider of food, of shade, of protection.
Inside there's enough room for an ornate little altar carved out from the walls as if hewn from one solid block, and a bench to sit at. It would feel almost cave-like if you were to sit inside, surrounded on three sides by stone with the forest at your back. Inside the mass of carvings continue, only visible right now by touch alone. The idea is for them to use their bioluminescence to light it, the way they lit the little temple they made for her. Her throat closes and her eyes water at the memory, at the idea of them having this place in parallel to hers. Somewhere that's not just of them but for them, something with a permanence that can not be taken or sullied.
Laid out along the back shelf of the altar are little trinkets and paper flowers, dried meats and cheeses, threads for embroidery, bones of various animals, pressed flowers, fresh vegetables. Offerings from their people.
She smiles over at Senechal, who is doing the last of the polishing they'd insisted on. They look nervous, and she acknowledges the nervous perfectionism with a brief and gentle squeeze of their hand. Signing, she asks them if they've been here alone all day.
"Just the past couple of hours. I had to send Metis back because they were driving me to madness," the tall, timid record-keeper signs back with a lopsided and fond smile. They look tired, and she makes a mental note to check in with Aron that they're not being asked to do too much around the temple. Senechal remains her friend even moreso than the others, not treating her any differently than they do anyone else - although she can feel their devotion when they pray to her, when they begin a new painting or destroy an old one to be reused. They go back and forth as friends do for a few precious minutes more. The residents at Bayt have been traveling here from the temple to help carve or sand or place offerings, word spreading after she initially asked for Senechal and Metis' help, their backgrounds in carving and love for Tolya instrumental in getting this done on time for their birthday.
And done it is, a little temple waiting for its keeper. God patron or not, a place for people to come and celebrate them, pray to them. For her to.
Senechal leaves her with the building and a blessing of luck, disappearing into the path back home. Alone, the goddess runs her fingers across all of the lines of the smoothly-carved stone, remembers each chip and grain that was knocked away so that this can exist. Remembers, in a way, things that haven't happened yet - animals coming here to die and rot into the earth to provide nutrients to their soil, travelers stumbling upon it in a storm and taking grateful shelter, generations of their followers taking a seat among their branches and reaching for the gentle acceptance of death and what it means to give back to the earth and grow into something new. The setting sun casts a warm glow onto the clearing, and inside the temple to her beloved Garden, her skin alights to drive away the darkness.
It's a strange thing for her to reach for worship from this end. Not difficult, though, not when it comes to them. It's like breathing, to sink into the veneration she feels whenever she thinks about them, to grasp that and mold it into a single-focused passion. Where theirs is a raging fire that feels all-consuming, the way she worships seems to pull inward, drawing the very idea of them into herself until they fill in every cell. Every thought, every movement, every breath, all of it so deeply for them because they're everything, everything that she is theirs, theirs, theirs.
The light coming from her pulses with a steady heartbeat, casting warping shadows on the carved walls and altar as the sun sets behind her and adds its own warm luminance. It spills out with blinding brightness when she slices into each forearm with her own sharpened teeth. Gold bleeds from one, black from the other, and she holds them above the center of the altar. The bloods mix into a liquid that looks like a star-filled night sky as it moves and spreads through the crevices, ignoring physics and gravity in order to fill in every empty space in the carvings within the altar. Then it travels further into the surrounding walls, until the inside and outside of their temple are covered in writhing, living ichor. As she gives her blood to this, to them, she bestows her own magic on it. No destruction will touch this place, it will stand here for as long as they want it to, outlasting civilizations and wars and the changing landscape itself. People hundreds and thousands of years from now will find it and know that the patron of this place is loving, and loved. So, so loved. Every bit of her that loves them, and it is all of her, imprints that feeling onto this place until she knows that it is so baked into every grain of dirt, every blade of grass, every speck of stone in this place that it will be unmistakable.
The ichor sinks into the solid stone like a sponge, embedding in it so that the black of the rock glitters with twinkling stars between where their vines will weave. Now, it's ready to show them. The blood stops flowing but before her wrists can close she reaches into the gap in her left arm, pressing her fingers deep into the torn black flesh until she touches something that is unmistakably their plant among the viscera. The pain is immense, her left arm still so much more sensitive than she's used to and twitching violently with the effort, but she smiles serenely even as her breath comes shaky and fast. Not a lot of room to maneuver in there, but she strokes one of the roots winding through the limb, the gift that's allowed her to use her hand again. Saying hello.
Then she tugs on the less tangible tether between them, at the same time that she hooks a finger under the vine and pulls. It doesn't come free easily - they want to stay inside her as much as she wants them there - but she continues to pull with surprising strength until one end of it comes free of her forearm with a snap and sharp gasp and a breathy giggle. They don't have plants out here, not yet, and of course they could travel underground from Bayt, but why should they need to when she carries them with her? Her dead hand hangs grotesquely at an angle, cut off from its supporting structure that writhes broken on one end in the fist of her other hand and disappears into the exposed gore of her forearm at the other, still connected to the rest of them that lives inside her. Despite the pain, she's only filled with giddy elation and excitement, them them them them them. And as she sinks to the ground in front of the altar and holds their root out to the soil, she calls them to her. Dig in, come here, come here, come see your birthday gift.
