Still
Thorael, the God of Death.
He lies in the cavern.
Ready to give birth to his second son.
The divine membrane seeps from the floor
originating from nowhere, called by his presence.
Encasing him, cradling him.
He is naked
and he was lost.
His eyes, open yet closed, empty but full
stare into the semi-darkness.
Lit by algae, luminescent mushrooms, sparkling dimly off of the slime around his eyes.
He has always had flashbacks.
He can always see again, when he closes his eyes.
His boy. Both of them. Living, and not yet alive, living only in his mind.
And he drafts,
and wills every cell in his body to work.
The slimy, clear liquid rises, keeping him safe,
dead to the world that he serves, and always will serve.
Their loyal knight. The last line. The ferryman.
He slouches, shielded, over the floor of the cave
and balls his fist, pushing against nothing.
And feels, forming,
the first clump of cells. He imbues each one, one by one,
with the divine gift and curse of mastery over death.
Once freed from the membrane,
this will be his son,
eventually.
He drops it, with fatherly gentleness,
tenderness,
into the centre of the cavern.
It is now almost full with the mysterious, slimy, viscous substance, necessary for creating divinity.
He shapes the next divine clump of skin.
He sculpts them into the shapes he sees in his dreams.
He can see those golden eyes.
It has been three weeks.
Suspended animation, eyes open,
covered in the dense, suffocating liquid.
Still encased, cradled by it,
now the tendrils are simply an extension of himself.
The wetness permeates his body. He is nothing but liquid.
And he is almost complete. If this works.
He can hear only wetness, squelches, and his own, laboured, gurgling breath
and the distant hum of the river that runs through here. Real water.
And Thorael continues,
vision perfect, yet blurred.
He rises, as he always does.
Or does the liquid raise him up?
Regardless, he rises from the bottom of the chamber.
And it lifts him to the top.
To the centre of this claustrophobic and flooded,
yet, divine, cavern.
And he sees his son. Perfect, as he’d always imagined.
Imbued with every little cell, every specific gene.
Everything he wanted. Everything he needed.
Thorael falls, the liquid bending and moving at his body’s slightest shift.
He dives down, watching his son in utero.
And he runs a hand across the slimy membrane.
And he smiles, and he thinks.
This could work.
His son’s unborn face lit by the light blue greens of the luminescent fungi and the algae.
Expressionless. Not alive, not yet.
Thorael looked upon his near complete work,
his face already saturated from the membrane’s embrace.
But growing wetter with tears,
sadness, love, regret.
Erakath had never been this beautiful.
They say when you have a kid, you grow to love them immediately.
Though, this hadn’t happened with Erakath,
but now, and Tallus not even born, not yet even touched by the spark of life,
Thorael understood.
Rushedly now, Thorael generates another cluster of cells
and rubs them across his son’s torso.
Just a tiny bit more.
Even out the chest area.
Yes, he thinks;
even, satisfactory,
beautiful. And in record time. Three weeks.
He thinks, despite how egotistical this might be,
maybe I was right.
And he rubs and he rubs
the last few clusters of cells, born from his hand,
across the body of his new son.
Evening him out,
a perfectionist, always.
“Give him life”,
Thorael speaks, willing the protection away.
And he holds his son,
Tallus, meaning lifeline.
His limp head laying on his hand,
and Thorael’s body,
slouched,
encased in the membrane, still, for only a few more moments.
This cocoon dissolves away,
slowly but surely sliding into the nothingness.
Into the void, into the previous life.
Back into the darkness of the cave.
It drains into the cracks,
into the unexplored shadows of the chamber,
into the endless abyss underneath.
The light in the cave dims
with no liquid to reflect off.
And it takes only a minute,
(when it should take hours)
as Thorael banishes the ritual.
Hastening it tenfold
to save more from unjust death.
And now, he thinks,
I can pass on the torch.
I can pass on the candle to my son.
He gazes into Tallus’s eyes,
waiting for the spark of life to flicker within them,
(the spark that should be triggered by the safety of the holy membrane having left him
and the first breath of fresh air to enter his divine lungs.)
He stares into the screens that are his son’s eyes,
and waits
and waits
and waits
and waits
and waits.