They called me a monster. Their children screamed when my name was mentioned. Their stylized images that were but vaguely based upon my appearance were frequently waved about as indications of evil. Indeed, one place made viewing my erstaz icons a part of the punishment and torture regime they practiced.
Did I deserve this spewing of vitrol? I don't think so. I only did what was necessary for the continuance of their ... species. They were on the road to utter ruin. They lifted their hands to the skies and begged their cold, distant god for deliverance from the horrors they had created. I came to them. When I walked through their number, they did not know me. They merely thought me odd, perhaps even quaint. Some, however, did recognize that I was far older than they. Those who did so could have been divided into two camps.
One camp was filled with fear of me that reached towards some measure of holy awe. The other regarded me with fascination. Fascination is not always safe. Still, I suppose the ones who gazed on me in fascination rather than terror were perhaps the ones who were always going to be the harbingers of change. I almost pity them for their ill fate.
Let no one tell you otherwise, for it was truly fate. I may be ancient. But not even myself or my elders, or the gods in their high halls, can evade fate. It is a perverse humor that guides such things. The mad weaver throws her shuttle. The drunken spider spins her webs. And I, I walk along them with something like chaos in my wake.
They had become stagnant. They had become calcified in their destructive behaviors and their work to rend the world until it fit their strange vision of order. I had no choice but to come. I was called to them by it. That hard, brittle crystalline structure of a world they had fashioned needed to be broken. It was something that had to happen so that life may progress.
Thus, I took them into my hands. I did not snap them like twigs. Not immediately. I started with a subtle shift, a few bends and twist to it all. When things started to come apart and entropy enter into the system, they blamed the unfortunates and the people whom they hated that week. Those who saw me, they spread word that I had come as the hand of judgment or as their liberator. One camp turned into penitent ascetics who cursed the world around them with one hand even as they plucked the fruits of its labor with the other. The other camp turned into wild revels and hedonists. Some did so with merry abandon and insisting that the essence of life was vivid experience. Others did so with the keen awareness that they were witnessing the beginning of the end of all things.
I had no joy in my doing. It was work. It was work that I was fated for and hated for regardless of the necessity that drove me to it.
Still, I did the deeds required of me. I broke the fetters and bonds. I crumbled the walls and loosed raging rivers o'er the fields of squalor. In the end, they started to see me as I moved among them. Not the ones of insight, but the most mundane of them. They looked on in horror. Some tried to rise against me and strike blows to push me away. They fell as grass before the scythe. They always have and always shall.
Now? Now I rest. My work is, for a time, done. All about me lays ashes and ruin. I did not want to bring it to them. They were so beautiful in their cleverness. Charming children who had such great potential. But, they created for themselves a trap. They cried for freedom. Thus, I came and rescued them. I do not think they wanted me to liberate them. Not how I did, but to have it in some fashion where they had the comforts of their creation and the freedom as well. Silly children, I mourn your foolishness.
Who among you stands now, wise? You are scattered about the world. You have reached the stars. On other worlds, I have yet to go and do my work. But, you do not listen to your breathren when they warn you of the necessity of wild things and open spaces. That is alright, though, I shall come and teach you. I shall come and break your chains and free you.
But now, let me abide in the silence. Midgard has been abandoned. Let me sit in the silence, reaching into the earth to feel the sleeping seeds. Yggdrasil shall put forth new leaves soon. Perhaps I shall sleep in the shade of those green branches and watch the deer walk along them in search of tender leaves.
(This is what happens when a certain red headed deity says 'let's write a story.' Sorry this is a little late.)
1 comment:
It's amazing how detailed this is, like you're getting inside His mind, or He's channeling through you. It reminds me of the time Loki told me above all other things, he is cunning.
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