When confronted by an adversary, one generally goes into 'fight-flight-freeze'. That is, one will either display aggression, try and avoid the adversary, or try to remain still, hoping the same will go away. These are natural, and even gods react in such ways. For Solaris, however, the consistent words of Nihilo, Sala, and Noctifer weighed heavily on his mind. Had he tried to run away from himself, he’d be there, waiting. Had his aggression only increased, he feared that heaven might lack a solar deity. Had his stillness continued, it would’ve lost a deity anyway. He was stuck with these consistent thoughts and queries about his validity, his existence, and his self-assumed purity, and it was as though his endeavor to bring Noctifer back to heaven was just an illusory fix. The deity was immediately taken into the abode and locked in a room with Leah, but the sense of wholeness that gradually returned did not return to Solaris.
He was left with more questions than answers, and his whole being and raison d'être were on a shaky basis. His own identity became some malformed lump of consciousness that he couldn’t identify. Even if he looked in the mirror, he did not see himself. He sometimes wondered if these hands were really his, or if it was his skin that he was feeling. Sala had, twice, caught him scratching at the skin in an attempt to rip off the facade and had to have him confined to the bed chambers again. She was concerned that maybe Solaris was too far gone and that this entire fiasco of Noctifer had done nothing more than solidify what was already happening.
So, there sat Solaris in his bed. The blankets were sprawled lazily around his waist, and he could do nothing but stare into the pitch-dark corners of his room, or what would’ve been what he called the room of the 'real’ Solaris. His thoughts were plagued, and his very perception became a spiral into madness. What got him was the question of ‘why’.
The girl’s parents had every capacity to adopt another child or have their own. Why would they so easily give up their lives for her, and how would they be assured their sacrifice would not be in vain?
‘A reason to live is as good a reason to die,’ is what the hidden voice in Solaris’ mind would say, taking the words of Sala and echoing them back at him. He thought over it, the words piercing the skin of his head and biting down on his tongue. He thought of how Noctifer was willing to fight, and how he was willing to take in the girl without consideration. A raison d'être in an otherwise meaningless and entirely chaotic environment.
“Foolish,” he muttered to himself, mocking how humans will try to seek stability in a temporary environment. There was a reason he was not good at philosophy. In his attempts to be consistently logical, abiding by some objective rationale, he tried to forsake every aspect contrary. Yet, one can never escape thought. His mind briefly flashed to Noxifer, and the way that the deity had unconsciously latched onto him in the graveyard, seeking stability in an environment that was a reminder of the temporary nature of things. Yet that was not his raison d'être; there was no justification for life in a god who embodied all that he was not.
When he felt his arm around him, however, everything was fine...
There was no need for a justification of his existence, nor one of thought or reason. There was nothing within the confines of Noxifer’s arms, and that was enough for the god in that moment. It passed. Soon, Solaris was back in his room. The air felt no less cold than it had before, and whatever emptiness was left by Noctifer had only grown to consume more of his identity.
The gods had planned a feast, prompted by the Elder Deities and Dhena, who knew that this entire return to heaven would solve such issues of power and ‘validity’. It was tomorrow. Noctifer would be given a place at the table. He would be fed and given drink. Solaris had offered him a pair of gloves, but the deity casually refused and went back to playing with the girl who had taken to heaven almost seamlessly.
Frustrated, Solaris fell back down onto his bed and settled in for a night of staring at blankness.
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The feast was to be held in the afternoon, which gave Solaris time to do a variety of things. Most of all, he wanted to find a way to deal with the fatigue that had taken his body to the point where sounds were too loud, sights were too bright, and he could barely read the words that were on his paper. Noctifer was, despite being a taboo deity, a bit more accepted amongst the court and had taken to his affairs. It was odd seeing the god in a place that didn’t show chaos and informality. It was worse to see him cleanly shaven. Solaris felt a twinge of sadness at the sight of the god without his beard and scruffy hair.
Still, the god was not one for sitting in small, cramped rooms, so he took his work with him. He did, however, leave Leah in the ‘comfort’ of the abode, which meant that the attendants asked Solaris if he wouldn’t mind watching her because they wouldn’t know what to do with a human girl. Solaris obliged, brought the girl into his office, and told her every rule he could think of.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“And just don’t make too much noise,” he huffed, “please?”
Leah nodded and sat down near one of Solaris’ bookshelves, pulling a tome from it. It was one on philosophy and one that he wouldn’t care to police. If she wanted to read what would be identified as ‘the Sects of Alchemy and Their Treatises’, then he would not stop her. It didn’t take long for her to grow bored of it, which was something they had in common. Solaris couldn’t stand the book and was glad that someone else shared the same thoughts. Leah put down the book and began to wander around, eventually picking up speed as she played a game of hopscotch on the patterned rug.
The sound was beyond annoying, and every vibration only worsened the headache that was building. Still, better madness here than her doing something else, somewhere else. He kept his composure, biting down on his tongue and working through the papers until he heard a sudden drop. Looking up, Leah had fallen and was holding her elbow.
Despite himself, Solaris rose from his desk and ran to her side. His hands immediately went to her elbow, gently trying to pry Leah’s hands from what she was covering.
“Abba,” whimpered Leah as she looked to the door. Solaris, still working on unwinding her hands, nodded slowly to himself.
“I’m here,” he said subconsciously. He didn’t think over the words he had just said but only realized it when Leah looked at him with a cautious smile.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Solaris tried to add, but there was something undeniably warm about the interaction. There was a strange sense of connection, a raison d'être, a justification for the being of something or another thing. He realized why humans drew such pleasure from these temporal connections.
He pulled the girl’s hand from her elbow and saw that there was only a small scrape. Relieved, and disconcerted that he was relieved, he worked to try and soothe the pain and rid the main bits of damage, but there was little that could be done with little. He wanted to berate Leah for being dramatic over what would be considered a ‘nick’ but he didn’t have it in him. His fatigue and Leah’s disposition were enough to disarm him. He tried to lift her awkwardly, but the pain in his body and his notably smaller frame made it difficult to support her in a way that was comfortable for the both of them.
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Noctifer avoided the attendants but was still constantly under the eyes of Sala, who still kept up with him.
“Are you really going to follow me everywhere?”
“Where did you go?”
“A temple.”
“Alright, now can you come down from the tree?”
Sighing, Noctifer slunk down from the pomegranate tree and landed on the floor next to Sala. He closed the book he was reading and tucked it away in his robe.
“I know this entire thing isn’t ideal, but it's best to give Solaris some sense of peace until Heaven returns to normal, no?”
“I suppose, but I’m used to being with my devotees. Some things don’t fade too easily.”
“I understand, especially with them being in the slums.”
“Especially with them being in the slums.”
A silence fell over the two deities, one filled with a mutual mournful longing. In thought, Noctifer finally decided to break it:
“He hasn’t recovered.”
“Sometimes,” Sala began, uncertain of her next words, “wholeness is not given but discovered, even earned. None of us can bestow contentment.”
“He hugged me, you know?”
“Where?”
“When we were in the grave, I came back and saw him in tears and hysterics, it was the first time in a long time that he hugged me.”
“Do you know why he was in hysterics?”
“I don’t know anything about him anymore,” Noctifer admitted, leaning against the tree. “He’s different from who he was before, and who he was when he was created. He’s something similar and different at the same time.”
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Leah had been taken for a nap, and that left Solaris in his study. The light wasn’t shining as it did before, and his office was now gloomily silent. Leah’s choice of reading was still on the floor next to the shelf. It annoyed him, but he could not hold it against the girl as much as he wanted to. As much as he wanted to berate her for existing, there was something that she stirred in him that made him feel less inclined to such action. Standing, he walked to replace the book.
If anything, he liked the diagrams more. Some texts of an esoteric nature spoke purely in diagrams and allegories. Where Solaris failed to understand the language, he could understand the image perfectly. Opening the book, he trailed his fingers over the same inkblot-messes of literature before turning his eyes over to their accompanying diagrams. It left him dumbfounded at how a concept that would be so horribly misconstrued in language could be easily explained in a circle with lines and letters. He wondered if anyone ever thought of just teaching through pictures, maybe he wouldn’t find debate so boring.
“The state of Putrefactio is the Tomb, in which Psychopompos raises the Essence of Self from the Decomposing Material. This Shadow-Form, what one may call 'spirit' elevates the antimony to what we may call Phosphoros, or ‘the Bringer of Light’.”
His eyes narrowed at the diagram, which featured a Venn diagram with alchemical glyphs, but one particularly interesting image was under it. It was a woodcut of two figures, both reflections of each other but with small differences. One was the embodiment of all the other was not, just as the latter was the opposition of the former. Around them were more alchemical signs that featured their duality, but their union was noted by a single glyph, which was called ‘Monad’, and was that of a circle with a dot within it. It was a symbol well-known by most alchemists, philosophers, and, as Solaris would say, even the gods.
“Nihilo,” Solaris muttered, tracing the hazy figure in the woodcut, the one contrary to the embodiment of consciousness and light. As said, Solaris never considered himself a philosopher. It was too ‘wishy-washy’ for him, yet he could not deny the synchronicity that had occurred and did not stop himself from thinking over it again and again until the party.