“You seem weary, little Adonis,” probed Sala as she offered another robe for Solaris to put on. He had gone through three assortments, and could not find a single bit of cloth that suited his taste.
‘Why don’t any of these colours fit,’ Solaris thought, trying to pick at the threads of this stress. He hated it. He hated how it felt as though the mirror reflection was mocking him like one mocks a cat with a thread. It was as though everything was urging him to scream. Sala folded the fabric gently, pinning it around Solaris’ shoulders.
“There must be a reason why you are weary, nothing is without reason,” continued Sala as she gathered some of the fabric to Solaris’ side, covering up the skin that has showing.
“Bebeloi is coming,” admitted Solaris, slumping onto his bed. He pressed his hands under his chin, still pensive from this morning’s argument with the sage. He couldn’t shake off this sensation of some imminent evil.
“You worry about the Young Gods?”
“I worry that he will pull a stunt, that he’ll throw a dent in all my work,” Solaris fell back against his bed. Sala looked over Solaris, the tired and distant god. It was a far cry from what she once knew as Solaris but things change. Chuckling to herself, she patted his thigh with a maternal grace before saying:
“What we consider a good reason for life, may well be a good reason for our death.”
Solaris stiffened at the mention of death, clambering to a sitting position but he could barely get a word in. Sala was already out of the room and wandering down the hall.
‘Death?’
The word threw itself against the edges of Solaris’ skull and it was bound to give him a headache if he didn’t stop entertaining it. He got up quickly, rushing down to the kitchens to distract himself with what he considered to be a sense of control.
—-
The festival began soon after moonrise. The gods gathered in the courtyard of the Abode of the Sun, bearing gifts and empty stomachs. Solaris, maintaining the Laws, greeted each one with a smile and a bow. He accepted the gifts with dignified grace and made sure to offer them wine and food freely. It wasn’t the main meal, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t distract them with the platters of quick servings.
He dawdled behind his table, chewing at his nails with fervency. The gods had provided gifts and they seemed well until Zaeal, the Goddess of War, brought a spear. It now stood on the table, glaring at him. He couldn’t help but think it to be an omen of coming wartime. He also thought it to be a jab at his decision to support the king from the morning. He huffed when he accidentally bit down on the bed of the nail.
It seemed as though he wasn’t the only one in anxious spirits. His sage was sitting in the corner of the hall with an apprehensive knot to his brow. He kept to himself, but whenever a sound echoed, he would look to the door immediately. Only Solaris, the sage, Sala and Caelis knew of the impending arrival of Bebeloi and that was what made him worried. The faces of other gods, especially the Young Gods, were merry and ecstatic. It felt as though the presence of Noctifer would bring such a heavy cloud upon the air that he wouldn’t be able to lift it himself.
Moving from his nails, for their sake, he began to twirl the snake bracelet around his wrist. He ran his thumb along the repeating patterns of the scales, drawing pleasure from the texture. That, too, lost its appeal and Solaris was back to the need to chew on his nails. He busied himself by tapping on the table, while the other gods seemed oblivious to his turmoil. With a sigh, he stood up from his seat and hurried down the halls to see the state of dinner.
‘The sooner,’ he thought, ‘ the better.’
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Caelis was the first one to enter. She stepped in with her right foot, nearly slapping Noctifer when he was about to do so with his left. He corrected himself, following her lead and entering on his right foot. They weren’t immediately noticed by the other gods, but Noctifer was anything but invisible. It only took a minute before they noticed the hulking, lanky specimen of a god lurking in their midst. The whispering soon followed, and the gods seemed to shy away from him and Caelis as they passed. Caelis didn’t bother trying to correct the behaviour of ‘superstitious children’, as she cursed them, but continued forward into the hall.
Noctifer didn’t bother looking around him, worried that he might cause a panic of some sort. So he kept his eyes between either the floor, or the roof above him. He enjoyed the roof more. It had a fresco with a very well-rounded pattern which reminded him of Solaris’ constant need for perfection, even in his aesthetics. It was very rare to see the god actually use squares because he said that craftsmen would always mess up the dimensions. He enjoyed circles more, and that carried over into every facet of his life. Noctifer gazed up at the repeating patterns, the laurels and flowers which came together in the abstract sun disk at the center. He didn’t notice the sage before him, and only looked down when Caeli nudged his side with her elbow.
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“You have caused a stir, Old Master,” huffed the sage quietly. Caelis looked tense again, staring at the man as though she was willing to fight him. Noctifer wrapped his fingers around the back of her dress and tugged warningly.
“I apologise,” Noctifer said, setting the man at ease with that characteristic voice.
“I did not say it was a bad thing, Old Master,” added the sage, looking around the room. “It may just be that others are not as accepting as some of the Old Gods.”
“That is a given, sage,” Noctifer smiled awkwardly. The sage seemed to appreciate his efforts, and nodded cheerfully before leaving. Caelis looked up at Noctifer with a curious crook to her brow before moving with him to the table in the corner. She snatched two glasses of wine and held one out to Noctifer.
“I can barely get through one hour without drink,I don’t think you should go without for an entire evening,” she joked. Noctifer crooked his lip in an attempt to smile. He accepted the cup from her but settled on taking small sips throughout the evening. Caeli, on the other hand, tilted it back and chugged down the entire cup. She grunted quietly to herself, swirling the remnants.
“Another reason why humans know what they’re doing,” she said, raising the cup accusingly. She had always been one for drinking, she found it to be a hilarious experience. People never suspect her of being a deity, and so she would drink them under the table in some strange mythological premise. She looked to the side of Noctifer and frowned, putting down the cup and picking up another.
Noctifer took that as his cue, turning around to see the red-haired solar deity walking into the hall. He was fiddling with his hands, again. Noctifer had once covered the deity’s nails with a bitter juice in hopes of getting him to stop biting them, but it seemed to only worsen over time. Noctifer didn’t exactly think that his absence would’ve stopped the deity’s habit any more.
He turned back to his cup, following Caeli’s lead and chugging the entire cup down. It was going to be a long and arduous evening, and he couldn’t look at the roof forever.
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Solaris sat at his table, trying to measure his breath but the fact that Noctifer was just on the other side of the room was rubbing him up in all the wrong ways. He rubbed his jaw when it suddenly stung with cramps, having been working on grinding his teeth for the past quarter-hour. The gods themselves didn’t take to Noctifer’s presence any better. They kept to themselves and spoke in hushed whispers, some even looking over at Solaris.
‘What I expected,’ he cursed himself for being so stupid as to allow Caeli to even come. Sala was nowhere to be seen, nor was his sage. At this point, he wanted to skip the festivities, feed the gods and then kick them all out so he could have his home back. He gestured a servant over, taking a cup of wine from them and sipping it quietly. He couldn’t stop glaring at the dark-haired deity over the rim. Each sip of the wine grew bitter with the vitriol burning inside him.
‘Did you even notice me? I allow you into my house and you don’t even have the respect to greet me,’ Solaris groaned internally, rubbing his temples. His fingers felt more sensitive now. Everything had begun to conspire against him and he took another deeper sip of the cup.
“There is not enough wine in all the Three Worlds to wash me clean of this travesty,” he muttered to himself. Eventually, the night moved into the dancers, which were a welcome reprieve. The choreography was set up by Sala herself, to match the fresco he had commissioned above them. He found himself entranced by the twirling of the dancers. It wasn’t long until he forgot the troubles with the literal embodiment of the evening right down on the other side of the table. Yet, it ended all too soon and he was snapped back to reality. The servants began to bring out the food, and his fate was sealed. He couldn’t run mid-dinner, nor could he berate the deity and banish him from his home. The two were stuck in a battle of will, it seems.
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Noctifer sat down quietly next to Caeli who was still sipping at her glass of wine. She was noticeably frustrated, eventually staring down another god who had whispered something about ‘adversary’. What had made her mood considerably worse was the way the servants actively avoided Noctifer. She had tried to speak up, but he kept her quiet and when she tried to offer him her food.
“The Laws say that I shall not be a troublesome guest,” he whispered in her ear.
“The Laws can go stuff themselves when the host isn’t doing his job,” she snapped back. She realized that she snapped at Noctifer, and sighed an apology. She picked up her cup to sip at it but had it snatched from her hands when she was about to go to her third sip of the wine. She looked at Noctifer who held the cup in his hand with a smile tugging at his lips.
“You can’t deny that you’re sitting here, while the other gods are stuffing their faces, with nothing to eat. Please, at least take a potato?
“I’ll be fine, Caeli. It’s not my first time.”
She crooked her eyebrow at him, but ate regardless. She tried to ignore the feeling of guilt building in her stomach. One of the gods, a drunken one, came forward from his table and offered Noctifer some of his food. He was already there, and Noctifer didn’t want to waste his walk so he accepted kindly. The god sneered and threw the plate to the side, so that its contents hit the floor with a sickening clatter.
“Eat then, dog,” he chuckled. Noctifer didn’t budge from his seat, and his hand immediately went to Caeli’s thigh, squeezing it as a silent reminder of consequence. The god shuffled awkwardly back to his table, slumping down in the chair where he was praised by some and admonished by others. Noctifer looked to Solaris, seeing the god look down at his plate immediately. The solar deity pushed his food around with a fork, trying to avoid eye-contact.
Frustrated, for once, Noctifer pressed his thumb against his teeth and bit down. He pulled and rip the nail off the bed and placed it onto the plate. He let his thumb bleed into the chalice, the blood turning into wine and the nail, covered in blood and saliva, forming into bread. Caeli gawked at the act of sorcery, or transmutation. The two were alerted when the hounds of Zaeal were licking up the remnants of the plate that the god threw at the floor. Smiling, Noctifer ripped off a piece of the bread and offered it to the dog that ate heartily.
He made due with the scrap left in his hand and the transformed ‘wine’. Caeli looked at Noctifer sadly, realising just how sorely he stuck out from the group. Her sorrow turned to annoyance and she snapped her head back to look at Solaris who was watching with wide eyes.
The entire affair, from the act of sacrifice to the feeding of the dogs, hit Solaris like a hammer. It was worse when, despite the supposed pain that Noctifer had put himself into for the sake of eating, he also offered it to another being. It was compassionate, to say the least.
‘But stupid,’ thought Solaris as he tried to rationalise it. The other gods were sneering at the macabre act of sorcery. Solaris stared down at his own food, the red beets now staring back at him. He pushed his plate away, no longer feeling hungry. Still, the realisation of how far Noctifer would be willing to go when pressed, and how much he’d be willing to give, stuck in the mind of the deity. He felt guilty, annoyingly so, about having made it clear that no food was to be offered to Noctifer.
Turning back, he saw the deity drinking from the cup he had made. The goddess next to him, Caeli, had stopped staring at him and was now fretting over the wound left by Noctifer’s act of sacrifice. He looked at the dogs who were called back to Zaeal’s side. She didn’t seem too offended by the god’s feeding of her dogs with what was practically glorified flesh. The headache only got worse, and Solaris reached out for the glass of wine. He looked down, seeing the red colour and frowned. He growled and then chugged it down, trying to wipe the image of blood and the smiling face of Noctifer from his mind.