Solaris found himself in the baths sooner than later, under the maternal berating of Sala, who currently sat at the head of the bath with his hair in her hands. She was combing it down, singing a song, while the solar god spent the most his time in the heat of the water. Sala abandoned the task of trying to get Solaris to wash himself. Relenting, she allowed him to rest in the water until he regained the strength needed to act. She knew of his temperament, and she had weathered it before and would weather it again. Solaris himself had grown accustomed to feeling that emptiness that came with the loss of Noctifer.
It felt like all power had gone from his limbs, and he couldn’t bring himself to raise his hand or foot. Not only did Sala bring him here, but also that she took such care of him. He felt useless, and that only led him deeper into his depression. He compared himself to a shell being blown in the wind towards some unseen horizon. He had thought about that. Mortals used to say that if you held a seashell to your ear, you could hear the roaring of the ocean. Would he sound the same? Would his hollowness give way to that same echoing rush of blood that you’d hear in the shell?
“You’re thinking again, Solaris,” Sala said inquisitively as she ran the comb through his red locks again, tugging gently to pull him back to himself.
“When am I not?”
“Sometimes, it is good to rest the mind and not think,” Sala responded playfully.
“It’s not like I can anymore; I have to figure this out.”
“And you will, when you’ve given yourself the ability to sit down.”
“You seem resigned to this entire thing,” Solaris said, gesturing widely with his hand.
“I’ve seen worse in my life, Solaris,” was all that the goddess said. The two fell back into a heavy silence, and as Sala plaited the Solar God’s hair, he finally spoke up:
“What am I supposed to do?”
Sala stiffened, hearing the god’s voice break again. He was crying, and she knew it was best to let him cry, but, by all that was, she couldn’t sit and watch the god rip himself apart. He had become his martyr and persecutor. Sala couldn’t handle it because of his self-inflicted suffering, but she couldn’t stand it for the same reason. She wanted to shout at him and tell him to pull himself together, but she knew he was fragile. It was his great struggle. When the Solar God fell, he fell with the darkness of the sunset around him. Sala had not heard from Ava as of yet, and she will send a messenger if it meant prying for the information needed.
“You will know what to do when the time comes,” was all she could supply, being unsure herself of the outcome.
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Ava couldn’t help Noctifer when he tended the garden or the lengthy vines that ran through his temple. Everything they touched would wither away and be restored to its archetypal form. They made due by sitting on a small slab of stone with their eyes set on the lunar deity as he wandered from corner to corner of the room.
Eventually, boredom got the best of the deity, so they slinked down from the slab, taking the form of a young girl, and wandered out into the courtyard of the once-temple. The stones were cracked, but at least there wasn’t anything susceptible to them. She looked up at the clouds that promised snow with glee, bearing the tusk-like fangs that never seemed to go away regardless of her form. She picked up a stick that had fallen, which luckily didn’t degenerate too quickly, and made it into a pencil with which she drew a small picture of the sun on the wet dirt.
It was fun until she heard the call of a crow. Looking up at the branches, she saw the small bird staring at her before it eventually fell from the tree and onto the floor. There was the sickly sound of bones snapping and skin stretching until it had formed the lanky figure of a woman, a messenger, with feathers still protruding from her arms and her notably bird-like legs. The lady smiled toothily before speaking:
“Mistress sends her regards and asks if you have any news of Noctifer.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Ava wished it was easy to hide from other gods. Even in this childlike form, she couldn’t hide from the eyes of Sala, which made it rather annoying. Back in the Beginning, they used to play hide-and-seek, but you can’t hide when practically everything is formative. Ava was about to speak but remembered that this situation was more complex than just somehow getting a god to return. There were political nuances and relationship-based ones. It didn’t matter; the birdwoman seemed to get the message and was on her way to fly towards the heavens carrying the message until she was grabbed.
Ava had resumed their form, tall, dark, and entirely annoyed. Their fingers gripped the birdwoman’s foot and brought her down to the earth. The skin on the foot had begun to melt away into decomposing flesh. The lady was panting, looking up at the impartial, burning eyes of the deity before her.
“Please, I will not tell Mistress of this,” was all she could say. Ava, grabbing the face of the bird woman tenderly, looked down with soft eyes.
“I know, but Sala has her ways, and I’d not be involved with anything outside my paygrade; there is a lot more to this than Sala or I could handle.”
The birdwoman’s eyes grew wide as her face began to melt away, revealing the yellowed bone underneath. Tears began to stream from her eyes.
“Don’t grieve, my child; I will be here when you return,” was all Ava said, pressing their forehead against the remnants of the messenger, who then faded away into dust and the remnants of what was a physical form. From it came the etherical form, still maintaining the form of a crow, which gladly floated around Ava’s body, seating itself on the deity’s head.
“We’ll have to send you to Ava for rebirth at some point,” chuckled the deity as they scratched the head of the spirit that had taken to their head for warmth. The caws of the spirit echoed around them, displaced yet still present.
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Sala had placed Solaris back to bed, his plaited hair a great deal more comfortable than its original, tangled form. She had soothed the weeping god and left to go about her duties and the duties of the deity who had fallen to his emotions and the deity who had been banished. She frowned at the realization that she was doing the work of three gods. She’d have to deal with the complaints about Caeli at some point in the day.
“One night was all it took to undo the entire structure of heaven,” she growled to herself. One of the attendants of Solaris looked up at her with wide eyes; she had barely seen the poor spirit wandering close to her.
“Yes?” She asked quietly, bending down so she could hear the attendant speak.
“The others sent me to speak to you about the petitions.”
“Oh yes, the petitions, thank you,” Sala responded, tapping the attendant on the head. He smiled inwardly and followed after the goddess as they entered Solaris’ study. She seated herself at his desk, and so began the day of arduous work. Of particular interest to her was the standard case of deific bribery. The case of the king who had offered Solaris his loyalty in exchange for his protection during the war.
She knew of the war; Ava had kept her updated about it.
‘Speaking of,” she thought as she looked out the window, trying to see if the messenger had returned. It had been an hour since she sent the bird, and they had yet to return. Massaging her temple, she turned to look down at the petitions before her. Beyond the deific bribery, the petitions were characteristic. Most of them were affected by wartime, and a good deal of others remained as calls for rain, protection, and healing for such and such a person. Some were even those of spirits or lesser deities, invoking Solaris for greater wisdom. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony, but she remained steadfast in her work. She did, however, put some of the more sentimental petitions aside, knowing that it was not her place to actively do Solaris’ work. There were some things that only the solar deity could do, with or without his sanity.
As she paged through the endless pile, her eyes widened. They had locked on a specific petition given to one particular deity, whose name was written on the top:
“Nox-Melanotheos,”
‘Dark God of the Evening, how you surprise me,’ thought Sala as she read through the paper properly. She hadn’t seen too many petitions to Noctifer, though he spent enough time with his devotees that they would take their petitions to him directly. This particular one was for a family’s affair with a snake that had bitten their daughter.
“I had almost forgotten you had ruled over poisons,” she smiled to herself, stamping the paper and sealing it as she answered. She looked down at it, still smiling at the thought of Noctifer, the God-Still-Praised, and the Name-Undying. She knew his cult was strewn across the land, but it was still heartwarming to see that some people didn’t see him as a monster.
She frowned at that thought, looking up at the door. She couldn’t help but think of Solaris, who had so accused Noctifer, alongside others. She rubbed her forehead, trying to soothe the migraine that had begun to form.
“Nobody is pure here,” she muttered to herself, “not even I.”
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“Who’s your friend?” asked Noctifer, leaning against the threshold. He had walked in on Ava busy playing with the spirit of a bird—a game of tic-tac-toe. Its feet were perfect for the crosses. Ava looked up, smiling sheepishly at the lunar deity.
“Just a bird,” was all they said before turning back and cursing at the bird for having taken a turn when they weren’t looking. Noctifer watched the two of them play, carefree and oblivious. He remembered a Solaris like that, who would wear the sun in his hair and skip merrily around Noctifer as they worked in the Heavens. He wished he knew when Solaris fell, but it seemed so subtle. It first started, possibly, when Solaris began chewing his nails.
“Are you alright there?”
Noctifer looked up at the concerned eyes of Ava and the crooked head of the bird, which gazed with equal concern. Noctifer nodded with a weak smile, quickly leaving the room and entering the temple proper. Ava turned back to the spirit that fluttered from here to there and wondered if she had followed the right course.