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At first, all I can see is the lantern light’s glare. Or flashlight, I suppose, since the beam is so small and stinging. My eyes don’t like the unnatural light.
After my incubation surrounded by godlight, I find all these human-lit filaments as abrasive as a curse on the lips of a child. Give me darkness any day to their false light.
I pull back just that much more as the creature does the most foolish thing any of them have yet.
They have come here with their popping guns and arched bows and nets and equipment to catch my likeness to prove my existence and bring swarms more of their kind—
But this one—a female I surmise by her form as she flings away contraptions she was using to hold herself up, along with the small light—falls face-forward to the ground.
The light rolls away from her and shines back her way, illuminating not my cave, but her face.
She is beautiful. Long black hair is caught by a tie at her nape, where the rest flows down her back. She lifts her face blindly toward my cave.
“Please,” she cries. “God of darkness, I beg your mercy. I come alone. And I know you can turn me away, or worse. But I still beg your help.”
Ah, so she comes wanting something. As all of them do.
She throws her arms out and crawls awkwardly forward. Only then do I see her slightly shrunken legs and the strange curve to her back. Unlike the other humans who have come to me, though, she crawls on her knees in supplication. I shift slightly so I can get a better look.
“God of the mountain, what offering might I give that would please you? Heal me, and I will give you anything you ask!” she cries out.
I pause.
Curious.
And I have not felt curiosity in a long time. It feels strange curling in my belly. To feel anything at all other than anger and bitterness is novel.
I tilt my head and take one step out of my cave. Quick as lightning strikes, I kick the little object making light away so that she will not see the face of the one she has come to beg favors from.
Not yet.
Apparently, I’m in the mood to play with my food.
“Anything?” I growl. “You will give anything for this great favor you ask?”
She raises her head, but I know without the sudden light, she cannot see anything more than my large shadow, if that.
No one ever makes offerings, only demands. Humans used to know the correct way to approach a god, but they have forgotten. All except this one.
“To heal costs me great suffering,” I bark into the night.
She lifts her head, eyes darting to the left and right in such a way that I can tell she’s been blinded by the lack of her light. I have perfect night vision. She does not.
“Healing me would hurt you?” The look on her face tells me the thought distresses her, and for a moment I’m taken aback.
No one has ever cared about the cost to me. I am merely a means to an end.
Her face falls, and I am astounded by the bright glint of a tear upon her soft cheek. “Then I am sorry to have come and bothered your sanctuary, God of Darkness.”
I pause, astonished. She would turn back and cease her demands of me? Simply because I have informed her that it would hurt me?
“You come to me because you are displeased with the shape of the body you have been given?” I growl the words. She is still beautiful. Her world tolerates her to move among her kind. Whatever suffering she imagines she has is—
“It is killing me,” she says simply, face still bowed to the ground. “And I am in daily pain.”
“Many experience pain,” I spit. “Many die. Why is your case special?”
She bows her head, and my eyesight is acute enough that I can see the tears rolling down her cheeks when she looks back at me.
“It’s not. I’m not special, and I know there are plenty out there that suffer more than I do.” But then she raises her head higher, though the rest of her body remains prostrate before me. “Perhaps you. We who suffer do not find kindness in this world.”
I tilt my head, mind whirling at these unexpected circumstances. I have done it before, I suppose. Of course I am capable of the healing. And my life is full of pain, so what is a little more?
This—or at least the dark twin of healing—was part of what my Creator-Father intended when he created me. Had he loved me, I might have granted gifts such as this creature now asks for happily. But love is the one thing he could never manage. Not when it came to me. And so I have been essentially left alone, all these many years.
