Chapter Six (Part 2)

Looking back on it, it was a normal reaction to have. I had dropped out of the sky, with ratty black hair, bloodshot red eyes, a torn-up robe, and I had just puked up a bucketful of blood. A normal person would think I was some kind of demonic beast. In a way, they would be right to think so.

The young man stared at me with wide pink eyes, frozen in terror. He was quite beautiful, with smooth skin the color of coal and wild curly hair flowing loose around his head. He wore a pair of soft brown trousers and a white blouse-like top.

This was the god I would later come to know as Ren. He’d been out in the meadow making new flowers. And I had just popped out of the sky and smashed about half of them.

But Ren didn’t get mad at me for it, thankfully, too scared to worry much about the flowers. We stared at each other, me on my knees, him standing, and for a moment, it was hard to tell who was more scared of who.

Finally, I got the courage to speak. “Idris?” I said, clearing my throat. My voice was rough from disuse.

This must be Idris, I thought to myself, even while part of me knew it wasn’t, instinctively. I had thought Idris was the only other person in the realm. Little did I know, in the month and a half I’d spent fighting for my life in the venomous forest, Idris had been hard at work creating himself a little family of gods. While gods like Nen or Ren could create their own half-immortals, demigods like Peace and Wisdom, or even mortals, only Idris had the power to create new gods. His very presence in the realm triggered the birth of several gods without any thought on his part, just as my presence triggered death. Only myself and Idris had been directly created by the universe. The others were either born from Idris’s light or had been created intentionally by him, like Ren, as companions, as family.

He hadn’t been looking for me at all. But I didn’t know that at the time, and I still had this mindless need to find him. If I did, I would be able to make sense of the world. Nothing made sense, and I didn’t like being alone, so if Idris was the only other person in the realm, then I had to find him. If I was alone, then he was too, and I didn’t want him to be alone.

Ren looked at me and slowly shook his head. “I’m not Idris,” he said softly, and I frowned.

But that wasn’t possible, I thought. Idris is the only other god. “Then who are you?” I asked.

“Ren.”

“Oh. Then where is Idris?”

I really had a one-track mind back then. It was pretty embarrassing, looking back on it.

Ren rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Um. I can take you to him?”

I perked up immediately, wobbling to my feet. “Okay. Let’s go,” I said eagerly, walking right up to Ren, who shied away from me, but couldn’t seem to take his eyes off me, nonetheless. He looked confused by his own reaction to me, but as it turns out, his reaction was a common one.

I was taller than Ren by a good bit, even then when we were young, so he had to look up to meet my eyes. Only Idris and Wisdom really exceeded me in height.

Ren coughed into his fist, blushing a bit, and I didn’t know then that it was because he had popped a wicked boner just from being near me. I just looked at him innocently, waiting for him to lead the way and getting a little impatient that he was taking so long. I wanted to see Idris now. I’d waited long enough.

Ren spun on his heel and led the way from the meadow. We didn’t speak as we walked, him because he was a confusing mixture of terrified and horny, and me because I was too excited to get to meet Idris soon.

At the edge of the meadow, trees began to steadily clump up, but these trees were…different than the ones I was used to. None of them tried to grab me or Ren, for one thing, which was pretty fucking weird. There were also small animals that I’d never seen before climbing all over the trees, perfectly safe. Not a single one got chopped in half or dropped dead to the ground from poison.

This wasn’t right. What was wrong with this place?

The woods here seemed to be well-tended and organized as if specifically cultivated. There was no underbrush cluttering up the path. Bushes of fruit and flowers were carefully placed at random, but visually pleasing intervals. I watched as Ren plucked a blackberry off a nearby bush and popped it into his mouth.

“No!” I shouted and smacked him harshly on the back. He choked in surprise, which only made the berry go down his throat, not out as I’d intended. He swallowed it and I panicked, grabbing him and sticking two fingers down his throat when he opened his mouth, probably to ask me why I was being so fucking weird.

Ren’s eyes widened comically before he puked, bending over at the waist to ease some of the discomfort. I rubbed his back as he heaved, holding his wild hair out of his face. The berry lay undigested in the mess, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank the gods. Didn’t he know those berries would make him bleed from his eyes, mouth, nose, and ears? They would make him shake uncontrollably, and he would feel like his bones were turning to ash. How foolish. Was he brand new to this world or something?

When Ren was done, he breathed hard and wiped a hand over his mouth, eyes a little teary as a reflex from gagging. He turned those pink eyes on me, confused and angry.

“Why did you do that?” he snapped, and I frowned. Definitely brand new.

“You can’t eat those,” I explained calmly. “They’ll make you very sick.”

Ren took a small step back from me, and though at the time I’d thought he was just upset that I’d made him vomit, in actuality he thought I was insane and possibly rabid.

“They won’t,” he said finally. “I eat them all the time.”

That confused me. I tilted my head, not quite understanding. But then, a solution came to me. Immunity, I thought. Perhaps he had built up an immunity to that particular fruit. If so, how lucky he was. And if he was immune, then I’d just made a terrible fool of myself. Gods, how rude of me.

I lowered my head, eyes cast to the ground in shame. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t know.”

Ren seemed taken aback at that, and he shifted his weight awkwardly. “Uh, it’s fine. Let’s just keep going, yeah? Idris’s palace is just up ahead.”

I nodded and followed along behind him, still too embarrassed to lift my head. Then his words sank in, and my eyebrows furrowed.

Palace? Idris has a palace? How long did it take him to build such a thing? Had he been working on it since our creation a month and a half ago?

No, I decided. Idris was the god of creation. Surely he just waved his hand and it appeared. The thought calmed me, initially. Until I realized something that made me stop in my tracks, blankly staring at Ren’s back as he walked down the well-kept path in this forest where everything was backward.

If Idris had made his palace here, he must be living here.

…Had Idris ever been looking for me at all?

At the time, I placated myself with excuses. I caught up to Ren and thought that Idris must have only set up a palace as a base, somewhere to sleep at night while he spent the days out looking for me. And if he’d created a palace, perhaps he’d created Ren as a second pair of eyes, someone to keep watch in case I arrived before he found me.

That must be it, I thought. Everything made much more sense now.

Ren eventually led us out of the small forest, which hadn’t tried to attack us even once, a fact that was still making me a bit uneasy. Nothing was acting the way it should, and it made my stomach roll with the urge to vomit. I kept it down though, not wanting to scare Ren, although the feeling of forcing down vomit was a new one to me.

Vomiting was the body’s way of removing toxins when I ate or drank something I shouldn’t have. It was necessary, and though unpleasant, it kept me alive. I usually welcomed it. Keeping it down was unnatural to me, and it made me sweat uncomfortably. I wiped at the drops cropping up on my forehead surreptitiously, not wanting Ren to notice, but I shouldn’t have worried. He seemed to be extremely focused on not looking at me, but whether that was because of what I’d just done to him or something else, I didn’t know.

After about ten more minutes, the trees began to thin out, revealing…paradise.

That was my first thought, upon emerging from the trees. This must be paradise, or at least, it looked like it.

The sky overhead was cloudless, pure blue spreading over the horizon, endless and calming. The sun illuminated the world around us with a bright, but not blinding, radiance. And just before us, a straight shot from the path we’d taken to the front door, was a palace. It was made of pale blue stone the same shade as the sky, seeming to blend into it. It looked to be at least seven stories tall, with white balconies and delicate, clear windows garnishing each level. The building itself was perfectly symmetrical, with two massive arches on either side and a flat roof connecting the space between them. White detailing lined the arches, looking almost like clouds. I could almost believe the palace was carved from the sky itself.

A white and blue cobblestone path lined with neatly trimmed bushes led from the edge of the small forest to the entrance, where a set of white stone steps led to a massive pair of white double doors. Ren and I took the path up to the doors, and my hands began to shake a bit. The nausea had faded, replaced by a jittery feeling from deep in my gut like I’d swallowed a bunch of hopping spiders.

Not really an impossibility for me, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t eaten any arachnids lately, so it could only be nerves making me feel this way. And why wouldn’t I? I was about to meet Idris, the one other person in the entire realm that had been directly molded by the universe, just like me.

Idris had become more than just another god to me. Thoughts of finding him, of being saved by him, had kept me going when I was suffering untold tortures in the forest I’d been born into. It was him I thought of as I lay on the forest floor bleeding out from ripping a parasitic plant out of my gut. It was him I thought of as the water I’d stupidly tried to bathe in slowly made my muscles lock up and freeze, the water threatening to close over my mouth and nose. It was him I thought of as I slaughtered the shadow creatures and brought trembling lips to their bloody wounds to ease the ache of hunger in my gut, even as I wanted to vomit from the smell and taste of it.

All of that suffering had been worth it, I thought, standing before those imposing white doors. All of the vile things that I had done, that had been done to me, would be worth it because I was finally going to meet Idris. I finally wasn’t going to be alone anymore. Even if I had to continue suffering, it wouldn’t be so bad if I had Idris with me. And Ren too, since Idris had created him to help look for me.

Ren reached out and knocked three times on the doors. After only a moment, they swung open by themselves, allowing us entry into a very large foyer with white marbled floors, gold columns, and a series of murals along the walls depicting scenes of the sky at various times of the day. It was gorgeous and made you feel as if the room was endless, like you could just walk into one of the walls.

We only stood there for a moment before there was a faint pulse down my spine like someone was lightly dragging their fingernail over it. I shivered at the sensation, liking it even though I didn’t know what it was. A mere second later, a figure materialized in the room.

I remember feeling like I was looking at the sun itself. He was so bright, so beautiful, and his very presence seemed to make the room more inviting. I stared at him, enraptured.

He was taller than me by an inch or so, with long, white, pin-straight hair that fell over his shoulders. His eyes were as blue as the sky outside, curious and kind. His skin was a glowing olive tone, and his face was the epitome of masculine beauty, with a sharp jawline and high cheekbones. He was broad and muscular, but not grossly so, and he stood with all the authority and ease of a born leader.

Physically, he was my exact opposite in pretty much every way, though I didn’t know it at the time. I had never seen my own reflection, so while I knew that my hair was long, silky, and black as night and that my skin was a creamy porcelain color when it was clean, anyway, I didn’t know that my eyes were the color of fresh blood. I didn’t know that though I was incredibly tall, I was slender, leanly muscled and sinuous like a willow tree. And while Idris’s presence made people feel safe and calm, I didn’t know that my very presence made them feel simultaneously fearful and horny.

Idris’s eyes locked on me immediately and I took a step toward him, eager to meet the person the universe whispered to me about. At first, Idris was simply curious, gazing at me with the same even warmth that he gazed upon all the creatures of the god realm with.

But as he looked me over, something seemed to drop in his expression. Realization. Recognition. And then, abruptly, horror.

And all these years later, it still hurt like a fucking punch in the gut to realize that Idris knew exactly who I was. He knew I existed. The universe had told him about my existence just as it told me about him, but he hadn’t been looking for me the way I’d been looking for him.

He knew about me. He knew where I was. He’d known the whole time.

And he didn’t fucking care.