What Only the Goddess Knows

Words had brought them together. Words had parted them. There was no deceitfulness, no reason to be saddened. Everything comes to an end; it’s a static law no one would ever change.

     So, for the story to end a bit sooner or a bit later, how important is it after all? Before long, everyone having known this story will forget it. It will fade into oblivion. It won’t be any more.

     The world was about to end. To worry about staying or leaving? Futile. For their story to extend until the last day or not wouldn’t change the outcome. Of course not.

     Still…

     Still, there were people who would struggle until their last moments. Through nostalgia, through hope, through love. Or through guilt.

     Each of them had its way of loving this world. Sometimes clumsy. Sometimes loathsome.

     But he was different from them. Why? Maybe he was lacking something, after all. Whether he had possessed it one day. Whether he had lost it one day. He ignored the answer to these questions.

     To realise that was already enough annoying. This was the true reason why he had abandoned Gretel as soon as possible.

     He could still return home and fall asleep. Close his eyes. And wait.

“How does it make feel to realise you are lost, tell me? Is it so hard to keep the hand you have taken?”

     Henox suddenly opened his eyes at the sound of this voice. He had taken the liberty of halting at nightfall in the ruins of an ancient village. Leant against the debris of an ancient stone wall, a hand pressed against his knee.

“Ohh…~ Maybe you thought having been the one to reach it out?” Griselde smiled mockingly. “And here I hoped eternity would allow you to realise what you were really missing.”

     She seemed so close. Sat on his exact opposite, on the other side of the low wall. Her long curly hair floating without the assistance of the wind.

     Her features, malicious until then, melted into a more serious expression. More stern.

“Tell me, Henox, is immortality a mere poison for the beings devoid of magic?”

     By the time he straightened up and peered behind the wall, she had disappeared. Disappeared for centuries.

     He pressed his fingers against the stone he had grasped.

     Despite all this time… She always had to manage reminding him of herself. It was his fault if she was dead. He knew it well. It was he who had sunk into her heart the blade that killed her. He knew it. But he, he had always kept his promises. She was the one who broke it… Her, and nobody else.

     Though he hadn’t time to dwell on it that he heard other voices. More numerous this time. More joyful. Another hallucination?

     There was only one way to know. The sorcerer followed their echoes until they guided him to a fire crackling jovially, its flames dancing in the middle of its hearth. Blue flames.

     Around the fireplace, a great number of bogeys. Ghosts and their shivering silhouettes, skeletons and their bones gleaming in the moonlight. Arm in arm, they formed a circle around the fire.

     A song set the rhythm of the steps.

“Oh ho ho! Oh ho ho! Under the stars let’s shake our carcasses. Let’s gather our old bones and… Let’s daaaance, let’s daaaance!”

     Voices clattered, gravelly and thunderous.

“Oh ho ho! Oh ho ho! The Moon makes glow our old spirits! Until the brambles engulf us… Let’s ghoooost, let’s ghoooost!”

     The sorcerer approached this curious gathering until another skeleton showed by his side, folding his arms. Or at least what remained of them. He tapped a phalanx in rhythm against his radius.

“Heyo friend! What are you doing? Join us!” He proposed in a joyous tone.

“What… What is going on here, exactly?”

     Despite the not-so-alive expression of his interlocutor, the sorcerer didn’t frown. To unhinge him? Pointless. Don’t bet on this a fortune you don’t own.

“But we celebrate! We celebrate, of course!”

“What do you celebrate?”

“Heh heh, are you not awake yet, friend?” The skeleton slapped the necromancer hard on the back. “It’s been months since Kishar announced the great news! We celebrate the end of the world!”

     The sorcerer’s gaze lingered on him. On the cracks upon his bones.

     Doomed souls, unable to dissipate, condemned to roam after their death.

“For them who can’t do anything but wander at each passing night, it’s not surprising to rejoice.”

     And they danced! Danced around the fire! At times a skeleton would lose a leg or an arm, but then a ghost would throw it back at him and it was stuck back. And they continued to get excited about the upcoming event. As they did so for months, night after night.

“What’s that? You seem quite thoughtful.”

     Facing his lack of enthusiasm, the skeleton leant forward as if to examine the sorcerer with his empty eye sockets.

“Yet you’re not so different from us, right, friend?”

     In a way, he wasn’t wrong. As peculiar as it was to hear it from an old pile of bones.

     Henox glanced at the partygoers.

“True enough… How is it that I’m not in a better mood…?”

     With an absent gesture, he then reached out his hand to the flower bracelet he wore. Brushing it from his fingertips.

“Thank you for the invitation, though I think tonight I will refrain.”

“Too bad.” The skeleton said, seeming a little disappointed.

     On these words, the sorcerer preferred to depart from them, turning away from the partygoers. Retreating to a quieter corner of the ruins.

“Oh ho ho! Oh ho ho! Let’s pour the brandy, the whisky onto our graves and… Let’s daaaance, let’s daaaance! Oh ho ho! Oh ho ho! Until we are all dust… Let’s ghoooost, let’s ghoooost!”

     Over time, their song faded away as he joined the silence of the night.

***

At dawn the sorcerer resumed his walk, wandering through the once again deserted ruins. As displeasing as it was, he was lost in thoughts.

     On both sides, houses whose shapes were more or less recognisable. Leaving to the minds having nothing but time to waste the possibility to imagine their appearance. From the days when the villages’ streets still sheltered life.

     He passed a shrine of which only a few heaps of stone remained, defining the space it had once occupied.

     Henox had stopped, turning his gaze towards what was most intact within it. A statue of the goddess Kishar.

“…”

     He didn’t grant her any particular importance. He didn’t worship nor hate her. Never he had taken the time to address her any kind of prayer.

     When she had decided to eradicate the world after a last grace period, he simply took note of it. It was nothing for him but a night about to fall after a day. A day far too long.

     However, he couldn’t help but have a thought for these people who had struggled so hard to live. For Gretel, who tried to make the most of every last grain of time she had left. For them, all of that held a meaning.

     It exasperated him. As much as it had ended up fascinating him.

     And for that reason, there was a question to which he wanted at least to get an answer. It wouldn’t change anything, and he was the first surprised of having such a pointless thought.

     Despite that, Henox enclosed the statue. With an almost awkward gesture, he joined his hands before him. And, closing his eyes, he addressed some words to the goddess.

“Why will this world come to an end? Why do you wish for its annihilation?”

     He stood still for a while. Before straightening up to turn around. She probably received numerous prayers day after day. They probably constantly begged her to let the world exist. Desperately. Pitifully. Some maybe thought they would find favour in her eyes with sacrifices, as Desphia’s inhabitants.

     He was about to leave the remnants of the shrine, to leave these ruins, the village an ancient conflict had devastated… When…

     All faded.

     The stones, the statue, the sky. All disappeared.

“You want to know the reason?”

     A voice echoed.