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And lest any part of the world should be wanting its
own living creatures,
the floor of heaven was richly inlaid with the stars and
the planets,
the waves of the sea were assigned as the realm of the
glinting fishes.
Ovid, Metamorphoses.
From his perch on the pearly balcony that guard the heavens, that outline his kingdom, Lotor can see him all the way down on earth.
The water god moves with the fluid grace that Lotor had spotted all those thousands of years ago, when the earth was fresh and newly born, still squeaking with newness. He had awoken, jolted into reality, submerged completely in a body of water, his beloved moon submerged with him. He had jerked around, horrified and shocked, unable to tell where he was, when he had felt a pair of slim gentle hands press into the small of his back. Turning, he had seen a boy, enrobed in long blue silk robes, the ends of which swirled in the water around him, rippling with the current that encircled him.
He had gazed at him with eyes as blue as the sea around him, wide with concern and care, and Lotor knew, from the very first second that he met his eyes, that he had fallen far too deep to care about anything else but the boy before him.
And so it had begun - the love of the moon god and the water god; the two who danced so beautifully with each other across the surface of the earth. Hand in hand, they waltzed to the end of the earth and back, each step softer than stardust.
Oh, but that had been so many years ago, Lotor reminds himself as he shifts against the gates, his white silk robe clinking as the jewels were dragged across the floor. So many, many years ago.
It was different now.
He can’t see well from here, the balcony that overlooks the earth, but he can make out enough to understand what’s going on.
There’s a festival, a gathering, for the gods who look after this world. The temples blaze with holy fire, spices and incense piled up in blocks at the altars, burning sweet and smokey, and libations cluttered the floors, wine poured into the marble until the floors run with so much red it looks like a massacre had taken place.
The gods crowd the fire, wrapped in silks and linens and the finest fabrics and jewels that they can find. They giggle over the libations, drinking the wine that their devoted little humans had left them on their altars, pinching the honey cakes and devouring them, smiling around the sweetness that filled their mouthes.
And in the middle of it all, draped in silky material the colour of sin scales, turquoise chiffon wrapped around his enticing hips, a gold diadem entwined in his hair, ultramarine embedded in the gold, droplets of coral dangling from his ears, a ring of red coral wrapped around his lovely long fingers, dancing to the sultry, tempting rhythm of the flutes and harps that surround him - is Lance.
His sweet beloved Lance. Who has changed so little all these years as Lotor grows more and more bitter, longs more and more for this boy, with his elegant legs, his toned tummy, his soft dark hair. As he moves, swinging his hips, arching his legs with every step, the eyes of the gods fall upon him, whether intentional or not. There was no doubt that there was nothing more beautiful than Lance now, not even the goddess of love, who lounged upon a couch draped in crimson silk, oodles of humans pawing at her feet, begging eyes pleading for so much as a scrap of validation.
But Lance was not dancing for the gods.
He doesn’t dance for the fire god, with his flickering yellow eyes and burning hair, or the goddess of the earth, in whose hair lilies and frangipani grow into an ornate, beautiful wreath of colour and beauty, or the god of the earth, who’s skin shifts, rippling with the land beneath him, the colour of the soil after a storm has passed; nor even the god of the stars, who so often came down to visit the earth with his sweetheart, the goddess of the sun, who’s shimmering, glowing onyx skin contrasts so perfectly to the shock of white that is the waterfall of her hair.
Lance pays not attention to them
Lance only looks for him.
Yes, he may join fire to soothe the ravaging blazes that cover the earth. Yes, he may run in hand with the goddess of nature, scattering droplets into every plant and flower he meets until the earth is a lush jungle, green and healthy. Yes, he may dance with the god of the earth, his delicate leaps as the rain tumbles integrating with the dramatic thuds and stomps as the earth rattles with it’s own music, it’s own dance. Yes, he may bow to the stars and the sun, standing before the pair of them, his head bowed, his eyes hooded with honour.
But everyone knows that Lance only dances for Lotor.
It is a double effort, this thing that they dance through. How Lance is so far away, so far from him yet so close Lotor can almost touch him - how he can see the blue gleam across his cheekbones, the liquid blue of his eyes, the whirl and shimmering splendour of his robes as he spins on one toe, head tilted, dancing under the light of the moon just for Lotor. If Lotor strains enough, puts enough power into it, steals the light from the goddess who seems satisfied with only keeping them apart, he can even see the tears that run down his face, shining like little pearls.
It was, of course, Allura who had kept them apart. Before the world had been separated, she had seen the looks of longing between the two, the spark of passion in their eyes that made her realise that if she allowed for the two of them to stay together, the humans, the earth, the fate of every other god, would never happen.
So she had forced them apart. Forced Lotor into the sky, pushed the moon out of the water where it had for so many years called home, and into the sky, far, far away from the earth, and the being it loved so much. Lance had wept and wailed, ran to Allura and threw himself onto his knees and begged her to return Lotor, to let them be together, to let him stay. He would relinquish his role as god - give up his immortality and join Lotor, run away to the moon, and remain there until he grew old and shrivelled as Lotor remained young and beautiful. Wasn’t that enough for her?
No. It was not.
Lotor had tried to force her hand. He had even picked fights with that boy she was so dreamy about, kicking the stars and squashing them like they were ants under his boots, and when Shiro had come, his skin emitting a silver gleam from the stars, his black eyes blazing like blackholes, Lotor had ambushed him. It had been a fight, and Lotor gained scars, blistering circles of shrivelled flesh from where Shiro had struck him. But Lotor had struck him back - reached up into the sky and tore down the Bear that ambled across the night and ripped it in two - and when Shiro had opened his mouth to shriek, to howl, to wail his agony - he tore right across his face with the jagged, jutted edge of a dying star.
The scream of agony that had tumbled from his mouth had earned him enough time to throw him from the moon’s perch in the sky, had watched with glee as the god had fallen down, down, down onto the earth below him.
It was worth the scorn, the banishment, the hatred and fury of the other gods.
No more would the god of the earth come to him with little trays of delights for him to sample, no goddess of nature to offer him up a flower of unquestionable beauty, no fire god to spit little rays of compliments to him. No god would come to him. They would only need to look at Shiro’s face, at the goring red stripe that ran across the bridge of his nose, to understand why.
Only Lance had remained.
Oh, the other gods had warned him, had hissed their distaste for the god he dreamed over and ached for, but his Lance - his sweet, wonderful, loving Lance - had pushed them aside, had shaken his head and stormed off. Lotor knew for a fact that upon his lover’s back were little scratches, little snippets of sunlight woven into scars from where a goddess had tried to get her own back, had tried to tear apart at the loved one of the god who had ruined hers.
Whenever there was a chance to, when the other gods weren’t looking, or slept the night away, Lance would dash to the waters, to the oceans that opened up like an envelope beneath the moon, and called up to him, to his perch on his palace so very, very far away. In amongst the soft murmurings of space, Lotor heard the sweet, lilting voice of his love come up to him.
They couldn’t dance anymore. Not properly. Not the way that they had done all those years ago, when the land was new and the stars fresh, and the moon and the sun had not business to fight, and the water was merely its home and not its undoing.
But they could try nonetheless.
Lance would sweep across the water, his trailing robes lapping against it, shoals of fish coming to support his feet, silver scales burning hot in the moonlight, dolphins offering their skills as much as they could. The crooning, haunting song of the whales echoed with each step, each movement, each flick of his wrist as he danced on the water for the god he loved so far up above him.
And Lotor would sweep himself across the surface of the moon, white lights burning around him, moving in step to the roiling rumblings that came from beneath his feet, white hair swinging, the click of his jewels and bangles and necklaces chiming in to the melody that he moved to.
Together, as though by some force, as though the universe itself was moved by the power of their love, the sea began to churn, to writhe beneath the boy’s feet, surging to the land and then, as though it could not bear the thought of being so far away from him, darting back out to meet Lance again.
Under the light of the moon, as though drawn out by his presence or remaining magic, creatures of the night snuffled through the forests and jungles, their howling cries joining the orchestra that they created. Plants swayed in the breeze that bounced off the sea, the earth began to fall away, as though in shame for having witnessed their drawn out union, chunks of soil and rock dropping into the water below it.
It never could last forever. Soon, Lotor would see Allura and her train of showy white horses, galloping across the top of the world to drag across the dawn into the sky. He would scuttle back into his milky white palace, hiding out the day within the turrets and towers, plotting and planning and imagining a better day, a day with Lance once more - where they could touch and dance and run and laugh just how they had done all those years before. Lotor would sleep then, curl up in a little ball somewhere, and drift away amongst the cold darkness of space, wistfully dreaming of a boy with warm wide eyes and silky skin that smiled so beautifully at him; dreams that made him awake in tears, crying for a better time, craving it. Lotor would cry for himself, trapped alone in this palace with only beings of his own cold creation that never matched up to the warmth of reality for comfort. Would cry for the boy who mourned for him below. Would cry for all of this - for the monstrosity of this world.
But they would meet again - they would dance again, of this Lotor was sure. One day, this would all come to pass. One day, when the sun and the stars had been toppled, and the earth lay cracked and broken, nature dried up and withered, fire burnt away into nothing more than glowing embers, the moon and the water would reunite, rejoice, and they could be happy once again.
But for now, there was only this long, disjointed dance to hope for. And beneath him, beneath Lance, beneath them all, the waves move in one together, racing down the margins of sand and water, a thousand splendid hands giving a thousand splendid applauses to the dance that had created them.