Chapter Text
The world changed.
With every day, minute, second—
Everything was moving around us in a never-ending cycle.
The Earth revolved around the Sun. The moon revolved around the Earth. All living beings lived, breathed, died.
How long had it been- since the day the sun had been shot down from the sky, torn from its pedestal?
My world had shattered, my sun fallen, but the world continued to turn on its axis. Countless of times the sun would rise and set, as though nothing had happened.
I placed my lips to a flute and blew.
I continued to sing and dance, through the nights, through the days that were no longer tinged with fear.
All living beings reached for survival.
Despite everything— I still wanted to live.
Humans were social creatures.
I had never been a person good at solitude.
My songs were meant to be heard; my dancing meant to be shared with a partner.
Once, I had never had to search far, for people’s hands to be reached out to me.
All that was gone now. I was alone, just like how I had been at the beginning of this strange tale.
Before I met the person that changed my life; the person who tried to mould me into something that I wasn’t.
I was still the same person I was at the start. A fool of a musician who never learnt how to let go.
I did as I had done for so long.
I continued to sing for ears that didn’t hear.
I continued to dance for eyes that wouldn’t see.
I gave my all to people who would never feel the weight of my hopes and dreams.
Unlike the rest of my brother’s angels, I wasn’t a mythical figure in a book, a being that people prayed to.
If they prayed, I wouldn’t answer. I wasn’t someone above anyone else.
I was just a musician.
I played my music to bring people happiness, to remind them of times long past, memories immortalized in song and dance.
I never thought—
That people would still remember me.
“If you are good,” parents would tell their children, “the wandering musician will come into your life and hold a festival you will never forget.”
At some point in my pilgrimage, during my fruitless attempts to spread history long past—
I had become a legend, a tale told to children the same way parents would tell their children of beings like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Strangely, I found that I didn’t mind this in the slightest.
One time I met Evernight.
She spoke to me, gentle as my brother had once been.
She described tall, towering buildings that loomed over streets, metallic objects that moved as fast or even faster than any form of transportation now. She spoke of a city filled with people, where gods were for the faithful and mysticism for the superstitious.
I asked her if she remembered the past.
“I’m forgetting.” She said quietly.
I then wondered if the past was meant to stay in the past, thousands of years of hard work and development to be forgotten by the world.
She told me that it was up to me to decide.
“No one loves humanity more than you do.” She said.
I told her that she was wrong. There were plenty more people who loved humans and everything that we had built up with our own hands.
She had said in return that those people wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I asked her when she had stopped being human.
“It’s not that simple.” Evernight said, and told me of powerful, foreign entities who wished to invade this world.
I listened on without a word.
It was the only thing I could do.
Evernight— She didn’t understand.
She posed me a single question before she left.
“Would you rather give up your pride, or destroy the future of humanity?”
It had never been about pride.
I hated gods. They took my brother away, took away who my brother had used to be.
Almost offhandedly, an unsubtle attempt at manipulation, Evernight had told me that becoming a god was the only way to obtain revenge.
But I had never been looking for revenge, just answers.
Hatred begets hatred; revenge would just set up another cycle of anger and harm.
I was tired of those.
I would rather- dance the night away, seeing the smiles on people’s faces.
I didn’t wish for hatred, and yet, a part of me burned, yearning to tear apart the ones responsible for taking my family away from me.
Sometimes, I hated myself. I hated my own hypocrisy and how hard it seemed at times, that being kind was.
After my brother’s passing—
The world was tumultuous, powers abandoning their responsibilities in a bid to become greater, to become more.
Meanwhile, I did what I had always done.
I sang and sang until the songs started to mean more to me than they were ever meant to be.
I danced until my body knew the actions before my mind could even think up of the next steps.
At times, it felt like a suitable enough punishment.
My failure to remind him, my inability to make a difference.
No one cared enough for the distant past; my words were heresy, the tales I told incomprehensible to all but the learned.
I almost gave up, the stubbornness I had held on for centuries starting to fade along with my shaking certainty- but then, I met a man, a passing god of travel.
He asked me my purpose.
I asked him his name.
He called himself Hermes.
In return, I spoke to him of days long past, of history more ancient than any god that still walked the Earth.
He told me this was blasphemy.
I told him I was aware.
In the end—he asked to learn from me.
I asked him, what he wanted from me.
“I have nothing better to do with my long life.” He said.
I had a passing thought- or perhaps it was the influence of a Spectator, of a merry caravan filled with immortal musicians.
“What an interesting thought.” He commented.
Hermes asked me why so many of the ballads and tales spoke of love.
I wondered out loud, if the ability to love each other wasn’t humanity’s greatest strength.
After all, in human history, the best creations were those made with love in mind.
Perhaps he was attempting to be kind, when he said that love had never kept people alive.
But at that moment, the only thing I could think of, was how sad his life had to be, growing up in a world where love was a weakness and kindness a luxury.
For someone who was younger than me, Hermes looked much older- and behaved the same way at times.
At his level of strength, he didn’t need to wear the guise of the old man as he liked to do.
I asked him if he intended to play an instrument along to the sounds of his bones creaking.
He asked me if I would trust the treatment of a doctor with the visage of a child, all but confirming my assumption of why he continued to stay by my side.
I decided not to think about children who were far from children, of beings with too much power at their fingertips but too little responsibility tying them down.
Instead, I focused on the strumming of my guitar.
Seated on a log and huddled around a campfire that neither of us needed, I played a simple song and sang along to words that were no longer spoken.
Hermes played along, his fingers moving across the holes of the flute, the accompanying sound smooth and melodious, a stark contrast to the utter cacophony it must really be.
I told him he wouldn’t ever get better if he kept fooling the senses of the audience.
He told me that no one would be able to tell.
I still thought of my brother sometimes. Of the life I had lived, long before the stars fell and wiped out the civilization I had known.
The past would always stay in the past. It could never become the present or the future.
All I could do was hold on to whatever remnants still existed and spread them to the world.
Every sunrise was still too bright.
Every thunderstorm was still too violent.
But that was life- that was nature. Nature never stood still. It would evolve and grow and adapt.
Underneath the glimmering glow of the first strings of sunlight, I played a simple tune and walked on.
There was much to do: land to be covered, music to be shared, mysteries to be revealed.
That was fine. I had time.
I heard whispers of new gods.
Gods who possessed the same abilities my brother once had.
…It didn’t matter, in the end.
I had never believed in gods, only men who thought too highly of themselves.
I echoed this thought of mine when Hermes asked.
People were gathering.
Something strange, an odd attractive force – it drew me to a certain place, made me stray from the path I had been taking.
Hermes followed me without a word, that faint smile still on his wrinkled, bearded face.
A familiar aura, one that reminded me of the Chaos Sea.
And before me, I saw a familiar-looking, mottled stone slab.
I touched the stone slate in my bag, just to make sure the object my brother had entrusted to me was still there.
I glanced around at unfamiliar faces.
Then, I lowered my head and left.
“Are you not looking?” Hermes asked me.
I told him I had no need to do so.
The only thing I expected of myself—the only job I had, was to play my music and spread the stories from days long past.
I didn’t expect to be noticed.
Nor did I expect anyone to chase after me.
History was important.
The tales of legends, the traditions of the past, they all painted a beautiful picture of the ancient days.
Humans have always been humans.
Mistakes will always be made; tyrants will always come and go; people would fall to hatred and destroy themselves from the inside out.
People would always create. They would always make beautiful structures created in their minds, with their own hands. Music, paintings, pottery, architecture, I loved them all.
I was afraid- that if I became any less human than I was now, I would stop treasuring them; that I would become like my brother, who watched the world with a gaze full of indifference.
So as long as I lived, I would keep roaming around, playing and dancing for people who lacked enough knowledge and context to understand my words and decipher the stories I told.
It wasn’t in my nature to deny the choices of others.
Still…
I glanced back at Hermes.
Hermes offered me a smile, deliberately ignoring my unvoiced plea.
I hated Spectators so much.
I continued walking on. Hermes followed after me as he had done for the past few years.
The stalker I had gained did so as well.
I eventually cornered my new follower after my third village and pressed a hand drum into his hands.
I informed him that if he intended to follow me around like part of my merry little band, he had to learn how to play an instrument.
I later saw him huddled by Hermes and exchanging whispers, a look of confusion on his face.
Hermes just looked amused.
Meddling old coot, I thought uncharitably.
Time passed as it always would.
I witnessed the rise and fall of self-proclaimed kings.
When I closed my eyes, I dreamed of spotlights, singing and dancing on a mahogany stage, for a faceless crowd.
When I opened them, I was still doing the same, but on modest land, with an instrument personally-carved.
Hermes stuck by my side. Even after everything, he still stayed.
I didn’t know why.
I was content with not knowing.