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This mountain is so tall that when I stand at its peak, I see the hands of the gods reach down, lazy, to pluck the fruit from the tops of the trees. They do not see me, as they are not obliged to leave any at my feet. I have no altar.
The cranes stretch their wings, flying from the cliff’s edge when they hear my footsteps. The people below pluck the wings off insects, the thin films slipping from their fingers and falling to the mud under their feet. They do not see me, as they do not see the face of the wind. I have no altar.
I am between these realms, a tree who has taken root along the jagged rocks, reaching out along the ice until I find a sliver of soil. When my seeds float down from the mountain, what makes them decide where to land? Why depend on the seldom gifts of the cliff and its winds beating down, when there are valleys of fertile soil below? Or is it that the valley is too small to spread their wings? Is it that they strive to test their limits? Is it that they want to be closer to the gods? I am here and I have been here. But what am I but a whisper upon the peaks? Do I claim to be divine? I say again, I have no altar.
Some say I form the breezes between my hands, releasing them to drift where they may. They never say whether they’re refreshing breezes of summer or icy gusts of winter. The fruits may be sweet, but each carries the bitterness of a seed. Can one be divine if they cannot ease it? But then, has any god ever succeeded? Let alone, I have no altar.
Is this what it is to ascend? To be made into nothing but mythos to the people? A simple image, yet alive on their lips, more obscure as the years pass. Maybe that is the nature of divinity. To become alone on the peak, time passing endlessly.
The more remarkable beings are those who tread upon the thread between life and death. Those who take their blind steps, each day their bodies swaying to each side. There is a certain faith in living. They right themselves and right themselves until the day they finally fall. Within this great balancing, wouldn’t they be sharper, quicker on their feet than the gods tucked safely in the clouds above?
I feel they are too forgotten. These days the children murmur words the older ones cannot understand.
They, holy things, in the brightest black, are the only ones who seek me. Their hands reach for my face, pressing gently until I blink. The immortals never shut their eyes. They come to me, soot all over their cheeks, asking to sip from the clear mountain spring. I say, who am I to guard such a thing? I have no altar. They say, then as reward, we will tell you a truth.
The old world’s days are numbered.
I think of the great sects, each bending to whisper into another’s ear. The wine spills from the table as the water pours over the cliffs. The swords find their graves amidst their clashing. I thought I was far enough to have forgotten, but I know that for each letter I send, there are feet that tread the mountain path, hands that deliver it to yours.
It was the coldest day of winter when my clear eyed boy went down the mountain. He had the purest core of all, crystal, and precious beyond measure. I had only once before seen anything like it. He made me want to wrap my arms around him, to trap him here where he would be saved. At first I did not care if it smothered him. Why would he betray me? But what, then, was I? He was not meant to be caged, as he is a crane with wide white wings. More than before, my heart ached from fate’s tireless blows, and a tear fell from my eye. I live in the nest from which they fly, among the strewn feathers. I’d lost three. But no bird wishes for her eggs to lie still, perfect pearls on a chain. She longs for destruction, the shattering of what she’d so carefully woven for them. It isn’t the young who feel their plunging as they fly for the first time, but the one perched above.
I kiss him by one ear. Temperance. I kiss him by the other. Compassion. I pray for them to fall upon you.
I had no doubt they would. He was of the last vestiges of the old world, beautiful and strong. They were going to break him and blot the light from his eyes. I could feel his death approaching with his every step. Does a god ever find herself on her knees? To whom does she pray for him? Is it not a human who cries such tears, sinking in among this clay? I am nonexistent. I am omnipresent.
It is a place unsilenced by the falling snow. A place where the sects whisper and plot in darkened rooms and murky waters. Where the clouds have descended over their golden cores, obscuring their light. The valleys fall windless, the fog ever growing. Its weight is paralyzing. They cannot see the moon in their delirium. He was too bright, he was too bright. I could not keep him, though I knew, like it was for those before, it was certain death. Even those who have an altar can only stand still if the worshippers walk away.
Little did I know I had constructed the end. My beautiful one, our daughter. She could have grown to be like me, gazing out over the peaks with eyes that never shut. She could have traced the summer breezes and known each by name, but always with the thunder at a click of her tongue.
I wish I could say she was stolen from me in the dead of night, but I had seen her great will. Nothing could alter her course. And, as such, she left me too. This world coveted her. They built thrones and hung flowers. But can this new world ever salvage, can it ever save? Can it ever catch the fruit before it strikes the ground? She was the brief flash of a star, then fell from the sky. The comet shines brilliant in its dying, yet remains chained to its arc.
The old world was ending, even if I had sought out her son, even if I covered his eyes. He had the same will. He was made of the earth itself, of the deepest, sharpest stones. Who was I, if I tried to alter the lines across his palms? They ran deeper than any I could carve. I am no god. I have no altar. Am I also a victim of fate? Yet, I have not left this peak for centuries. How am I different, as still as the statues to which they pray? Does some power yet dwell in me? But those who descend cannot return here to muddy the streams, their feet covered in the soot of the valley. Even if that person was me.