Work Text:
The shepherd remembered the day he was taken by the God of Spring. How it felt, meeting a god in the flesh. The heat, the rush of light, everything smelling of spring flowers: daphne, lilac, iris. The hot swoon that overcame him at the God's burning touch.
He was the most comely youth he had ever seen, the God told him. The shepherd, wide-eyed, believed him. "Come with me to the mountain where the Gods live, and you shall have beauty and immortality," said the God.
So the shepherd left everything without a backward glance. Family, friends, the lambs running in the field, his faithful dog. What are the charms of the world compared to a God's?
The fall, when it came, curdled their love like spoiled milk. All was sweetness, until it wasn't. The God's attention wandered; the shepherd's comeliness no longer held any fascination. As the new spring approached, a new boy appeared, younger and even more beautiful.
The God no longer had eyes for the shepherd. Bereft of his God's gaze, he wondered if he still existed.
The shepherd left. He would find his way home, he told himself, to his family, his friends, the lambs running in the field, his faithful dog. He wandered for an untold age. He entered a wasteland, cold and arid; with no God to ease the way, he had to walk it himself, every step. He walked till his feet bled, his stomach shriveled, and the cold overtook his body.
He didn't remember fainting. Every grey day had blurred into the next, until darkness overcame him, and he came to, sore and starving, in a familiar meadow, to a familiar face.
It was his best friend, holding his face and calling his name. Something was licking his hand—his faithful dog nuzzling him, tail a blur.
All went black again.
When he awoke, it was in his bed, his mother by his side. She wept when his eyes opened, and when he said, "Mama?"
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The first year he returned, the shepherd felt the lack of the God as a yawning chasm in his center. It was worst in the spring, with the smell of daphne and lilacs and iris in the air. He remained thin and brittle; his eyes yearned for a flash of divine light, a golden visage.
But no God appeared. Instead, fat lambs tumbled at his feet; his faithful dog managed the sheep; his family fed him and watched with worried eyes; his best friend held him as he wept.
A year passed; two, three, more. The God never returned. The shepherd stopped looking.
And then one day, the realization dawn on the shepherd, that as intoxicating and glorious as the God's regard had been, it had never been love.
Love was a dog snoring at the foot of his bed, and his best friend good-naturedly cursing him when he beat him at cards.
Love was his mother staying up all night making him honey cakes for his birthday; the nuzzle of his favorite ewe's muzzle in his hands; his father telling bad jokes with a straight face.
Love was dancing at his sister's wedding and hearing the loud crack of her laugh all day.
Love was people crying with happiness that he'd returned after he'd been godstruck, because not all of the boys had come back alive—or at all.
The Gods moved the world, but it was the everyday, mundane stuff that gave life savor and made the world worth living in. The upward push of green things towards the sun; the taste of warm bread; the warm look in his best friend's eyes that was beginning to warm him, too: everyday things that overflowed with beauty and meaning; all of it worthy; all of it riches enough, and more.