Chapter Text
Love is a cunning curse. This is what the poets decided many years ago, before Earth was called Earth and people were called people.
Back then, those very first poets were known as Gods.
Creatures that came and went how they pleased, causing whatever chaos suited them best at the time. No one was around to stop them, after all.
Fires would burn newly sprouted trees, wild waves would doom whatever lay ashore, wind would tear down even the sturdiest of nature’s structures—for they were Gods, and why be a God if you could not do anything you wanted? What would be the point of all that power?
Back then, those poets or Gods or creatures or whatever you would like to call them, were very much alone. They believed they would be alone for centuries to come.
Back then is when and where our story starts.
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Kokomi watches the moon rise above the water, content on the shore. Her tailfins enjoy the gentle layer of sea washing over them every now and then.
The bones poking out of her arms are shiny as ever, sharp as ever. In her throat, there is a song. It is stuck there, waiting to be thrown at the water, carried beyond the horizon line by win.
“Bring me the treasures from beyond…. Bring me a heart, heavy and firm…” Kokomi looks up from where her eyes are fixated on the sea, to the man standing next to her.
Ajax has exchanged his tail for legs, though his skin is still covered in scales much like hers. He is grinning brightly, and she pats the space beside her, inviting him to sit as she continues the song he started.
“Of deepest depths I am fond…. Of all that makes one squirm…” The two of them sing in unison, voices matched in harmony, a gentle melody that lulls.
When the hot sun becomes slightly too much, both of them jump back into the water, right past all of the smaller creatures that have bubbled up to the surface, eyes dim of light, minds filled with their song.
The salt against their gills and scales is refreshing as they swim further out and down, towards the crevices where light is hard to find. It hides from the eye, like prey that does its best to blend in with its surroundings so that it might escape a predator.
The sea is not a kind thing. No large body of water is, for it likes to jump out with surprises to those foolish enough to venture into it without a means of protection—and Gods are not protection.
Gods are the things that roam these depths looking to kill. Gods are the things that lurk in the hidden, dark spaces. Gods are the thing others call predator.
Even as Ajax and Kokomi laugh side by side while swimming, their teeth are impossible to miss—these wild, jagged things—to all the life forms beside them in the water. What was once a full reef is now entirely empty.
But this is how things have been since the beginning of time, and not only in the water. Out on land, where the Gods without tails roam, entire habitats can come off as wastelands. And further up, where there should really be birds, there are other winged things taking their place.
Diluc stands with her feet right at the edge of the rock, feet wrapped in material around her soles. Part of the cliffside crumbles, tumbling down, as she stretches her wings and watches the creatures of the depths return to the sea, done with their song.
Yoimiya lies in the air beside her, enjoying the sun on her face. “You’re looking at them again. You know you can go down onto the shore to exchange words with them, right? They have legs, and so do you.”
“Our dear Luc is somewhat of a recluse,” chuckles Kaveh, dancing around on invisible stones. “Unless all the Gods are a-gathering, she stays in the clouds.”
The recluse in question is currently scowling, unnerved by the fact that she will never know what goes on in the part of the sea that shimmers black over blue. These are Gods they do not know the power of.
Those of them with wings have never hidden what they are, what they do, where they do it. They do not hold themselves above the others, who hide in the sea or burrow themselves into the earth, but they recognise that they are different in this sense.
So it is the beginning of times, and the Gods are divided, as they will be in many stories to come.
And just like in those stories, they will eventually butt heads.