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There once was a nymph who was a devout servant of the moon. As such, in spite of all his beauty, kind-heartedness, and undeniable charm, he had promised himself to a life of gentleness and chastity— to a singular, silver-lighted love. His name was Neige.
There once was, in similar fashion, a god who commanded the heavens, wielding arrows of intense light and heat, and he, for all of his fearsome power, carried in his heart an abundant and generous love for all that was beautiful. He was called many things: lord of thunder, king of gods, he who metes out divine judgment. His name was Rook.
Rook was deeply in love with Neige. He, like many others, was not immune to his doe-eyed gaze and sparrow-like laughter, and despite knowing where the young nymph’s allegiances lied, he could not stop himself from growing fonder of him by the day.
There once was a goddess who, serving as this tragedy’s jealous catalyst and as patroness of marriage, grew intolerant of her husband’s infidelity. She was named Vil.
Listen well, mortals, for this is a story that forever changes the night sky.
This is a tale told in caution of the gods’ wrath.
This is a song sung in reverence towards the gods’ unending love.
It is beside a still pond that this story begins, verdant green and balmy beneath a lazy sun. The light reflecting off the water shimmers even in the shaded copse of willows, and it dances in golden flecks about Neige’s brow as he rests from an earlier hunt. He reclines against the trunk of a great tree beside his spoils, a limp and wet lump that was once a burrow full of hares.
His tunic is spotless, and this more than all other things about the boy— more than his shiny brown eyes and his apple-red cheeks— draws the god of lightning closer to him.
He had watched the whole thing with rapt interest. The graceful flush of fur fleeing its safe haven in the ground, the methodical, light-footed stalk across the forest, and finally the quick, almost merciful takedown. It was all done so precisely and so swiftly, that not a drop of blood had been spilled.
This skill of course was a gift from the nymph’s patroness: the goddess of the moon, the hunt, and of sacred chastity. Oftentimes, Rook would find himself lamenting this. How he wished to be ruler of the hunt. He’d trade his kingdom and authority for this coveted role, if only for the thrill of it.
If only for Neige’s lovely, loyal hand.
Neige, unsurprisingly, would have none of it, spurning the king of the gods over and over again with a most serene smile and a shake of his dark head.
“I am not for you,” he would say, before pointedly returning to paying him no mind.
No one had ever refused Rook or his affections before, and that stirs him. The novelty of it tickles him and feeds into the gravitational pull threading them together.
Still, Rook would not continue to impose upon Neige his insistent attentions for two reasons.
One: he is a benevolent, gentlemanly ruler, who would never abuse nor flaunt his abundance of white-hot power to be a pest.
Two: his wife is an impossibly jealous and unstoppable force.
It mattered not to Vil if Rook’s intentions were innocent or borne of simple curiosity or want for friendship. His queen would have none of it. She would not even stand to listen to mere rumors of him looking at anyone else, much less approaching them.
No, Rook had learned his lesson with sweet Leto and strong Alkmene, with gentle Echo and bull-headed Io. He could not tempt Vil’s temper. He would not subject another poor soul to her volatile fury. Not Neige.
Still, Rook craved Neige’s company. The want to be by his side gnawed at him like intense hunger, and he ached to hear his voice, to be regaled with the tales about his day and blessed with his twinkling laughter.
The solution was simple enough.
Neige was not for him. He had said as much.
But if not for him, if not for the king of the gods and the heavens itself, then…
Neige sits by that cool pond, draped by the dappled light of the sun. He hums a sweet song to himself while idly polishing his knife, the very same he had just used to dispatch his handful of hares. They are tribute to his goddess, lying expectantly in the grass.
He is waiting.
The first time Rook had come to him disguised, adorned in the moon goddess’ pelts and bearing her quiver (or, at least, a very convincing replica of it), Neige had thrown himself at his feet to whisper reverent praises into the hem of his tunic. The motion equally appalled and moved Rook to tears, the feelings washing over him in alternating, warm tides. In the undercurrent of it all was shame for his trickery, yes, but it was all swept away once Rook pulled the nymph to his feet. They spent the afternoon in pleasant, easy conversation about nothing at all.
The second time was easier. When Neige saw him approach, saw him glide over the ground without disturbing a single blade of grass or budding blossom stalk, he greeted him with a warm smile and a great fowl tied with string around its feet. After the false god accepted this offering, the duration of this encounter was spent like the first: in idle chitchat.
The third and fourth were much the same, casual, mundane, and just long enough to run out of things to say. Their meager hours together were so pleasant and so plain that any onlooker might even describe them as boring, but it always left them both in high spirits, which was enough. And it was nothing more than that. Nothing less.
Neige— beautiful, unknowing boy, grew too readily accustomed to the routine of it all, and Rook…
Rook grew careless.
He had been sure that no one followed him, disguised as he was, but on this fifth and final encounter with the beloved nymph, unbeknownst to him, he is being watched. In the same way that Rook had just witnessed Neige’s masterful hunt, Vil lurks, waiting to catch her idiot husband in his unfaithful act.
She watches as Rook mischievously stalks behind the tree upon which Neige rests, singing a simple, wandering tune under his breath as he awaits what he thinks to be his esteemed goddess. Rook leaps upon him, startling him with a cry, and the disguised god laughs so loudly Vil’s chest tightens. He is saying something to the nymph now, the two of them smiling, and Vil cannot hear, but she can see them.
Her husband accepts the carcass as if it were gold or ambrosia, and revulsion roils through the pit of her stomach. It made no sense to her. What was it about this mortal boy that endeared her husband to him so? He had only dead animals and paltry conversation to give. She could do that herself. She would lay waste to miles and miles of farmland and livestock and speak her throat raw if it meant Rook would look at her the way he looks at him.
Their hands touch.
That is a crime she cannot find it in herself to forgive.
Vil snaps her fingers. The scene around them melts away, with the trees stretching into marble columns and the grass hardening into polished stone floors. The boy, bewildered, staggers backwards, his sandals scraping against the ground. Confusion paints over his fair face, and he’s about to ask a plethora of questions— where are we? what happened? how did we get here?— but Rook understands the situation with immediate, chilling clarity. He comes to stand between Neige and his wife without a second thought.
They had been transported to Olympus. Rook knows this place in particular to be one of Vil’s gardens, a space that is resplendent and white and normally occupied by her beloved peacocks, but they had all fled lest they get in the way of the queen and her righteous anger.
Rook begins to speak in the moon goddess’ voice. “Vil—“
“Oh, stop,” she scoffs. “You look ridiculous. Enough with the farce, Rook, and away with your stupid games.”
With another snap of the queen’s lithe fingers, Rook’s disguise is stripped from him with a blinding flash, his mantle torn from his shoulders, his quiver ripped from his back. He may as well have been made to stand naked before them. Shame wraps its cold fingers around his middle as Neige’s eyes widen in horror and understanding. He had been deceived.
When Rook finally gathers the courage to look at Neige, to offer some bumbling apology, to do anything at all, the boy does not acknowledge him. He can only steel his heart and turn away as Vil addresses him. He grips the hilt of his hunting knife in a futile display of resistance, but his fingers tremble pitifully. It will not do anything to save him, he knows, but just the act of holding it brings him a modicum of comfort.
“I want you to know, boy,” she says, and though she is talking to him, she is staring down her husband with a wild look the entire time, “that what is to happen to you is not your fault. Still. You must be made an example. But what to do… What to do with a pretty thing like you…”
Neige begins to beg. “Please, mercy, goddess, queen of queens–”
“Silence, fool,” she snaps, turning her wild, manic stare his way. Upon seeing him, her eyes round out, as if struck with sudden inspiration. “A bear.”
The voice of the queen of the gods rings through the air like a metal bell, clear and cold. A wave of ice ripples across the marble plaza, and all Rook can do is stare from where his feet have frozen to the ground. Cowardice overwhelms him as he remembers the agony of Leto and Alkmene, the loneliness of Echo, and the transformation of Io.
“A bear,” she says again, with a smile that does not quite reach her eyes, as wolves snarl at cornered deer. Her teeth glint cruelly in the glare of the sun as she speaks. “For his wrongdoings against me, I shall transform you into a bear.”
The nymph’s eyes go wide, and he attempts to take a step backwards, away from the frightening deity, but she closes the gap between them in one elegant stride. She reaches out, cupping his chin with her icy palms.
Vil’s grin grows wider as she caresses his perfectly round cheeks. His smooth skin. “You shall crawl on all fours and sustain yourself on mud. Your body will be covered in coarse, shaggy hair, and never again will you use your sweet voice to bewitch another man, much less my fool husband.”
When she releases him, the heavens begin to hum with an oppressive, dreadful magic.
Neige’s eyes dart frantically between Vil and Rook’s faces. It is clear he thinks to flee, but there is nowhere to run to. The king of the gods does not move. He is frozen in terror. In awe. The nymph begins to stammer half teary-eyed pleas for forgiveness, for help– half stuttering, panicked nonsense.
Vil laughs at this. “Yes! Just like that. You shall groan and grunt stupidly for the rest of your days as an ugly beast. I will this into being now, in the name of fidelity, for the cause of righteousness.”
The nymphs' cries are drowned out by the drone of the goddess' transformative power, a rumbling melody as low and deep as the pits of Tartarus and as divine and final as the pinnacles of Elysium.
She points a glowing, sharp finger at him.
The ground beneath Neige trembles as his body is lifted by two large, invisible hands, the fingers of which begin to sculpt him into a hulking, unnatural shape, pulling and folding his pale body into a grotesque lump. Popping and cracking like twigs underfoot, his lithe limbs contort, starting with his feet, his sandals ripping from his toes as they transform into great claws. Fur grows in billows along Neige’s bloating body with clumps of it bursting through his fair skin as flowers come from dirt. Throughout it all, the din mounts to a fevered, hellish clangor that soars above the atmosphere until at last, with a resounding screech, his tunic tears from his chest.
A screaming roar pierces the sky.
The process takes all of one excruciating minute, but Rook stands where he is, transfixed on the sight of his beloved nymph’s shiny brown eyes growing dark, beady, and blank.
A glorious beast now stands before them, and he is the most beautiful thing the king of gods had ever laid eyes on. The bear that was once Neige towers above them, a wall of dark fur the color of tar. His muscles twitch and roll in uncoordinated waves as magic continues to stitch his soul into new sinew, and ever so slightly, he glows with Vil's wicked power. Rook holds his breath, as if afraid he’d blow out such splendorous shine with a single, shuddering exhale.
The bear’s front paws land on the ground with an impact that shakes all of Olympus.
Vil is saying something self-congratulatory and gleeful, but Rook cannot hear her over the sounds of his racing heart. He cannot bring himself to look upon her smug countenance. He cannot do much else but wait as her laughter and footsteps grow distant and they are left alone. Blissfully, wretchedly alone.
Neige— the bear plods aimlessly about the courtyard, grunting and snuffling. He does not seem to mind the state he is in, nor does he appear frightened or angered or anything at all. He exists now as no more than a dumb animal, and it is only when he takes a step back and away from him that Rook realizes what had just happened to him. What he had done to him.
He is beautiful, just as he always had been, but he had been changed. No longer is he the amber-eyed boy that indulged him in frivolous conversation, the rosy-cheeked nymph in the pristine white hunting robes, the swift-footed object of his affections.
He is both the victim and proof of Rook’s wanton greed.
Remorse floods his limbs in icy floes.
“Oh…” The single syllable falls from his lips unbidden as he tumbles to his knees. “Oh, forgive me.”
He cannot find the strength to pull himself to his feet; his grief weighs him down like a stone about his neck, and so he drags himself on all fours until he is cradling the beast’s snout and staring into its empty eyes. Such a terrible gaze. Such sharp teeth and heavy paws. Never again will he hunt with such graceful precision. Never again will he use his sweet voice to speak of nothing or taunt the king of the gods himself.
Even now, he turns his huge head innocently away from him with his nose in the air as if saying the words his throat can never say again.
I am not for you.
“You never were,” Rook weeps and beats his chest. “Oh, beautiful Neige, forgive me.”
He could never mend this wrong, and he could not turn him back into a mortal who would again and again fall victim to Vil’s endless wrath. And he cannot keep him for himself; this much is certain.
With tears of ichor running down his cheeks, in one final act of solipsistic petulance, Rook presses his lips to the broad crown of his head, pushing transformative magic into his skull. It rewrite’s Vil’s spell, carefully undoing the mangled knots Neige’s body had been twisted into.
Light weaves its way into his limbs, leaking gilt into his veins and perfusing through him. The magic follows Rook’s gentle hands as he runs his palms over Neige’s wiry fur. His fingers plunge into his soft undercoat, which begins to slough off in ribbons, peeling away layer by layer to reveal the glowing pool of starlight that had taken the place of his innards. It spills over the gods wrists and forearms in warm, golden rivulets, and Neige startles at this. He attempts to wrest himself from his grasp, huffing and grunting in agitation.
Rook hushes him gently. “I will not hurt you. Please be still, child, and hear me. For all of your kindnesses towards me, and for my foolish transgressions towards you, I give you this one gift. I return you to the cradle of the skies. I place you in the arms of your patroness.”
He kisses him again as his body dissolves into shimmering sand, which rises from the marble ground in gentle, looping curls, as if caught by a passing breeze. It winds toward firmament, past the blazing chariot of the sun and into the fabric of Nyx’s dark skirts. The molten pieces of his body settle into the horizon, nestled between the tail of winged Draco and the head of ferocious Leo.
He is seated in the glowing light of the moon.
There is a moment when, right before he ceases to exist on this plane of existence, a flicker dances across Neige’s eyes. It is the cue of intelligent thought returning to him one final time.
The two of them regard each other in silence, saying nothing while awash in the gentle tide of Rook’s enchantment. In Neige’s gaze, Rook can find no redemption. No grace. Only bare-faced acceptance.
That is enough for him. It will be enough.
And then he is gone. The great bear sieves through the god’s fingers and scatters into a place where he can no longer reach him.