I never knew my father. He died before I was born, and all I had to know him by was my inheritance of flesh: my eyes, dark on my pale face like puddles of ink spilt on an empty page, and my hair, a crown of fiery copper curls. An angel, mother called me when she bathed me as a child, her hands devoted in their worship of my form, a blessing for both of us. Both her and my father, she meant, for she was convinced that he loved me even in death. How could he not? It had been his greatest wish – his overwhelming desire – to sire a child of his own blood. I was the answer to his and my mother's prayers, their desire incarnate. And for it, I was loved – for it, I was treasured.
Yet to treasure something is to covet it, to guard it zealously and keep it locked away where no one else can see. For the first twelve years of my life, all I knew of the world outside the wooden cottage where we lived in the forest happened under the strict supervision of my mother. She would take me into town, her hand caging mine as people greeted her on the street, pulling me closer to her whenever someone approached us, almost as if she feared that they would snatch me from her grasp and steal me into the unknown. Whenever someone cooed at me with adoration, trying to pat my hair, she strained as if pricked by a thousand needles, her mouth twitching into a grimace of simmering rage, and her boots would march faster as we left, dragging me along in a blind drive to keep me from strange hands.
Not even other children were allowed to be near me for long. Mother looked at them with a different kind of dread – not as if they could steal me from her, but as if she saw in them something terrible, something monstrous. She watched me play with them, yes, and smiled lovingly as we pranced around, yet her eyes watered with unsaid things, secrets she kept from the world and her own child. When she approached me to take me back home, her hands were raw from digging her own fingernails into her palms. Even at that tender age I knew this meant that my mother hid some great Truth from me, and it burned her from the inside. The other children would call out to me and ask that I stay just a little longer to finish our games, but I did not dare to disobey my mother; she trembled as we walked away, the children's voices coiled like snares around her throat as she choked out an apology that I was unsure was meant for me.
I was forced to experience life vicariously. We had a sizeable collection of books through which I experienced sights foreign to me – tales of adventures on exotic lands and dangerous quests in alien worlds where no men may tread. I lived through the protagonists of these stories as if their skin was my own, devouring one book after another and aching for more – more books, more stories, more lives than the one I had. Something inside me stirred as I began to understand how small our town truly was, and I felt a crushing weight upon my heart as I realized that even it seemed like the farthest of shores to one like me whose entire world might just as well fit within four wooden walls. And from then on, each time my mother led me away from the other children – our games invariably incomplete – I envisioned myself a prisoner in my own house.
I do not resent my mother. In her own way, she was protecting me, for adults can perceive things that children cannot, and she knew very well that there would always be those among the townspeople whose lips dripped with poisoned words that could be aimed at my heart like invisible arrows. Rumors about my father's death had circulated even before I was born. "He is not dead; he simply left her for another woman." "He beat her, and she took her vengeance." "She sacrificed him to an unknown god in a dark bargain." I heard these words and many more throughout my childhood despite my mother's best attempts at shielding me, and every time I looked at her mutely, too scared to ask the questions that festered in my throat.
"Your father loved you, and I loved him more than you could ever imagine," she said to fill the oppressive silence. "He died, but today he would be proud of you, our son."
"But why did he die?" I asked her one time. "Was he ill?"
"In a way," my mother responded. "He had the affliction that plagues us all: the want for something he could never have in this life."
I never told my mother that this answer meant nothing to me; the itch to know the true reason behind my father's death remained buried within me – hidden, but with its roots entrenched painfully in my heart. Neither did I tell her that sometimes, when I heard the rumors, I dreamt dim dreams of a strange forest not our own, its trees like obsidian spears thrust against a starless night of absolute blackness, their sharp leaves rustling under no wind and their roots hidden by fog. From beyond the thicket, deep in the bowels of the forest, something waited.
As I aged, my mother's reluctance to allow me my freedom began to cede; the leash with which she held me became longer, looser as I began the transition from boy to man. I was still not allowed to bring anyone over to my house or stay out after hours, but I now had friends to show me what lay beyond my books and my house, and who did not regard me as an oddity despite the way I had been raised. My mother wrapped what dread she still felt in practiced politeness, in words like silk that belied her wariness of any and all who laid eyes on me, her precious child. She was, after all, a saleswoman, a trader of small miracles, and in her line of work words had power; the illusion of her tranquility was the only lie she ever sold. Indeed, she seemed to realize that one day I would be alone and would have to look after myself, so she began teaching me her trade.
"This is how we serve others," she said. "These are our small miracles, and through them we give each person a little magic, a little hope."
I progressed rapidly through my magical studies. The voracious hunger that had led me to devour novel upon novel now made me gorge on my mother's tomes of arcane knowledge; I savored every magic formula, every sacred name and ritual in those yellowed pages and smiled for I understood that these were more than just the tools of the profession I was to inherit – they were the key to my own emancipation.
At the end of my first year of learning, I knew all the stars in the sky and how to interpret their movements, understood the messages relayed by tree bark and rain, and could read palms with my eyes closed. I could also do things that no book had taught me: I commanded fire to dance on my skin without burning me and cast words of power without performing the ritual sacrifices to their ancient patrons, and I could even feel things within others – things both vile and beautiful, secret yearnings and shameful cravings. I felt invincible, as if the world I had been denied all my life was at last within my reach. The once sheltered child stood at the precipice of adulthood, and I knew that the day on which I would spread my wings was about to dawn.
My mother, however, did not praise me for my prodigious skill; instead, she looked on with renewed fear as I went into town and began offering my services to the people. "Young mage," they said after I had performed my small miracles, "you honor us and your family by continuing to help us. Please tell your mother that she has raised a most wonderful child. Your father would have been proud." Yet when I relayed these kind words and expressed my desire to help them further, my mother shuddered as if I had blasphemed. Her eyes once more watered with unspoken terrors, and she demanded that I swear not to use my magic more than was necessary.
"But mother," I protested, "can you not see how powerful I have become? I can grow even more skilled and do more for these people. There are things you cannot do, even with all your knowledge. You cannot cure the frost pox, nor can you command the earth to bear fruit in the dry season. You cannot know the heart's true desire. But I am learning how to do all these things and so many more. I can be so much more."
Her response was a frigid one.
"You are ambitious, and that is the way to perdition."
"My only ambition is to be a better mage, a better healer, a better man," I said as tears began burning in my eyes. "I desire to–"
"You desire," she said, and her words dripped like tainted water into my heart. "I desired once too, and so did your father; that is why we brought you into the world. You are born of want and thus you have wants of your own, my son, but I must warn you that the price we pay can prove too much to bear. I should know, for I live with it every day. Sometimes I regret…"
"You regret birthing me," I punctuated. I knew this was not true, for I could sense the emotions writhing in her heart: fear and sadness, yes, but love most of all, love for the child who now accused her of the most abominable thing a parent can feel. And yet, I chose these words to punish her, to make her small as if this could heal the hurt of being her thrall for so many years. On the next morning, I apologized, but I knew that things would never be the same again. I had stumbled upon forbidden knowledge – the understanding of my own violence – and it tormented me.
For some time, my own guilt led me to try to please my mother. I promised what she asked of me and at first refrained from employing my magic beyond what was strictly necessary to our trade. I blessed the newborn and the dying; I helped find stray sheep and interpreted omens good and bad; I took the coin I was owed and went home.
Yet in the age of self-discovery, when the approval of others is the measure of oneself and every stroke of the ego is ecstasy, promises are hard to keep. And so, I indulged in the attention of my peers by using my magic to perform vulgar parlor tricks, awing and terrifying them with my power; beneath the trees, where no one could see, I fancied myself an Archmage. Word spread through the town's youth of the spectacles I offered, of the marvelous lights I spread through the night like rainbow fireflies and of the monstrous shadows I conjured around the fire as I told horror stories. Soon my following extended beyond my close friends who had known me since childhood, and every full moon an entire retinue would gather in the forest to observe me, entranced by my miracles that were small no longer.
Among these young men and women were some who did not regard me with awe, but with suspicion or brazen mockery; children are cruel, it is true, and some of them become crueler still when they become adults. And so, from the crowd one night came a voice that challenged me to confront a part of me that I had strived to forget about.
"Tell us what happened to your father!" The voice jeered. "They say that your mother killed him and buried him next to your house!"
"Now that is a horror story!" Another one joined in, laughter erupting from the multitude. "Tell us! Tell us how she killed him!"
I did my best not to heed them, yet that night the words felt different than when whispered with vague fear or pity; they were harsh and full of malice. My dreams were equally malignant: candles and circles within circles, blood spilling over the floor as bones shattered and became dust. I heard a voice, a pleading, screaming voice that slowly devolved into gurgles and sounds unspeakable. Once more, the black forest spread before me, all-encompassing, and the thing that waited beyond the trees called out to me. And as the screams rattled me into awakening, as my bare feet sank into cold soil, I knew that sooner or later I would answer. I shook as if I had been cast into an ocean of ice, my body recoiling as I tried to find my footing on the ground where I stood; I had sleepwalked outside of my house and now found myself amidst the small plot of land where my mother grew vegetables. It was she whose screams had woken me up, enjoined with the nightmare that had drawn me to this place where, I quickly concluded, my father was indeed buried.
"I heard him," I told my mother. I was shaking not from cold, but with rage. "I heard him in my dreams! He called to me! It is all true, is it not? You murdered him. You killed him and buried him right next to our house!"
"No!" My mother sobbed. "I loved him! I could never harm him!"
"Then why is he dead? And why did you never tell me he was buried here?"
Mother fell to her knees and clasped at the wet, cold earth, which crumbled between her fingers.
"I loved him so much, my precious Kari. He was my sun and moon, my whole life. I would have done anything he asked of me, but I could not give him the one thing he truly desired: to have a child of his own! He would love me no longer, for I had failed him, and so I found a way, a power that could finally heal his broken heart. I gave him you, my child, but the cost…"
No. This could not be it. This was the Truth she had kept from me all this time? The air in my lungs grew heavy and my stomach heaved as I finally understood. Through thick threads of acrid saliva, through the anguish of the revelation, I cupped her face and said:
"I want to see him."
We spent the entire night unearthing him, digging for the Truth I was owed. My mother wept silently with every strike of the shovel, and it took every fiber of my strength to keep me from rushing to embrace her. By first light of dawn, I gazed at the bare bones of Kari, at his pulverized pelvis and his skeletal mouth forever fixed in a mute scream. Here he was as he had been all this time, his flesh reduced to nutrients for our crops, nourishing me in rot as he had done in death. But this was not the Truth that had called me here, the one that my mother had strived so hard to hide from me. No, this Truth lay buried deeper still than the bones, entombed in a sepulcher of soil and silence yet slowly clawing its way out: tiny but numerous, black and ashen, the toadstools grew where he rested, twisting their mycelia around his bones, their bulbous heads pointing upwards at me like accusing fingers that demanded I admit to what I already knew. This is not my father.
Neither I nor my mother spoke of it again. We reburied Kari and kept a wordless pact that the Truth needed no further addressing. Yet I could sense that something in her was broken, something that had precariously held her up for as long as she did not confront what she had done so many years ago. As time went by, she seemed to sink into herself, dragged down by the guilt she had tried to contain but which now returned to swallow her like a tempest wave. She stopped leaving the house, stopped talking and eating, and despite my best efforts to care for her she died only three months later. I buried her next to Kari, for she had loved him truly, and I mourned her until I had no more tears left.
The guilt I felt was all-consuming, and it drove me to shun all that I had once wanted. My friends and the people I had helped gave me their condolences, yes, but I had no further desire to indulge their company, nor to hear whatever rumors might now surge amongst the townsfolk about my mother's death; if they said I had killed her, it might as well be true. Thus began my penance, my life once more marked by isolation as I locked myself away inside the house, a prisoner of my own volition.
I began to deteriorate, mirroring my mother. Food was ash in my mouth, my body barely strong enough to keep down what little I managed to swallow. I allowed the house to grow untidy, filth and dust holding court over my shriveled being as I crawled into bed and quietly begged for my dreams to hold nothing but oblivion. Yet there was no expiation of my sins in the recesses of my own mind, and in my darkest nightmares I saw my mother prostrate on her bed, her cheeks sunken and her eyes hollow as she wasted away before me. I tried to implore her forgiveness, to tell her that I loved her and that I regretted everything I had said and done, but she did not listen. Her empty gaze went past me as if I did not exist, and soon her form was nothing but bones upon a bed of dirt, the black toadstools ensnaring them in their twisted embrace, still pointing accusingly in silent condemnation. Then I found myself in the forest once more, the trees all black pillars of dusk piercing the starless sky. From beyond came again the beckoning of the thing at the bottom of the dream. Sooner or later, it seemed to say. I am the call, and you are the answer.
One night, nearly delirious after many sleepless nights, I opened the door for the first time in months and walked out into the wilderness, barefoot and clad only in rags. The cold air was a scourge against my papery skin, and my feet ached at the sharp kiss of stone and litterfall. Aimless, I trod for as long as my body and spirit allowed, lost in the woods and wishing to dissolve to darkness amidst the void of a night that seemed eternal. And yet, in the distance, I saw light.
It was searing, painful to gaze upon, and strangely familiar. As I neared it, I realized that it hurt me not in the same way that a knife hurts the flesh or the sun hurts the eyes, but the way a kindly caress stirs the agony of a wounded heart. I felt moved by its sickliness, awed at its cruelty, and despite its perfidious glare I knew I stood at last before the Truth.
The Green Moon dominated the clearing on which I stood, the starless night a throne from where it presided over the black titans whose leaves still rustled like the whispers of an awaiting multitude. Poised at the zenith of the inky heavens, it bathed me in its blighting luminescence, a baptism of heavenly light. It was the call, and I was the answer. And yet, this overwhelming sense of familiarity did not cement itself into my soul until I felt them under my feet – the toadstools. They formed a great cluster at the center of the clearing, pulsing softly as I stepped into their midst, caressing me with a tenderness not unlike my own mother's, almost as if they meant to lull me, to welcome me back after a long absence. My mouth felt dry, my tongue heavy as I muttered to myself:
"This… this is where I come from."
Of substance mortal, of dream divine. Moonchild.
I looked deep into the light, into the face of my father – the Green Moon.
"Why?" I asked it. "Why did you make me?"
Desire.
Want.
"I… I do not understand."
I unravel your fears and certainties. I make naught your misguided lies.
I am the mirror of your soul, the measure of your desire.
You were wanted, so I delivered you.
And now, child of void and moonlight, you return.
"They are dead. My mother and… Kari… they are dead. Is that why you have called me here after all this time?"
I am calling always. Only now, in the silence of absence, do you hear me.
"What do you want?"
The eternal question.
The only one that matters.
I want to be whole, for I am divided.
Cleaved.
Sundered.
You were my answer to my call, a self within myself.
You, Moonchild.
The threads that bind us should have brought us unity beyond communion, oneness everlasting.
Yet here you stand, tethered yet separated. Wanting.
You are weak. Frail. Unworthy.
I remain unfulfilled, for you remain you.
As before, the one I sire is naught but a stillborn dream, a fading echo of a desperate yearning.
"As before? Do you mean there are more like me?"
One.
There will be more.
"I want to see it. Show me."
And so it shall be. Your desire laid bare.
I awoke in the woods, curled into a ball in the dirt. My head hurt as if something was attempting to hatch from within, and my feet felt a restlessness so unrelenting that it could only be the call of my own desire waiting to be fulfilled; I would soon have to leave behind everything I knew.
I went home and shaved and cleaned myself for the first time in weeks. Then I bought a horse and a wagon to transport what few belongings I considered important for my journey – a few tomes of ancient magic and the artifacts key to my craft – and left my empty house behind. I did not say goodbye to anyone, nor did I look back; my former home, the town and its people now belonged – like my mother and her great sin – to dust and silence. Now I followed the call of my own desire, the beckoning that pointed the way like a compass whose needle pierced me deep inside.
I do not know how many months I spent on the road, only that spring gave way to summer as I made my way through the pastures and hills, the dry season looming over the fields and the people who sowed them. I passed many towns and villages, and although I was reticent to stop and rest, for the thing at the end of my path beckoned ever louder, sometimes circumstances forced me to seek the hospitality of the townsfolk. In exchange, I provided my services and tried to help them however I could. Yet I soon realized that, after my encounter with my father, something within me had changed: before, I could feel the desires of the people around me, but now I could lay bare their truths with a mere glance as if peeling every layer of their being down to the core. The things that were once hidden now bubbled up to the surface, shameful and full of unfulfilled woe, and what could I do but sate them?
At night, while everyone slept, I sat within the sigil painted on the floor of my wagon and whispered into their dreams. I uttered secret words of comfort and resolution, tools for them to achieve what they desired. To the baker I gave the key to the candlemaker's heart; to the lawman I gave the words to extract any confession from the throats of thieves and murderers; to the writer I gave threads of gold for her to weave great stories with. I thought I was doing good unto them, for even these small things must surely have great meaning to them and achieving them would bring them joy.
Soon I realized, however, that my works had been undeserved blessings. Their dreams brought into the waking world were petty things, small and myopic; they did not wish but for the most immediate satisfaction, and once these things they craved so much were fulfilled, they sought no further meaning than to revel in them and grow grotesquely bloated like leeches full of blood. The baker did not wish to marry the candlemaker for love, but to clutch her riches and successful business in his greedy hands. The lawman wished not to uphold the laws and values of the land, but to dominate others and grind them under his heel; the writer wished not to weave stories that would enthrall the mind and fill the heart with wonder, but for her name to eclipse those of her contemporaries, diminishing them. My whispers, my small miracles, had been wasted on these people.
And yet, was I any different from them? Had I not wished to raise myself higher than my peers through my craft? Had I not put myself at the center of a stage to capture the attention and praise of the townspeople? The thought repulsed me, and I felt as if something moved beneath my skin, slimly and thorny and biding its time to emerge from me like a malformed butterfly leaving its cocoon. I shuddered as I thought that the same poison that tainted the veins of these unworthy creatures coursed through my own body, binding me to them, leading me to make the same mistakes and commit the same sins. I was no better than them, and my judgement held no value.
Theirs is the philosophy of lice.
Theirs is the want without end.
They will gorge on your blessings until they burst and then try to satiate their ruptured bowels.
They will have all they have ever wanted and drown in it.
I began shunning towns and other travelers who I found on the road; I could not stand to look at their faces, to see myself reflected in their eyes as their words oozed with want. Yet the closer I came to my destination, the louder my father's voice became, and its condemnation of my unworthiness became harsher still. I could hear it even during my waking hours, rippling through my insides and stirring the thing that nested in my heart. Unseen, my flesh crawled over my bones, shifting and pulsing. I realized now that I had changed far more than I had first thought and that I was still morphing, becoming something different – but what?
In my dreams, I crawled over the forest floor under the perfidious glow of my father, my skin sloughing off as I wept and shuddered, retching as wet fragments of myself fell upon the toadstools as if they were reclaiming me piece by piece. Boils burst throughout my body, dripping with noxious fluids mixed with blood into an unrecognizable brown sludge. My own tremors forced bone through skin, and I coughed out my own tongue. Under the unblinking green eye, my humiliation reached its climax as I finally lost the last of my strength and allowed the mushrooms to embrace me.
You are filled with the same thing that revolts you.
You are the image of themselves mirrored in flesh and dream.
You are shifting, changing, becoming more.
And yet you cannot see, you cannot grasp this Truth that grows from within you.
I scratched myself bloody in my sleep, and upon waking up I cried silently and cursed my mother for her folly, for it was she who had condemned me to this existence, bound me to the Green Moon in her selfish pursuit of a man who no longer loved her. In the end, she had sacrificed not one life at the altar of dream and want, but three. And just as Kari had screamed and writhed as his flesh was mortified to grant his misbegotten wish, just as my mother had been consumed by her own guilt and let herself die, so did I near the edge of my own sanity.
On the day the first thorns emerged through my skin from within, I reached the walls of the city. No one stopped me when I entered its open gates, for there was no one left to stop me. No one approached me as I wandered through the cobblestone streets, for they were merely shadows in the mist that enveloped the city like a shroud. I clenched my fists and felt the thorns that emerged from my palms bite into each other, then gazed up at the mountain of grey stone that loomed over the abandoned metropolis; there I would find the answers I came searching for.
I left the horse and the wagon behind and made my way through the nameless, voiceless city. Disturbed by the sound of my steps, unseen things called out to me from the empty houses whose windows had not been lit for years. They were echoes of the people who had once lived here, remnants of their memories that lingered precariously as time and dust eroded them into nothingness, lost to all but those who walked the line between the Dreaming and the Waking. All those unfulfilled cravings, all those regrets and fears and unspoken words still haunted the corpse city, beckoning me as if I could lay them to rest. Before, I might have strived to give them peace, but now my objective loomed overhead, and my steps were decided; I hardened my heart and cut my way through the silent begging of the city's ghosts.
It was midday when I reached the mountain and found the entrance into the depths – a crack barely wide enough for me to fit through, hidden away by dust and overgrowth. From within, a heavy shadow seemed to emanate, its colossal weight crushing the city over which it had been cast since forgotten times. As I entered, my thorns quivered painfully, rattling against each other like the last spasms of a dying bird. I let out a cry, and my own voice answered me from the depths; close to it rode the call that had led me here, the beckoning of my destiny – the voice that came from the faraway mouth of the titanic stone idol entombed upside-down below the mountain.
Down and down I went, past the great stone feet and the exquisitely carved stone robes, clinging to every crack and crevice to avoid plummeting into the void, shuddering as the anguished rattle of my thorns became more and more intense. Shadows swallowed my own shade, and in the abject darkness I knew there was no option but to reach the bottom. Then came light, faint and red and pulsing, and my father spoke to me again.
And now you see, Moonchild.
I stood on the statue's caved-in forehead, staring at the gaping hole where its face should be. Had it ever been there? Had its eyes and nose and lips been sculpted with the same care and detail as the rest of its colossal frame? Or was this place as it had always been – both a sepulcher and a womb?
Now you see.
My sibling met my eyes with His own empty gaze. Incomplete, forever unborn, He floated motionless in His amniotic sac, nested on the faceless visage of the dead God whose faith and corpse the Green Moon had defiled in its first attempt at fulfilling the mission I had both inherited and failed at. This, I realized, was meant to be its Firstborn.
Of flesh and dream divine, first of my children.
But an unborn child is no child, its potential smothered in the womb.
Even dead gods dream, and their dream is oblivion.
I tried to speak, but the thorns pushed out more painfully than before, and I fell prostrate before my sibling. I clawed at the stone floor to keep from clawing at my own flesh; it constricted me, my own frame crushing me as the tissue beneath the skin clamored to come undone. More and more thorns pierced me from within, wriggling their way outwards and covering me like sores cover a leper. I choked out a pleading moan, a wordless prayer, but the only gods there were mindless, dead or merciless.
Still you resist.
Even here, mirrored by the one who came before, you fail to grasp it.
You are unworthy, both of you, for you each lack what the other possesses.
What pathetic failures you are. You are extensions of my will, creatures born of my blighting light. I am at the center of your being, the force behind your every wish and craving, but you cannot fulfill the singular purpose of your creation. You cannot make me whole.
You are nothing, and to nothingness I should return you, yet I envision a different path, a different means to my end.
Do not fight it, Moonchild. Embrace it.
For there is no choice but mine and no fate but the one I weave.
In the end, there is only
Surrender.
A forsaken child of an eldritch father. A failed vessel of an incomplete god. Forever bound to the whims and schemes of others, my sole inheritance was the knowledge of my unworthiness. I had looked Truth in the eye and found nothing but emptiness, my purpose void and my free will denied. Like the men and women whose wishes I had fulfilled, I had followed a caprice without thinking of the consequences, selfish and shallow. As I gagged and writhed, I envisioned my mother's dying face, her great sin eating her from the inside out. She opened her arms to receive me, urging me to give in and suffer no more, to rest forever in the kindness of dirt and rot. Behind her, its light wrapped around her head like a halo, the Green Moon shone with all its bilious might. My father was right; one way or another, there was only surrender.
I dug my fingers into my face and pulled.
Skin sloughed off in my grasp with the ease of wet parchment. A new wave of searing pain was followed by a sense of renewal, my body fresh beneath the old skin. I clawed at my chest and in the luminescence of my sibling's amniotic fluid I saw that it was dark, smooth and glossy, like the carapace of a great scarab. I tore at my arms, where the thorns now proliferated like fungi, and saw that they were not thorns at all, but fingers. Vestigial and stubby, their nails sharp and crooked, they jutted from my new flesh at strange angles, flailing uselessly and grabbing at nothing. More of them covered my legs and back, and I realized that more were still emerging, worming their way out of my flesh.
In those moments, I felt no fear, only merciful release. I understood it now. I had failed at the task for which I was born, but that did not deprive me of purpose. A new dream may yet incarnate through me, through my whispers to both the willing and the lost. I was still changing and molting and becoming more, even as I thought that I reached the end of my journey. Yet my metamorphosis was not an end, but a means for the deity whose designs I could not uphold in my first form. Under my father's decree, I could be the knife and the compass, the hand that reaches out and the fist that crushes. The Green Moon had use for malleable tools, and my transformation would know no finale.
Now I saw.
Now I saw what nightmares would come.
A fiend with no eyes spasmed on the floor while chanting maledictions, his triumphant grin foaming as my father shone through shredded clouds in plain daylight.
Bodies burned in a pyre as a dancer recreated the sin of her predecessor, undulating like a serpent until all were ash.
A man born of paper and ink swam in the unfathomable depths of the Dreaming in search of the free will his creator had denied him.
I saw my siblings, my father's children yet to come. There would be more of them – more of us – and we would find each other in the mist. Our father would not stop until we served the purpose of our birth in one way or another, until at last it is made whole.
Still the Green Moon yearns to fulfill the desires of others, to let them bask in its blessed light. It is always calling, always beckoning from the bottom of the dream. What can its children do, if not fulfill its wish? From ancient lore I have crafted a new path for the willing to follow, for the lost to stumble upon. It will take them to the forest of black colossi, where my father's whispers dance in the unfelt wind. Under the starless sky, their hearts shall be laid bare, and the will of my father shall be done through them.
And as I descend to the dreams of mankind, my form forever morphing and shifting and becoming more, I plant but one seed for them to reap, one question for them to answer: do you know the Ritual?
☽