While the rest of the world had been anointed with Isopia for years, Mauna had only been granted a few days with her. He’d absorbed them all – remembered her face, her strengths, her irresistible touch of morality. She’d been beautiful. She’d been kind. She’d been brave. She’d been wise. She’d been so many other things intertwined – sometimes a raven, sometimes just the earth – and though he’d only had her for a minute specks of time, a granule of sand, she’d carved her way in and out of his soul. The little mountain considered it a blessing, a conviction, a promise, and didn’t stray, didn’t run, didn’t wander off the beaten path, searching for her, narrowing his eyes to stare into the infinite bliss. He wished, as all youths did, for her to come flying down from the clouds, on wings of satin, on pearls of sagacity, ready to regale them with everything she’d seen in their moments apart. The babe understood little else – had been witness to the flurry of movement, of motion, of chasms and bedlam, but not the root of it, not the effects, not the derailing consequences and horrors – the after that plunged his father into oblivion, that riddled over his uncle’s shoulders, that pulsed and pervaded through each and every heart. He’d never seen death until that day, had no name to describe the feeling of apprehension, the fear curled into his chest, into his gut, sliding along his ribs – but the emptiness, the hollowed bits torn away from him still registered, still lingered, still didn’t make sense. The tiny scion could tilt his head and dream, but so many of those could never become reality.
Otem told him so. Vulkan told him so. Maybe a part of him always recognized her absence as more than fleeting, as more than transitory, and the rest of his little frame couldn’t segment it, couldn’t be certain, couldn’t be sure. He’d seen magic, he’d seen mayhem, and couldn’t muster the difference, the parallels and contrasts, the blinding, horrific variations – because if Isopia could transform into a bird, why couldn’t she also become bits of dust, and return to them, same as before?
But, and here it was, stark, blunt, cutting the threads and webs of lies and deceptions, of specious armaments and dastardly tricks – wouldn’t she have come for them by now?
Wouldn’t she have longed to see her children’s faces? Wouldn’t she have yearned to see what they’d learned, heard their newest tales? He had so many for her, and she hadn’t come, she wasn’t here, she was gone.
It slashed the effervescent smile along his angelic grace. It lacerated the ebullience, the reverence harbored in his blood-red eyes (and why couldn’t they be gold, like hers?). It shorn away the quiet sanctions of his consecrated form, so everything seemed to fall apart, piece by piece, inch by inch, the tenderness, the warmth, shriveled, withered, decayed. He was a fallen oak leaf, still green, lost before the depths of autumn. He was a forgotten lamb, thrown aside when the reaper’s scythe heralded its final refrain. He was dumb, weak, and foolish, for believing the world would send her back to him.
She’s not coming. She can’t ever come.
It drummed through his thoughts as he lowered his eyes to the ground, stared at it instead of his sister, instead of his brother, taking in huge inhales of air to avoid crying. He shook instead, another frond in the wind, swallowing down the rush of tears and ineptitude. Mauna didn’t care about the weakness of Gods, how they’d all come toppling down, how the world had been crushed beneath the weight of deities’ blunders. He was a small boy who wanted his mother back, and no matter how many times he tried to find her, she wasn’t coming. She was never coming.
“How do you know?” He said first to Vulkan, and it came out bitter, it came out harsh, broken shards of anger (emotions he didn’t know he had, sentiments he’d never possessed) – the crimson stare focusing entirely on the bulkier lad. “How do you know she isn’t…” he paused, eyes daring to focus on the darker aspects of the building clouds, always a storm on the horizon. “Up there, watching over us?” The child dared because it was all he had left, rebelled against the forces of knowledge, trembled and quivered in the breeze, desperately trying not to fall apart in front of his family (and now he understood how his sire functioned every damned day, and longed to cry for him too). He didn’t care about the stupid obsidian shards sticking up from the loam any longer; they hardly mattered when his mother was dead and everything was a mess. Instead, while his bottom lip trembled, while tears began to beckon in the corner of his eyes (no matter how hard he tried, they just kept antagonizing, building, a stoked fire of grief and misery), he turned to Otem, matching sorrow for sorrow, indignation for indignation. “Then we’ll be better than the Gods,” he offered, in promise, in oaths, in benedictions he had no right to pledge, no means to convey. “She’d want us to be strong,” he sniffled, locking his jaws together when he couldn’t say anything more. Perhaps they already were, and he was the meek one, the weak one, the child destined for nothing – proffering something he could never become. Maybe their prowess, their potency, was something Isopia never would have craved; he wouldn't know. He'd never been able to ask.
Mauna
CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
OF NOUGHT BUT EARTH CAN EARTH MAKE US PARTAKER,
BUT KNOWLEDGE MAKES A KING MOST LIKE HIS MAKER.
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Siren's Summit
