By the Willow Tree

[queeniegalore]

The little god sat in a bright green hollow of grass, head tilted to the sky to watch the flying clouds and birds, watch the wind play a game with the branches of a nearby willow tree.

He was a very old god, and though he knew his power was fading he didn’t mind so much on days like these. Golden-wind days, blue-sky-warm days, with the sweet brown earth under him and the endless expanse of heaven above. He was still strong enough to draw little buzzing insects to his fingertips to die cradled in his palm, their tiny lives providing him with tiny kitten-sips of nourishment.

He remembered men dying for him, once, the great rushes of power that would wash through him. Men, and oxen, and beautiful white lambs. Virgins died for him and kings, and wild, proud sixteen-point stags - for sometimes the god was the king of the hunt and sometimes he was vengeance and sometimes he was mercy.

The little god did not used to be little.

His memory stretched out backwards and forwards for an eternity, and so his awareness hung always suspended in the middle in a never-ending Now. The Now of a golden butterfly dying on the back of his hand, sending a shiver of glittering life through his being. The Now of peace, trilling birdsong, and sweet solitude.

The fading Now of a prayer called like music over the wind, to be caught in the branches of a willow tree, and lost.