A Gift for an Elder God

[Many_As_One]

He was called The Many as One. His name was long forgotten to the dust of ages. For now, he wore the face of a young human, fifteen, perhaps sixteen years of age. Long flowing raven black hair framed a too perfect face. His eyes betrayed his nature. Blood red, and slit like a reptile. He was the eldest priest of this cult, and he wore their pendent around his neck. A snake coiled around a sphere, crushing it as it devoured its own tail. Eternity was a thing that would devour us all in the end. He had overseen this for many generations of his followers, and now was his time to act. The Elder One was experiencing humanity's worst now. Guilt, depression. Anger. Rage. Now he could make him turn his back on it, embrace what he truly was.

Weaklings, thought to protect him from it. They should be nurturing him, grooming him to take his rightful place. Fools.

He had done many things in his time.. and this was perhaps one of the oddest. Today, he was examining baby pigs. His fingers ran critically over each one, till he found the perfect one. Small, perhaps a runt. Pink, with a slightly deformed tail and a single dark strip betwixt its eyes. "This one." His voice was a hiss, like water on a too hot skillet.

Two acolytes in the robes of purest red approached. One lifted the little piglet by its back legs and the other seized its mouth, prying the jaws apart. Then a brand was placed at against the roof of the poor little piglets mouth, searing the symbol on the boy's pendent into the roof of its mouth while it flailed The boy made soothing sounds, running a hand across the little thing, healing it and putting it into a deep sleep with magic. It was bundled and placed in a basket

Then put near the wood pile Catch spent so many days and nights chopping. It would not wake till he approached. He would find the little thing there, with a tiny bow on the hand of the basket.

His tiny hog baby, the perfect gift.

[catch]

His sleep was finished, and coaxed was he into yet another meal, and all the while he fretted and despaired, nearly wept, for the Wood was his, and he would have nothing left to him, were it taken away. And finally he could throw on scant wool-sweater, and a scarf that was not even wrapped properly, and charged out the doors, dreading to see Radioran or some other stranger at his task.

It was as they promised him. Assured him with words that meant nothing. He trudged through scanty snow, his scarred hands tucked under his armpits, and he saw a foreign object, there, a basket. He stopped, and he watched it, shuffling booted feet uncertainly. He glances at the door, but no one came rushing out; he looks all about the Dagger's yard, and there is silence, the utter-stillness of a winter morning. And what could it be?

Careful, shuffling steps. There is a noise. A movement. Catch bends over the basket, and with hands that shook from cold and coiled emotion, he pries the lid.

A hog. A perfect, tiny, pink little hog.

Catch stares at it, his mangled brain slow to clicking. A. A gift. Was it? Was it his? Catch withdraws his hands, and he looks around yet again. A gift, a trick. He deserved nothing. He was not a Good Citizen, not any longer. Still, he was entranced, and he pulls the hog, basket and all, to his chest, so that he may see it more easily, his feet and legs taking him into a slow, waltzing spin, unaware that he was even moving, so caught he was by the littleness of the hog. A snow-carpet Waltz.

"Who are you f-f-f-for, I wonder," he whispers to the sleeping hoglet, a pang of sadness. Surely, not for him.

[Many_As_One]

In the caverns, Many as One smiled. The Elder one had found his gift. It was time. His eyes close, and words are chanted from lips. A voice too ancient for young lips, and the spell drifts into a tiny hog brain.

At the lumber pile -

The tiny hog wiggles awake and stares at Catch with beautiful blue eyes. It lets out a happy little piglet squeal and wiggles happy little piglet legs toward him. A voice seems to come forth, nagging and familiar. From the mind of the hog to the mind of the addled woodcutter.

"I am for you. Will you love me?"

And then the little thing is trying to reach the warmth of its new mother, Catch.

[catch]

I am for you. Will you love me?


He does not drop the hog, basket and all; he does not scream. His face is already pale as the snow around him, but those few parts of him - cheeks, nose, lips, the feathered curve of an ear - are drained of their winter-pink. His powerful arms grip the basket, but not to crushing, only so that the wood groans at the effort of keeping the shape willed upon it by the Weavers.

And he groans with it, a soul-shattered groan.

"Hogs d-d-d-do not speak," he whispers to the writhing pink-thing, blue eyes and child-voice. But even as he said it, with the dull chanting of Rote, he knew it for false. The Hogs had greeted him. They had come to him. He had snapped their legs, and took out their eyes, and they screamed, they screamed and begged Why, Why...

That was madness. It was madness-talk. But how could something so mad feel so true?

Carefully, Catch extracts the naked, squirming thing from the basket, and he lets the splintered thing tumble to the ground, tucking the speaking-hog under the warmth of his throat, trailing wisps of beard tickling it's back. He tried to think, but it was hard, so-hard. His feet stopped in their dance, and took him towards the Remeberidarium. There is someone there who he could ask. There is advice to be sought.