The Trickster: Part Four

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        He had met, once, in the sort of vague passing that accompanied many moments of a demon's life, a pantheon of gods from the western seas, creatures that were obsessed with fornication and mindless play.  It was disgusting, watching with a dour expression as they continued their ever-changing dramatics of random loving and unending murdering.  As Sister Po Kong and most of his brothers indulged themselves in the frantic, unexplained foolishness that surrounded them, he had taken to the sky, striking off to sulk and hide as the child he was.  He did not want to waste his time visiting one of the deity kingdoms in their individual dimensions and whatnot, doing naught but watching with bored eyes as they performed foul deeds.

        "Moronic fools," Sister Bai Tsa had hissed before she curled into a ball and shut the rest of the world out effectively.  She was young at the time, the same age he was now, and though she was a bit more fascinated in the acts than he, she still found it to be a grand waste of her valuable time.

        He wanted no part of it; he simply wanted to fly.  The skies of this Mediterranean realm were different than those of China, in the decade before his family had struck out to capture and reign large sovereignties of their own.  Asia's were brittle and cold, a reminiscent chill that always pervaded the bones and mind to remind him of where he was, but this was a humid warmth that engulfed and surrounded in a cloying embrace.  Relishing with deep interest the change in air currents – warm and smooth twists of air that gave him more exotic turns and a greater ability to swoop in changing patterns then the sleek quickness his homeland's atmosphere gave – he had dove and spiraled until the mortal skies were rent asunder by the fall of night.

        Then had been when he saw her, a silvery girl-god that flowed as moonlight from the sky and gently rested her feet on the wet grass of a flowing meadow below the stern white glow of Artemis, moon goddess and one of the few gods that had not partaken of the mindless celebration.  "Hello," she had said to him as he hesitated, a child entranced by the ethereal beauty of the western deity.  Her smile had been gentle, an understanding one, and she had continued, "Would you come with me, then, to visit my shepherd boy?"

        He did not remember answering, though he did recall following her, creeping through the soft grass as his arched heels grew uncomfortable in the humid wetness that was Greece.  She glowed, a silvery whiteness that engulfed and flickered like a silver candle, but he was reminded of the sort of being that the humans considered a mother: an indomitable gentle presence that soothed and comforted.  That was the one time he had longed for the guiding forces of the mother he and his siblings had never known.

        "He is Endymion," she spoke eloquently after several moments of carefully preserved silence.  They traipsed down one of many hills, passing between thick, gnarling trees that bent in strange directions but always clung in worshipping fronds to the sky.  "Oh, but I should introduce myself," she had then laughed, her long silver hair twining of its own volition into a delicate braid, a tender weave that looped up to wrap in light spirals around her glowing scalp. 

        She stopped, and faced him, and spoke with a kind smile, "I am Serenity, daughter of the moon-goddess."  Her expression turned to curiosity, an innocent youthfulness on her dainty features, and he realized she too was a child in the terms of the grander beings of uncounted age and undetermined power.  "Who are you, though, strange one?  I know you are of the eastern sea's gods, but your name I do not know of."

        "I am Brother Hsi Wu," he finally answered in his hissing, rasping voice, too young yet to have developed the idiosyncrasies that would lead him to be more cautious in his dealings.  Lapsing into silence he had continued to follow the silver being, the mother and the child and the quiet gift of moonlight swaying, large clawed toes pressing and breaking streams of flowers and grass underfoot. 

        His height was still smaller than it would be, somehow standing a foot under her graceful stance, and he had felt a burst of envy that even the girl-child was taller than he.  With his siblings he was inadequate enough.

        "Ah," she whispered with a note of blissfully happy satisfaction, and she ran lightly down another hill.  Tiny pools of water formed where her gentle weight pushed down just so into the spongy earth, glistening portals into a miniature ocean that glittered under the moon and stars before fading back into the engulfing mud.  "This is my shepherd boy," she called, turning around to smile as her braided and woven hair glistened like a halo pinned to her head.

        It was a human boy, of ten-and-five years with a head of shaggy black hair and swarthy skin, deep in an unnatural slumber with a shepherd's crook nestled in his arm.  Hsi Wu had paused, confused as to why a goddess, any being of supernatural power and unbendable right over the mortals, would show the level of tenderness she gave to the sleeping lad.  Serenity stooped beside him, grass staining her raiment of spun moonbeams, and tousled her long, slender fingers in the dark hair as he murmured in his un-breaking sleep and turned his face to her. 

        "What are you doing?" he had asked, thrown off-balance at the loving in her motions.  He could sense a strangeness in the young man, as though it had been decades upon decades since he had woken to see the sky, and a putrid smell filled his nostrils, a foreign emotion of beautiful tangible strength.  Love?  "Ugh," he intoned with all the strong disgust of a child and a repelled demon, taking a step back as he hunched over, wings shifting into the night.

        "You must understand, demon-god," she spoke softly, looking up as she traced her fingertips down the youthful, downy-soft cheek of her sleeping lover.  "He must sleep if we are to be together.  He must slumber unwaking, forever here in a youth if I may ever see his face again.  My grandfather Zeus, god of gods, gave this to me in gift that I would never suffer to see him in the drifting realm of death."

        "He is mortal!" was Hsi Wu's recoiling disgust, more upset at the vile love and the human body.  "His stench – ugh!"  He gagged, fangs exposed briefly in the moonlight as he stepped back again, wings moving impatiently through the air as if to herald his body into the waiting sky drifting effortlessly above.

        "You must understand!" cried Serenity, silver glow flashing brightly in a searing haze.  He had frozen, unsure of what to do as she stared at him in unmoving power, a knowing passion entering her voice as she continued in sharp, enigmatic tones, "One day you will know exactly the pain of watching a mortal someone loved and die.  Can you not see that your fate has already been determined?  See the Oracle of Delphi as she tosses her bones and reads her fortunes!"

        "What are you yammering on about?" he had demanded, feeling a defensive degree of insult rise in his body with steeled power as he prepared to launch himself into the sky.  "What mortal?  Why can't you talk normally?"

        She stared at him, an unreadable expression that dripped of a knowing sorrow, a bleeding grief she had suffered many nights as she came to visit her eternally youthful, eternally slumbering shepherd boy.  "There will come a day when you shall watch a girl," she said in a quiet voice, cupping her palm along the swell of Endymion's chin, "and she will love another.  She will grow as you watch, and she will age as foreign time passes."  She hesitated, then said in an accepting voice, "She will die."

        "You are a fool!" he raged at her, feeling some horror and fear that he could ever care for a mortal.  They were playthings, creatures of weak skin and foppish constitution, easy to tear asunder and devour in fits of sadistic delight.  Love and caring were things reserved for childish beings such as they, too low to even be the equals of a sky demon but four centuries in age, and it filled him with powerful fury that this she-god would dare tell him he would fall prey to such things.

        "Such has the Oracle of Delphi told me to speak to you," she replied in a pleading voice, cradling in her lap the head of her love.  "She only wishes for you to know that should this come to pass, there is always hope in the intricacies of time."

        "It won't come to pass!" he snapped back, baring his fangs again at her, wings pulling him into the air as he went to disappear.  "It will never happen.  Your fortunetellers are mindless and weak, moon-god."

        In the void, surrounded by shades of golden honey fire and cliffs of unchanging rocks, an unending infinity that was capable of slowly driving one mad, Hsi Wu thought on his hatred for oracles.

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Notes:  This has been the weakest part so far…but, well, everything I've mentioned thus far is going to start weaving together in just a few more parts, when the plot starts to show up and the chapters get longer!  ^^  Stick with me, 'kay?

Feedback:  An' I'll wuv you forever an' ever an' ever an' ever…

Disclaimer:  Too poor, too young, too crazed.

Status:  The plot's a-comin'…just be patient, all…

Thanks:  VampireNaomi (eeee!  *passes out from sheer happiness*  I love how everyone likes evil Hsi Wu!  I just…*passes out again*), Lisa-Chan (*victory!*  I churned this out in about fifteen minutes, so I suppose it's an apology for how long it took part three to get out), and Tajeri Lynn, Extremo Luchadore (exactly!  And, yes, it is very anarchic – which might stay around for a bit, until I get to the point I've been taunting about for ages…*sweatdrops*).  Mucho gracias, ya'll.