do you think God stays in his heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he has created?
How long has he dreamt here, in this place between life and death?
Hours. Decades. Eons. It’s all blurred together now since the dream is always the same – birth, conquest, and slow death. Are these things that will come to pass or are they simply the imaginings of some hopeful little child? He sucks in another gulp of amniotic fluid as he practices breathing, followed by a tiny hiccup. Ghaul remembers being plucked from some other place and slung into the echoes of infinity to wind up here. He’s only the sad side product of some cruel angel’s fever dream but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Sometimes Bible speaks to him and he doesn’t understand the words. Her tone is soft and gentle each time. He’s content to remain curled here for as long as needed so it comes as a surprise when her body heaves with its first contraction. If he had room, he might kick out in fright, but he can only flex his small talons in the tight space of her womb.
But this time, his claws are developed enough to tear a small hole in the sac that confines him. Seconds, minutes pass before another contraction rolls through her and he again lashes out, ripping through more of the soft tissue. There is a taste of copper across his tongue that sends him into a panic of gnashing teeth and all four legs flailing. The tender meat of her stomach is torn into ribbons and he can hear someone screaming. Ghaul can feel Bible fall to the ground but he continues in his frenzy even as cold air meets his small nose.
With a kick of his back legs, he pushes himself out into the world through the wound he’s torn in his mother. The stars that shimmer across his horns and cheeks are stained red with her blood as he sucks in his first terrified breath. (And heaven shivers to see its mistake unleashed, surviving.) Ghaul screeches – for his mother, for anyone – as he lays there on the soaked ground. He strains his ears for some reply but there is only the sound of drowning lungs gurgling out their last breaths beside him. This world is cold and dark, and it has left him all alone with his hummingbird heart.
A shiver runs up his spine as he rolls on to his stomach. Perhaps no one will come, he thinks. Ghaul clenches his little fangs together to keep them from chattering. Instinct commands him to stand even if there is no mother there to kiss him clean and encourage him. His star-dusted legs gather beneath him and he stumbles halfway up before tumbling back into the pool of red in the unforgiving snow. An angry, terrified whimper slips from him but he tries again a few more times until he gets it right. The moon observes his unholy birth indifferently, unimpressed when he takes his first steps.
Ghaul leaves an ugly trail of filthy hoof prints in the snow, connecting him to the torn open woman forever. Would he cry if he had eyes or would he still only be concerned with himself.
@[litotes]