what's a king to a god; all

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

“Come then, son.”

He is not a god.
No. Of course not.

Had She not pillaged him? Picked him dry, like a vulture does a carcass, because She could? Because his flesh was not made of the same substance – air and earth; supernovas and black holes – as theirs. But skin, taunten over muscle and bone, as vulnerable as the wretches that gather around the god-king like so many lost lambs…

(—but first, he must be found.
And then, he must be caught.)

It would be a lie, to be sure, to say he did not think himself among their pantheon. A lesser thing, perhaps, but what is a mortal to a demi-god? He had been imbued with a complex the day he was laboured over, pushed through that canal of ice and time, and woke up a weaponized man.

(He had been born a lowly thing; he had been a bitter, base creature of the shadows. Had been. Long ago. Those were dead things, now, offerings on an altar of his own device.)

He is a builder, architect, artist. Creator.
This, he has always been.
Reaper, destroyer. Obedient to a cyclical violence.

He follows the summons, remade once more. Those gaudy wings carved from his golden shoulder blades and replaced with the single, boneless one, dragging limp and useless through the dust on his left. On his head, curving back like great crescent moons from his forehead, were the tools of his trade. His hooves, cleaved in two once more, leaving queer tracks in the waste. And writhing inside his skull, like mealworms, is that restless, wanton Fear.
(Be still. In time.)
He had built a boy, who had shown his own eagerness and strength, and at such a young age. Like father, like son, Bruise had brought him gifts. Together, they are pillars in sour earth; idols of Fear, and side-by-side, with an immortal quickness, they come.

(Somewhere, in this festering scar, Sinew incubates more of his bairn and, by god, is he populating Pangea on his own?

The gift-giver, indeed.)

Pollock moves through them without his invisibility, Bruise by his side, past the meek, and the lost. His lip curls at the blue woman, though her pleading incites something feral and excited in his… loins? Mind?
Both, it would seem. Threatening and lustful, both; pitying, above all.

“If I were a god, I wouldn’t suffer a moment longer, either,” he smiles his wry, crocodile smile. There is no desire to hide the self-serving. If the god-king could raze a canyon, he could read a mind. “I introduced myself once, I am Pollock. We did not get time to talk. I so would have loved to,” not, to be fair, a total lie. “I’d venture to say, I have a few behind me that would support my claim,” he looks to Bruise, his mirror, at least in the formidable features. He believes he can count on Sinew.
“I have not done enough. Nobody has. I have played some small part, yet, in bringing... life to this place,” a beautiful irony, “maybe it is my aging, or my children, turning me soft, but I have come to fancy this place. It is... a thing of beauty, so thank you for her. She is a symbol, of so many things I hold dear. And I’d like to keep her. Build her. 

I am not, I admit, a practiced politician. My skill set is... well, a little rougher than that, but then, you built this kingdom on the back of disorder and defiance, so maybe we are perfect. I believe Pangea is unique right now in Beqanna, and is something worth preserving.”

He could accept the weak and the lost, here. 
He could not love them. They could fuck off to their sanctuaries or learn to harden their own bones.

He had.

POLLOCK
the gift giver