Swallow Your Affection

Depressing Grandpa

"Ouch." Phil winces.

"Yeah- I think he missed me way more then he let on though, cause I managed to cool him off." You paused to eye Phil's steak, "Give me some of your steak and I'll give you some of my bread."

"Sandwichs?" Phil questions, already trading some steak to you for two slices of bread.

"Sandwiches." You slap that steak between two bread slices and call it a day, not willing to put more effort in to make it a better sandwich.

Phil wiggled his bread at you for a moment, "So if he cooled off why'd it go bad? I was honestly kind of expecting you to bring him home-" he says, slowly assembling a much better looking sandwich then yours.

You make grabbing hands at his use of ingredients but he ignores you, which forces you to answer with a huff, "...Phil- you know he wouldn't just 'come home with me'. He's set on guarding Mom till someone kills him."

"I don't see why one of you can't just take on the mantle your mother left behind. It would solve everything for whichever side didn't pick it up." Phil chuffs, taking a large bite out of his sandwhich.

With his mouth still full he waves his steak and bread slices at you, "One of you will get your mom back, and the other can go about their days not worrying about some random npc picking up all the power of a god."

So nonchalant.

You huff.

Sometimes. Just sometimes. Phil does not understand things.

Sometimes, he's just a little too detached from the world.

There's a natural order to things, and he knows what the order is, and because he understands it, he sees nothing inherently wrong with continuing the cycle.

"I wouldn't be me anymore." You say, before taking a rather depressed bite of your own sandwich.

Phil doesn't catch on to your hold up, staring at you as you stared at him.

"Well, if anything you'd be more yourself then ever before. Remember you aren't a full... entity." Phil pauses, smiling face finally narrowing down into a blank face for the topic at hand, "When you die as you are, you kind of disapear forever..."

Swallowing the bite of sandwich in your mouth felt like swallowing a chunk of coal.

You know he's trying to be helpful, you know he is. But you're an emotional creature, and thinking about permanent death does bad things to your head.

Phil's eyes glance around your face before his smile came back, "If one of you picked up the mantle, you'd be able to absorb all your sibling out of the dirt, so they wouldn't be dead forever!"

"I'd be a different person Phil. I'd be such a different person. I wouldn't be able to say with certainty that I'd ever want to split myself into peices again- so my sibling may as well be dead forever." You stare at your two-bites-in sandwich and then glance to Phil who's happily half way done with his.

"Yeah. I figured you'd say something like that. Which, again, it's your guy's choice. I'm merely suggesting a simple and easy solution." Phil takes a bite, "And also, it's been a long time."

The warning bells in your head chime.

Like a setting sun in the distance, or all the animals in a forest going silent because something dangerous was lurking.

You remember that bad things usually happen when God's start gathering.

You remember that crows are a sign of something terrible on its way.