The Subtle Taste of Midnight

Of Mortal Ethereal and Monsters Divine

For the umpteenth time today, Melete's nerves abandoned her, taking with it the contents of her belly once more. Then again, everything had abandoned her today: her meal, her tears.

Her gods and her faith in them.

The happy hum of life had left Melete's soul a long time ago, tucking its tail and running away cowardly the moment Heaven's monsters came knocking. Now, she was filled with abyssal sorrow, the kind that rips the life from a mother's heart as she watches her newborn child die in her arms, twisted in its own umbilical cord. And in many ways, she was like a mother watching her child die, watching all of her children die, watching them fall one by one like leaves in autumn.

She should've seen it coming. Should've seen them coming. Demons or Angels. It didn't matter. They were all the same: vicious, ravenous beasts.

The taint of the charred flesh and burnt bones of her friends and family ‒ kindred spirits and enemies alike ‒ hung in the air, blending with the lingering sweetness of what was left of today's Maza fresh from the baker's stones; a miasma of mismatched scents that mingled and made passionate love to each other until their climactic moment of release made her giddy with manic laughter. The cackles rolled from her chest and leapt into the air. Tears sprang to her eyes, confused as to whether they should be joyous, mournful, or just plain, 'ol crazy.

"Aoide!" the name fell from her lips, broken and battered. It hit the ground with the finality of long dead memories waltzing around in her head: of solstice feasts, of the offerings of flesh and wine to The Almighty Chaos that were laid at Melete's feet. There was a time when creatures of Heaven, Hell, and Earth all clamored for favors from her hands.

"Lend us thine heart, oh Favored One," they used to cry out, "speak to us with the Voice of God. Bless our ears with the words of The Almighty."

The Vessel was what they used to call her. The Muse; the one whose heart thundered with the spirit of Chaos and whose tongue burned with the fire of God's Word. For even though The Almighty may be dead, her soul still lived on, buried inside Melete. A precious gift to bear.

She glanced up at the sky again, past the tornado of twisted things calling for her flesh. Her heart cried out to the sky above in the language of the Garden, to the all-seeing Ananke that − though worn thin by the scratching claws of the demons, the gnawing teeth of the angels, and the incessant prayers of the mortal men − still held the borders of the universe as decreed by The Almighty Herself.

Creatures of the night, stayed in the night, and those of the day, remained only in the glare of the sun. Heaven, Hell, and fragile realms of Earth shall be as they always had been – separate but not necessarily equal.

Her trembling breath carried with it the eternal hope that history would not repeat itself, that God's children would be content with their lot and not rain their wrath down on this all-too fragile universe, like they did the last time and the time before that. Hopefully, some ghost of The Almighty Chaos still echoed across the vast emptiness beyond. Perhaps this ghost would take pity on her, after all, Melete was carrying the Word of God inside her. Technically, that made her − albeit in some small and insignificant manner − The Almighty Herself. Right?

Sadly, only silence dared to answer her cries. And the awful truth of it all rudely barged in, taking up residence and fouling everything with its presence. For all its power over the boundaries between the worlds and its tethers around the necks of all of God's creations, The Ananke was flawed because the universe was flawed. There'd be no pity for her, no help. Nothing but misery and sorrow for God's Muse. If Melete wanted to survive the wrath of Heaven and Hell combined, she'd have to take matters into her own hands.