Breathing. Painful. Heavy.
Blood flowed quietly, like a stream in twilight. I looked around, she was gone. Ai was gone. So yes, it was made from the same material as all her lies, illusory. Damn falseness that looked tangible enough to touch.
And yet I knew. Not with certainty, but knowledge stirred somewhere deep inside. Wasn't it clear? Deception remains deception, no matter how practical and alive it seemed. You can touch it and feel nothing.
She's been gone for a long time. Memories long hidden. The past far away.
Can I blame myself for letting that past slip away?
I don't know, but I definitely know, I feel my weakness. Weakness in failing to hold on to what was most precious.
What a pity, and this is a deity? Would a deity allow what it holds dear to vanish forever, with no chance to bring it back? Is a deity a being that lets go of the most precious thing just like that?
Then what is a deity?
People usually think a deity resolves everything. Financial problems, spiritual questions, everyday trivialities, all in its power. Imagine a being that can do anything, wouldn't it transcend matter? Wouldn't it be transcendent?
But if someone asked: "Why do we need?" We exist, so we need something.
If a god created us in his image, doesn't that mean he needs too? Need gives birth to action. So, could humanity be the result of someone's need?
Or why do we ourselves always want something? Is life good because of the constant sense of need, with much of what we desire unattainable? Maybe the Creator wanted to dull his own need. Wait, is he capable of experiencing what people do? Feelings? Weaknesses?
Animals and humans aren't so different. We want, we need, without it, we don't survive. Cycle, chain. Closed loop.
If a deity lives by the same rules, needs, acts, repeats, doesn't it turn into insignificance? Not divinity, but something absurd?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!
"Aha-gha-ha-kha-ha!" Her laughter, as usual, piercing and insistent.
"How quickly you can be led to thought!" she said, her voice light, like a knife. "So you're just like everyone else, trash. Nothing."
Life.
Cycle.
Needs.
Constancy.
"Tell me this: did you really cling to predestination? Then, knowing it, did you accept it as inevitable?" the witch said with excitement. "Let me guess, you thought brute force alone would change everything?"
They say everything is predetermined by someone above. But imagine you have the power to shape others' fates, yet you're in chains yourself? Paradox, right?
You should be free, but suddenly even that freedom is a new chain. You realize power, and it immediately becomes stronger than before.
The path stretches, you walk, the step you look back on disappears not because it never was. It simply dissolves in the expanding space.
Fate, a word that sounds like a sentence. Like a verdict. Is it born in us or outside us? Object or subject? I don't know, but I want to know more.
That which can't be reached. Touched. Seen. Without seeing, you won't understand the form, without knowing the form, you won't understand the essence. Energy? Personality?
"You're still trying to fight it?" the witch interrupts my thoughts, as if bored listening to my inner phrases.
"So you're desperately trying to give fate a form, an animated form," she continued, her voice full of mockery. "Because you've never met it."
Pause.
A pause that makes even silence fall quiet.
"Isn't it something that can't be seen or touched?" she added in the same tone.
"If even my powers weren't enough to fight against it, what is it then, if not a personality?" I replied. Words like cries in an empty hall, I wanted the whole world to hear the truth.
"Who said your powers are worth anything?" the witch coldly, almost contemptuously. "Try to understand, you're nothing."
(Dirty whore!)
"I'd love to see what you're made of if I were in better shape!" I forced out, and immediately, as if testing her, added: "Convenient to hide behind the rules of your game."
(Yes, convenient.)
"Trying to dull your own insignificance?" she tossed arrogantly. "But even without rules, a pathetic piece of shit like you wouldn't threaten me!"
A sharp stab. A word that hit the mark.
"Let's drop this topic and go back to the beginning. There, where I'm the predator, where I'm supposed to tear apart the wounded prey!" she said with smugness.
"Be my guest," I replied.
She tossed a figurine, like in a game. Where every number is your loss. If this is a family dinner, well, that won't break me.
But... w-what...
Surprise.
Memory.
Deception.
Past.
And somewhere there, under those words, something stirred. Something that returns, though I thought I'd buried it forever.