RE: Deity - The Breath of Creation

4:37 When Heaven is Not Watching

Xing Wu was having trouble. Being God of the Stars and, more importantly, God of the Path, was all fine and dandy for the most part. His domain allowed him and even encouraged him to be aloof and distant, just like the Stars themselves. They didn’t come down from the sky and smite evil…well they did, but only on occasion and that usually wasn’t him but other Dao Progenitors. What they really were, were a promise that if you tried hard enough, you could rise up to the heavens as well. Well, accounting for luck and some other things, too, but the idea was nice.That was ninety percent of the job. He'd been the trailblazer, still was in many ways, to show the silly mortals that it was possible to become the absolute best you could be. Then there was the bit that made him Heaven's Spear, the warrior that led the charge. Then ther was, apparently, the part of the job that turned him into the Physical Realm's spiritual punching bag.

"Is it that bad?" Inesa asked, wrapping her arms around his middle as he stood in their garden, watching their daughter blankly as she flung dirt into the air and made plants grow freely. The vegetables had been Sequoia’s first target, tomatoes the size of her head and redder than blood hanging heavy and fat on vines, while squash and other gourd-like plants grew in odd shapes because she thought it was funny. Now she was focusing on the weeds, ripping them out with reckless abandon, their roots wiggling and curling around her hands before she tossed them away.

"Hmm?" he asked, distracted, briefly shaking off the fugue state that was clouding his mind. "Whazzat?"

"Oh my. I haven't seen you this distracted since you first ascended." She said, pressing her lips to the back of his neck. That properly made him pay attention to her, putting his hands on hers, where they were wrapped around his middle, and watching Sequoia as she giggled like a mad-girl, patting the soil as it rose up to make a miniature castle, moss forming a moat of green.

"It's rough," he agreed. "It’s the mortals. They're all pouring their hatred into me. Sorry, not that. Using me as an excuse to hate. The religions that popped up, the...well, everything. It's clashing with what Alanna is trying to build, or they're making it clash. Using me as an excuse to grab power, deny the upstart goddess, in their own words, and worse. It's getting louder, building like drumbeats in my skull." He told her, tilting his head back a little to stare at the sky. "What's really weird is that, unlike before, I have no desire to go crack skulls because I know this has to play out without my interference."

"The Hearth has been rather upset lately, as well," Inesa whispered, laying her head against Xin Wu's back, pressing her cheek into his shoulder blades. Sequoia shrieked as a worm popped out of her soil castle, plopping on her arm only for her to immediately shake it off with a gleeful giggle.

"What I don't understand," he said slowly. "Is why my religion inspires such zealotry. Why my story seems to get taken as an excuse to commit crimes moreso than almost any other god. Moreso than any other god, period, and why people twist it or change it so much to suit their agenda." He corrected himself. He'd done his due diligence. He did the math. For whatever reason, his religion allowed for people with more dangerous mindsets in more than any other, be they Statera, Elvira, or anyone else.

Morgan's cult didn't count, though, because that only attracted the evil, with the incredibly rare exception, and wasn't a recognized religion. It was, but it wasn't.

"You won't like the answer." Inesa whispered. He patted her hand, urging her to continue silently, while watching his daughter. She turned to him and grinned a gap-toothed grin, lifting her dirty hands to show him how much fun she was having playing in the muck, grass stains on her dress.

She looked about eight, maybe nine now, and still acted like everything in the world was an absolute delight despite being much, much older. He hoped she'd never lose that childlike wonder, or, more likely, at least retained a spark of it through the rest of her life.

"It's because you were once mortal." She said softly, and Xing Wu's eyebrows furrowed.

"Huh?" he said eloquently.

"You started at a lower spot. Your story begins at a lower density and quality of energy, it just doesn't have the same incorruptible brightness as Statera Luotian's, or even mine." She said softly. "It's like qi. At lower cultivation levels, your qi is less pure."

Xing Wu wanted to object. The mere idea pissed him off, that starting mortal was what had caused this. In fact, it made him furious enough he had to stop himself from kicking the nearest tree and obliterating it, because he knew she was right.

"But that's also why your followers believe so strongly. That's what makes your story so compelling, and able to reach souls even Statera Luotian cannot. You started at their own level, and rose up to become all that and more." Inesa continued quickly, circling around in front of him to place a hand on his cheek, her warm brown eyes meeting his. "Statera Luotain’s story begins too bright. It's not...people cannot connect with it, the way they can with you. The most they tend to see is the family, the love Statera has for all their children, but She is too far away. Too...grand. It is like worshipping a planet, or a monument; untouchable and unknowable. But you?" She paused then, placing her other hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. His rage had cooled a bit, no longer answering to the thundering of drumming within his skull, but frustration was still mounted in his thoughts first and foremost.

"So, I'm relatable," he ground out, voice lacking the heat he'd expected it to carry. "That doesn't make it any more pleasant to have my name and deeds twisted by the words of others. It's a constant game with them, and it - it hurts, Inesa. Some days more than others."

"I know." She said, hugging him again, laying her head on his chest. "But you chose this path when you hung your star in the sky."

"It's not in the sky anymore, it’s around your neck," he complained, though he knew it was a losing argument.

"It's still visible," she argued back. "The moving star, is what the true believers call it. The star that will always, no matter how far the path goes, lead you to a warm hearth and home if you're just willing to follow it. No matter how long the path and journey, your hearth waits at the end of it."

"Poetic," Xing Wu grumbled, though his arms still wrapped around her waist, the drumming in his head quieting just a bit. They stood there for a moment, holding each other, when a tiny, obnoxious, lovably ball of energy crashed into their legs and promptly began climbing them. Xing Wu sighed dramatically and looked down at his daughter, slowly climbing up his and Inesa's body as she was.

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"You are getting too big to be doing that," he accused, and the green-haired girl just had the audacity to giggle at him.

"We should take her to the Physical Realm soon," Inesa said softly.

"I wanna go, I wanna go!" Sequoia cried, letting go of their robes and dropping flat on her butt in her eagerness to go on an adventure.

"Maybe not right now," Xing Wu mused, thinking of what was stirring down there. Inesa hummed noncommittally as she let him go and bent over to poke Sequoia in the belly, tickling her and setting her to squirming. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he watched his wife play with their daughter, an ill feeling squirming in his gut.

That was not a hum of agreement. That was a hum of "I know what you said and heard you, but you'll come around to my way of seeing things soon enough." Which wasn't always true, he just tended to surrender to her decision because it wasn't worth the fight.

Though, even he couldn't doubt it. Sequoia desperately needed a place to put down her spiritual roots, and the Heaven Realm was not a place to do that for one reason or another. Maybe he'd take her to the top of the Life-Giving Tree, first.

That should be fun for her, right?

***

"So, this is the Original Sin," Aeriel whispered, the goddess of wind and secrets drifting along on the breeze. "Beneath the rebellion, beneath the rage, beneath the so-called struggle against the Heavens lies a single question. Who are you, while the Heavens are not watching?"

Because that was the real question, wasn't it? That was the ultimate secret held within every single soul in existence, a secret she was privy to, but could not always see. A secret her Mother and Father could see with a glance, and never judged on, because that was Their gift.

When all eyes were turned away, when all pressure was taken off and you thought you could get away with anything, who were you? With the Big Four gone, people were moving. With Statera Luotian preoccupied, people thought Heaven's gaze was off of them.

The gods were still here of course. The Four Realms still functioned the exact same, but everyone could feel the small changes, and many misinterpreted that. Some primal part of their brains saw the moment Statera had Their gaze facing away, and thought God was truly turning a blind eye.

Aeriel clucked her tongue. The knowledge that Statera could be temporarily blinded, disseminated amongst those below by the Heavenly Dao itself, not willingly, but simply through connection itself, had made a few people...greedy. Arrogant. Believing themselves capable of the same, if not that Statera was still blinded, despite how foolish that sounded.

They were not the Oshun. Not even close. What was the phrase the mortals used? Ah, right. They "had eyes, but still could not see the Holy Mountain."

She drifted down to the Physical Realm to observe, passing through the clouds of the Heaven Realm, through the Spirit River, to behold the entire Realm in all its glory. Everything moved in surprising synchronicity, despite the chaotic nature of the realm. The new regions circled around the first, orbiting it. The solar systems orbited Pangaea, the center of their galaxies and from which the Life-giving trees grew. The planets orbited their miniature suns, so much smaller than the Realm Sun.

And each held their secrets.

She drifted like the wind, listening to all of them. Mortals, Immortals, spirit beasts and spirits alike. All were held back in some ways by the constructs around them. Social, societal, insecurities, almost all actions were guided, no matter how small the guidance was, by how people thought others perceived them, or would perceive them.

She watched a boy in school lie, to make himself feel right because he hated the shame of being wrong. She watched a man hug his wife, only because society said a husband and wife should be a happy couple, despite knowing how much they truly were beginning to hate each other. A pity, too, because they'd once had a red string of fate. Not all was meant to be, it seemed, unlike the fate of the Realm Sun and Lunar Star.

She watched some of the Celestial Empress's, or former celestial Empress, as she was actively abdicating her throne and setting up a democratic system, agents work to put down a terrorist threat. They hadn't even been devil cultivators - those belonged in the Hidden Realm, with their stolen planets and secret plans - just regular people incensed by the change.

The question once again rang in Aeriel's head, as she watched a priest of Statera Luotian kneel beside the sick and injured, comforting them in their final moments, while another uses the clout of the religion to line their pockets with donations. Two people, one hiding behind religion to their own end, and hide their greed, and another using religion as a tool to help others. It happened to all religions in time. It happened to all mortal organizations, she’d found, no matter what.

It was funny, in a way. The question the Original Sin was asking was the same one Statera Luotian demanded with Her immortality trials. Who are you? She demanded you know and answer, not to the Heavens, not to any gods, but to yourself and yourself alone. When the Bridge of Immortality descended, full of all that power and the Will of the Four Realms, it always asked the same question of every single person, and forced you to face that fact. People thought the bridge judged the one who walked across it. It did not. It only asked that you face what lay inside.

That question, that forcing you to look inside, was an uncomfortable one, for many.

Aeriel turned away from the Physical Realm and whistled a tune, drifting off, realization settled. She could not answer that question for anyone, and the Fae, and Avains, and Karae and even Dragons had to answer it as a collective species as well as individuals. That would decide what the Original Sin shaped itself as. No, not shaped itself – how it would be remembered.

She’d leave them to it. Now where was Gilles? He was the Shadow of the Mountain. He was always fun to bug.

***

Fang Xu and Celene had spent a long, long time together. Their love had not dimmed in the slightest since those early days, but to say it hadn't changed would be a lie, as well. Today, for example, she was mad at him, and he at her. Their first big fight since they woke up as gods, to be exact, and it was about something silly.

Children.

He wanted more. To start making a family again; their children in the Physical Realm had long since passed away, the Xu clan fading nearly into memory. Knowing what he knew now, how being a god had changed him...it pained him to admit, but he had a different view on things now.

Those kids they'd had; he'd raised them, loved them with all his heart, and they'd been his blood. None were around anymore to carry on that physical blood, and all that was left were souls. Souls who, frankly, had a grateful air about them when it came to Fang Xu and Celene, but didn't necessarily regard them as their parents anymore. Or even grandparents. There was maybe one Immortal left alive from their immediate family who had known them, and even then, they'd been the weird old elders who only existed in the fog of memory.

He still loved those souls for being his children at one point. But…

He wanted, and it burned him to phrase it like this, real children. A soul born of hers and his own soul, not a soul that was still Statera Luotian's child and he was helping walk through life.

A true grandchild for Statera Luotian. A true child of them.

Celene, justifiably so, had not seen it that way, and he was not the most eloquent with his words. He couldn't even blame her for lashing out at him with the way he'd phrased things. She just didn't have to be so mean about it. She didn’t have to actually hit him.

That was why he was mad. She'd lashed out and, maybe on accident, maybe not, had hit him. He still had the frost in his hair to prove it.

Absently he reached up and dusted off his hair, ice shards falling to his feet as he shot toward his Sun, away from Celene's moon, to go cool off some. He paused at the very base of his Sun, staring into the roiling fire, knowing deep within was his private room.

Now he understood the desire Elvira and the others had, to build something that was their own. He’d give Celene some time to cool down, himself too, and then approach it differently. Maybe they wouldn’t just build a family together again, too. Maybe they’d build something that lasted, and extended to more.

But what did he know? He couldn’t see the future. He was just the Sun.