(I'm so sorry I'm so inactive. I'm really, truly trying guys...)
The sun blazed from a break in the clouds, red as blood and larger than ever above them. Sin watched the small group through her fingers, her shaking and fear… not subsided, but lessening. They hadn’t killed her yet, or even eaten her alive, but they looked better fed than any she’d seen in the months since it all happened.
The moans of the coming hoard brought back her shaking with a vengeance. She’d seen those things, time and again, doing what they did to the few people that remained. Not again, she couldn’t watch. Couldn’t even think of what they’d do again. She swallowed. The only way to make sure, though, was to move. And if they didn’t eat her… She wasn’t going to watch them get eaten.
She spoke softly, barely more than a whisper, but the fallen deities, with sensitive ears, heard the words. Only barely, but they heard them. “P-please, we… we need to move,” Sin said. Her voice was so hoarse anymore, from screaming then not using it. How could that be hers?
Above, hidden among the thick clouds and behind the sun blazing on their backs, Cenillia watched in silence. Her robes fluttered in a soft breeze, her hair brushing her forehead. A million thoughts swarmed in her mind, a million more fighting at the edges for attention. The loudest of all, though, twisted her stomach in knots.
Did they make the right choice?
Much as the Fallen had a wrong to right, she couldn’t help but look at the many warriors around and think they would have more understanding of the task. She sighed aloud. Perhaps that was their own doing. How can you know what to do with no task set forth?
Ginial, clad in nothing, walked up behind the younger goddess and touched her shoulder. She spoke softly, but with no less strength than willow’s wood. “Do not place anywhere but on the shoulders of those who brought this, sister. They must find the path and recant without intervention,” she said.
Cenillia looked back at Ginial. “I know, eldest. But could we not lead them? Not once? If this fails… There are so many people gone, so many suffering already.” Her shoulders fell. Justice was supposed to be blind. It was supposed to be impartial. But was it so right to hold justice at the cost to so many of their children?
Ginial was silent for a moment, watching the white eyes of her sister. She too sighed after a moment. “Perhaps. I shall talk to the others. Perhaps we can give one the push in a vision or dream, something harmless.” She looked down once more at the looking pool. To see that tiny bat cowering and know so many still dealt with such fear wrenched at her heart. “It is not as if they can do much more harm than they already have.”
With that last word, the goddess of life let her hand drop to her side and strode toward the high temple. This would be a long day.