‘I want to see Tva.’ Yanus said, in one of her more lucid moments. ‘I want to look into the eyes of the god who abandoned us.’ She still considered him a god, rather than just a wolf, she realized, not liking her implicit admission of his other identity. Gods shouldn’t abandon their followers. They should be true to them until the end. She would be a better god, she resolved. When she took up her rabbit devotees, she would protect them. They would worship her as their god and they would not be disappointed.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea,’ Yuno hedged. She had become more reticent, more withdrawn, since their confrontation. It must be hard to be the sane half of a half-crazed god, Yanus smirked. She knew what was happening to her, in some deep part of herself, and she had accepted it, embraced it as part of her own psyche. Her feelings were right, after all, even if the magnitude of her reaction was off, she was right. And really what else could she do, besides accept herself, in all her damaged glory.
‘You’re going to keep me from him?’ Yanus asked, suspicious. Why would she do that? What could she gain? ‘I’m going to see him! You can’t stop me!’ She screeched, her voice breaking. Fear struck her, what if Yuno had gained some control over her body? The sudden anxiety sent her into a panic. She launched herself through space without another thought, carving a rift in spacetime and squeezing her resistant body through, ignoring the pain of being torn apart and reassembled as she warped. Or perhaps she simply couldn’t grasp pain any longer, her mind too ravaged to hold onto anything other than madness. She could feel where pain used to be, the shape of it, but it no longer held her hostage.
She appeared before the wolf-god with the forceful pop of displaced air, the sound beaconing her arrival once again. She loved that sound, the sound of her power, her might, the sound of her conquering the rules, the physics of the world.
‘Wolf-god!’ She screamed, unwilling to be ignored by him once again. ‘Wolf-god, I’m here for you!’ Her voice broke on the last word, her vocal cords bruised under the strain of her emotion.
Tva was drunk, or course, passed out by a moon shaped lake, twilight painting it in shades of blue, just like the coat the wolf had been in her memories. Blue like the sky, she remembered him saying, as the rabbits braided his coat, lupus offering tucked into the coarse fur of the woven plaits. He had told the story once, of his ascension to godhood, how the sky had summoned him, had remade his body, his mind. Had she taken that into account when she had made the decision to take his blood? She couldn’t remember now. Memories faded under the weight of the present, the gravity of it sucking her in.
The god lolled on the ground, his six legs sprawled around him ungainly, four eyes closed. He was much larger than any other wolf could hope to be, a monolith of a being. Were all other gods so large, she wondered, suddenly insecure about her own small stature. It didn’t matter, she was stronger than all of them, she reassured herself. Better than them.
She hopped up to his head, peering at him closely. She had never been this close to his face before, she could see the fine lashes fluttering with each breath, the wet shine of the moon off his nose. He looked peaceful like this. Like he had no worries, no guilt about how his acolytes had butchered her people. Her face hardened. Turning around to face away from him, she gave him a hard kick with her strong rear legs, ‘wake up!’ she said harshly, kicking his head again. She wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to wake, even his head was much bigger than her whole body, but kicking him was therapeutic and she was happy to continue to do so for as long as it took.
‘Ugh,’ Tva groaned, his head rolling away from her, ‘stop, it hurts,’ he whimpered, his voice weak like a child’s. ‘It hurts, it hurts,’ Yanus mocked, giving him one last vicious kick. He lifted his head at that, trying to escape. ‘A rabbit?’ he asked, his voice mournful as he eyed her, four sad eyes looking down at the animal below him, ‘have you returned to me?’ Yanus snorted, derisive at his drunk-sloppy demeanor. ‘I’ve returned, yes,’ she said, her voice saccharine. ‘Now answer me, wolf-god, why did you abandon us!’ He looked taken aback, ‘you, you left me?’ he responded. ‘I couldn’t protect you so you left me.’
Yanus’ ears twitched in annoyance, he was still drunk, sleep hadn’t cycled all the alcohol from his system. ‘You let you acolytes eat us,’ she was very nearly yelling the last words, letting all her anger and bitterness bleed into her voice. ‘You let them devour our fluffle, let them tear us apart. Our children, our elders, you let them all die! So, I’ll ask you again, why did you leave?’ Tva shook his head, overwhelmed at her accusations. ‘I, I didn’t! You left me behind, didn’t want me anymore, I had failed you and so you, you discarded me,’ his voice broke, great eyes filled with tears. Yanus thumped a foot, enraged at how he avoided responsibility. ‘Ha! You swore to protect us. We loved you, would have followed you anywhere! You were the one that discarded us!’
This was going nowhere, he wouldn’t accept his fault, kept denying it, denying that he killed his followers. She could feel the anger coursing through her, boiling through her veins as she shook with impotent wrath. How dare he. She couldn’t bear his lies, his resistance to the truth any longer. She needed to leave, to not see him, every second in his presence burned her.
She left, bounding through space once more, unwilling to spend another second entertaining the farce that was the once great god. Let him drown in his liquor. She screamed when she re-manifested. A scream that went on and on. Yuno’s ears flattened to her head, still saying nothing, unwilling to draw her mother’s ire. Yanus wondered, with vengeful fury, if she could tesseract through her old god, if she could jump within him and rip apart his body with her own. She shuddered, suddenly remembering the same sensation from when Yuno was born. No. No she would not. Despite how much he might deserve it.
