SA - Roses Fall

The Nothing gazed into the mouth of the cave, a black hole on a backdrop of starlit white. The sky was clear, without a cloud to insulate the night from the moon’s cold light. There were no trees or hills or any other kind of disturbance to cast a shadow over the trampled old snow, no disturbance except for the shape of the young colt. He shivered, but there was a smile on his face. Cold and alone; his fellows encamped somewhere in the distance by a warm fire, ready to leave at dawn. Their pilgrimage was through. But not his.
    The faces who had passed into the cave before him were all little more than strangers to him. Miscellanea, flotsam in the stream that was the traveling people of Digend. He was never long to linger with any clutch of the free folk, content to flit from caravan to caravan as they rendezvoused. He’d stuck with this band however, as soon as he heard they were making the pilgrimage – and they were tolerant enough to let the Nothing wade along in the trail they broke through the snow. They’d been here for days now, content to count their slowly-sharpening ribs and eat half-frozen mulch, as they one by one went to see their newborn god. The Nothing had waited patiently for his betters to make their visitations – each one returning a changed – or at least a quieter - being. No one was much into sharing their experience, which was fine. He would have one for himself.
    There was no snow inside the cave, nothing to pad his hoofsteps with its silence. The little candle he carried in his teke – a candle borrowed from one of his elders who probably wouldn’t miss it – illuminated his way. The shadows were velvet, and the darkness had a texture to it. Stoney echoes of footfalls were all that accompanied him in his small circle of candlelight. He could see old drops of blood, from his predecessors’ offerings. Ever since the news of the Pit had exploded across the plains of Sirith, dozens upon dozens of horses had trod this path. Their god had been gorged with blood and bones and death. Jubilation, ecstasy. For all of the loyal worshippers.
    But he’d heard whispers. There was a thing in the pit, something not at all expected. Something that looked like a young creature, even. Was it true? Was that really their god? A joke perhaps, a divine comedy, even.
    And there was a new word being breathed in the cult. Goddess.
    The air grew warmer as he walked, and he felt his pulse quicken, as the quiet grew thicker, softer, darker. Eventually the tunnel split. He took the eastern way, as he’d been told. Follow the breathing. The air began to grow warm, thawing his bones.
    The young colt could not presume any act of violence or any grim effigy that could be enough to impress the Great Chaos. Nothing that had not been seen before, nothing that had not already been offered. He could not say how much blood and viscera and skulls had been rained upon the God in all the worshipful masochism. The god of mayhem, the god of diversity and wild freedom, left with only one taste in their mouth – salty red iron. Monotony, a gray noise of grave-matter and the dry bits ghosts leave behind. It didn’t seem right. Or, in the very least, something seemed to be missing.
     And so it was a single rose he carried as sacrament between his teeth.
     A single rose. Far out of season, frostbitten, red bud burnt dark with cold. He’d found the bushes the other day, small, squat, hibernating under the snow. He’d taken this single bud before his travelling party at the rest. He’d cut the stem free with his teeth, and the thorns pierced his gums even now, tasting his blood. They would laugh at him if they knew where that last rose was now, but he didn’t care. A rose for their God of gore. Unusual, certainly. Trite, maybe. Foolish, quite. But the sentiment was genuine. If he was smote for impudence, well then, at least the bards could sing of the colt who died laying a flower at the hooves of the Death God.
    The candle guttered, as a deeper darkness opened up before him.
    He’d reached the chamber, and it opened up before him like a starless night. As warm as a mother, as dark as a deep dream; it was the very threshold of doom. The colt smiled, as his gaze fell to the deeper darkness, the pit that was the cradle of it all. He set down the candle, and proceeded into the dark.
    The ground underhoof was earthen; he could not decide whether it felt more than holy, or less than, as he approached. It felt like he was standing in a vast ribcage. And now he was looking into its heart, his shadow bleeding into its void.  
    Black, deep, formless. Every bit of it the pit it was so named.
    He felt like there should have been something more magnificent about it, something more bold or glorious. But he cared not for finery or grandeur. Sometimes it was the plainness of a thing that was the grandest. And what was plainer, and concealed more, than shadows.  
    The thorns pricked his mouth, the last sanguine imbuement of his offering, as he gazed into the Pit. He could not ask for a blessing. He had no blessings to ask for, no wishes to be granted. He wanted nothing. Nothing any wise God would give him.
     But it would be something, he supposed, if he could see them. His God. Or his Goddess. Yes, that would really be something indeed.
      Finally, knowing it might be his last act in the world, he cast the rose down, and watched the darkness absorb it. Your worship. A strange thought came into his head - My Lady, he wanted to say. But he said nothing. He did not move. All he could do was wait.