From the Memoirs of Death, chapter: Divine Cycles
This is an older experience but one that lingers stubbornly in my memory. There are some who believe Gods to be eternal, immortal, beyond the reach of death. But in many of the older traditions they are anything but. Gods die all the time, usually at the hands of other Gods. Although in the end, just like humans it is my hand that takes them. There are many worlds full of all sorts of life, and precious few where I am not welcome or necessary.
There was one woman, divine, a mother of all. Her lover I had come for not long before, a King overthrown and assassinated. He had passed both brutally and gently, put to sleep before being gored and gutted. An odd tactic, an exercise of brutal gentleness. The woman wailed in grief when she discovered him, a sound I have heard countless times. Yet I was struck by its primal purity, the power and depth of the divine grief. An archetype of suffering to be modeled after for the ages.
This man, this God, was on an accelerated path to his next life. He had only just been freed from worry and pain when he was immediately back again on the other side of me, defying time and reincarnating into a man already born before his release. It made little sense to me but Gods follow different rules than humans. But what I had seen that puzzled and awed me in illogical, impossible feats and grief was only prelude to what came next.
The Goddess swore revenge and declared war on those who killed her lover, yet the one who rose to fight and kill her was this same lover reborn. I could sense in him the sorrow at striking down her down It was as if he was compelled by forces he could not control. Yet he showed no mercy of hesitation when rendering her body from whole to independent sections. When I took her at the end of her fierce battle, she displayed no relief, only further rage and sorrow. Worlds were formed from her butchered body. The heavens, the earth. And just like him before her, she was snatched up from my company as soon as she had joined it. A new life grabbing hold with no consideration for her ability to absorb the shock, thrusting her into her new role and repeated experiences of doomed love and killing at the hands of lovers, both dealing and receiving, forever repeating a dance that ends with me as their partner.
Honestly I felt somewhat robbed and a little disgusted by the spectacle. Bringing peace and a natural ending to the cycle is my duty and privilege. People are not meant to suffer over and over without end, or at least some respite. I doubt Gods are much different. But that is exactly what these two do. I have come for them often and will continue to again and again. There is never any satisfaction in it. For any of us.
D.