does it feel futile to breathe when you know one day you won't?

I often find that gods tend to be more flawed than the societies they govern.

We chose to etch pathways all throughout your bodies. Unreadable maps to your heart that must be handled with extreme caution, lest they be severed by any stray selfish desires. We gave you these maps knowing somewhere deep within us that we would never experience the suffering that we've created.

I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't enjoy my view from the pedestal I'd been placed upon. I pondered, on occasion, if that's why I never longed to fall from it into love the way I'd watch you all do over and over again for thousands of years. I suppose, in a way, it was silly to me. One of your generations is but a moment of my time, and these connections — these shared moments — felt like little else than a desperate attempt at … something. I'm not even confident that I felt as though you knew what you were fighting so hard for.

It's common to hear that someone has taken your breath away. Though, technically, I am the only one who could do such a thing. I never understood the way just looking at another could force your lungs shut. How love could choke you until the object of that love shared some of their breath with yours.It was an incredible amount of power to grant someone.

There I sat, in my proverbial castle in the sky, and I judged. That is, until Kova was born. The moment she desperately gasped for her first breath, I knew she'd stolen it from me.

I did not fall in love the way that you do. I felt no desire for the physical form she possessed. I felt, instead, an unprecedented curiosity regarding her presence. My affections for her were almost familial. Not as strong as a maternal love, yet more powerful than that of a sister. I felt something else for her, something that nothing had ever felt before.

Kova's birth spurred a lot of firsts. She was my first love (and many others'), the first nes'kär born to her generation. Among all that, her birth was also the first, genuine instance of the birth of a god.

I view you as an extension of myself. Every breath, every feeling, every moment of both bliss and terror — though I am not experiencing them, they belong to me. It was for that reason that I felt entitled to the power I'd wield over you and your fate. I felt you owed me for the air you'd syphon from the lungs that sprouted from the ground and hosted canopies to shield you from the harsh sun I had also forced you to endure. I owned you, but I did not own Kova. She owed me for nothing. She was the first fate I had ever witnessed that I did not weave with my own two hands.

Sometimes, she tells me stories. She tells me of the way true, unabashed heartbreak can rip that heart right out of your bodies. The way you let water rush over your heads — and how it feels like you're regaining some sort of purity and you let that purity cleanse you, but it is also dangerous and unforgiving. It can flood your insides and leave you gasping for that first breath again until it burns. She tells me that you'd risk it on a hot day just to spend some time with the people you love.

Kova, once, told me her story. Somehow, though I'd been watching it unfold, it felt new to me. I believe I realized during her description of one of the tests of faith I'd forced her to endure that witnessing an event is not the same as living it. I had never experienced anything. Not truly. I had no idea what it felt like to feel a heart shatter but somehow stay beating. I'd never gotten to feel them shatter; only stop.

She'd begin her story by telling me that graveyards somehow seemed more ominous in the daytime. Perhaps it was the idea that the sunlight would illuminate the spirits that lingered there. Or, maybe, it was that the light would illuminate Orion's face just enough so that Kova could see the look in her father's eyes as he gazed upon her mother's place of final rest, a deep yet hollow grave that they had come to symbolically toss their respects into. Regardless, the moments she spent in the cemetery with what was left of her blood-born family made her realize that the winter was not as cold as she once remembered, but a part of her knew it was only because her father's hands in hers felt colder.

There was always silence, then. It was as though Katherine had filled the space between them with the overwhelming presence that neither of the two surviving Arondtis' possessed. That was potentially why Vinnea was such a favored addition to the family: she breathed fire into a hearth that had laid bare since Katherine's death. Her presence commanded attention, but only from the corner of your eye. Her cadence, while unassuming and generally hostile, left you feeling uneasy for reasons that would never quite become clear to you. Vinnea was never one to mince words: not even at the funeral, when she'd voice her distaste for the Guard and their capacity to "mimic loss", in her words. Kova never argued that fact with her — it was undeniable that Vinnea had suffered more than any child should.

Katherine's service was beautiful, albiet cliched. She was laid to rest in an empty coffin, beneath a soldier's grave east of Lyre, her burial site falling just short of the ocean's edge. The service was beautifully graced with lilies eagerly provided by the townsfolk, but still had a solemn air lingering above it. The appeal of honoring the dead was not quite lost on Kova, as she had spent many days doing nothing but honoring her mother's life. However, to Kova's — who had already paid her respects in the years prior, when Katherine's untimely departure from this plane was only a possibility — young mind, she could only look through the greyed hue left by the previous day's rain and see only false declarations of love.

Her uncle, Caito, found himself leading a pack of the Lyrian Guard to their places beside the grave as they stiffly arranged themselves along the edges of the coffin and filled in between the pallbearers. Kova found herself envying them — they knew what they had to do. The steps to take. All anybody had ever done was apologize, or tell her that time would heal. Nobody seemed to have an answer for how much time can mend a neglected heart. She held her father's hand tightly in hers, and she knew where she was, but Kova was still lost. Her mother had been gone for many years at that point, though she had not been officially declared dead until recently. The weight of what she'd sacrificed in the name of creating a healthy, thriving nation weighed down on her shoulders but had long since stopped being too heavy for Kova to carry. Though she missed her mother greatly, possibly more than she would ever miss a single human being in her short lifetime, she had shed all the tears that she could manage.

Her father, whilst still holding her hand so tightly Kova could feel the tips of her fingers going numb against every contour of his calloused knuckles, cinematically dabbed her grandmother's tears with his free hand, and she could see through the light layer of fog that he, too, was fighting his own. It was the telltale quiver of his upper lip and a glimmer when his eye caught the low light that gave him away.

Kova indulged in the curiosity of his expression for just a moment before tearing her eyes away, feeling the sudden urge to look anywhere but upon Orion's freckled face. Her gaze quickly settled on Catio, who had his head bowed as he shuffled to the pedestal that stood tall in front of the neatly arranged soldiers. Both of the men in her life, who had exhibited nothing short of incredible fortitude from the moment Kova was conceived to the moment those men dissolved into the dirt, had been reduced to husks of the people they used to be, devoured unapologetically by their love for Katherine.

In the months following her mother's death, Kova resented her. It was an irrational resentment, buried deep within, and though it had faded some by the time her funeral rolled, the impact it had on the way she viewed Katherine never went away. Kova stewed in the pain Katherine had caused to the few people she had loved — especially her father. The way she looked at Catio changed ever-so-slightly during those days, too. Though he was present throughout her entire life, and was practically like her second father, there had always been a disconnect in Kova's relationship with him. Her love for Catio did not run as deep as it would have for a family member, but she always enjoyed it when he'd grace her with his presence. However, there was never a persistent urge to keep him in her life as there was for some others, to the point of near desperation. She mused, idly, on several occasions if that was because Katherine's disappearance was his, too, in a way. Not physically — he still came around just as often, if not more so, but there was a faraway look in his eyes that translated almost too well into his actions. When he looked at Kova, it was as though he returned, but that lingering feeling of his homecoming lasted only a moment before fading away, possibly to the same void that the rest of Caito had withered to.

During the service, all Kova could manage to do was sit quietly, taking in the words of her peers. They thought she couldn't hear their whispers, but she had spent the first few years of her speaking life decoding the hushed tones of Orion and Katherine through the thinned wall of their home. She was particularly skilled in the art of making herself vague and unknown, cruising through any crowd with no particular intention. Though she was a direct descendant of who they had all gathered to mourn, in the eyes of the townsfollk she was comparatively inconsequential. To the few whose eye Kova did manage to catch, she'd see them lean in close to one another, whispering harshly under their breaths, "That poor girl. Only nine years old. I heard she waited by the fountain every day for her mother to return."

Though their tones were unforgiving, and Kova felt a distinct pang in her chest when they reminded her of her state of denial when Katherine first disappeared, they held no fault. At the time of her mother's disappearance, Kova happened to be a quickly maturing nine years old, and she did wait by the fountain each day and well into the evening for what she thought would be Katherine's inevitable homecoming. Her childlike innocence prevailed back then, never allowing Kova the possibility that she would be left the sole caretaker of her father's broken heart should something go awry. She trotted out each day in her best white dress, Katherine's proclaimed favorite of Kova's arsenal of ceremonious clothing, a bouquet of fresh flowers lounging haphazardly in the crook of her arm. Though their soft petals only just grazed Kova's skin, the sharpness of what they began to represent over time just felt like a million tiny needles, piercing her all at the same time. She felt it a minuscule price to pay for her mother's happiness upon seeing how much her daughter loved her after two years apart.

Despite Kova's enthusiasm in the beginning, however, the fantasy that Katherine would one day return home ended the same way it began: slowly. Agonizingly. Certitude faded into hope, and hope faded into fear, until the fear became the gentle thrum of acceptance. At some point, going out to the fountain became rooted in more ritual than belief — a quiet routine to fill her days. Back then, Kova had nothing better to do with her hands than grip those flowers so hard the stems snapped in half. Eventually, Orion stopped funding that ridiculous ideal, and the owner of the flower stand stopped handing them out for free. It wasn't until Kova's dress got caught on a bush and tore from the bottom to her waist almost a year after this ritual began that she snapped out of her grief-stricken haze.

Through it all, Vinnea was the comfort. Her actions — or lack thereof — were unusual for her at the time of the funeral. Vinnea was boastful, egotistical, and brazen. Kova took her silence as an unspoken show of respect. Out of all the people in the village who gathered on that day, Vinnea was the only one present who didn't personally know or even particularly care about Kova's mother. The indifference towards Kova's past before Vinnea's arrival in her life was something the young orphan had often voiced before, but was nowhere to be found as her strikingly aureate eyes fixated knowingly on the coffin that rested dead center in the crowd. Kova wouldn't notice until many years later that mentions of her mother from Vinnea ceased after that night. She wanted to assume it was purely for her sake, but she knew better.

The nonchalance was more manageable than the masks the townsfolk put on. She stood solemnly and silently to the side of Kova during the majority of the service while the other brooded bitterly, disappointed in her father for taking part. Though she was young, the appeal of lowering this memory of Katherine Ardontis into the ground and saying final goodbyes was not lost on Kova. The act itself meant the world to Orion for reasons his daughter could neither understand nor explain.

Kova must have zoned at at some point, because she snapped back into her body as Catio began speaking, his voice resonating through the open brush surrounding her mother's grave.

"I knew Katherine for many years," he began. From deep within, Kova felt the urge to roll her eyes, but she resisted. Not particularly because she was attempting to hide her distaste for the moment's activities, but because she felt Catio's eyes boring into her. He was looking at everyone — at least, he appeared to be — but she could feel that, when their gazes would meet, his would linger just a moment too long. The color, ever-so-slightly, would drain from his lips. She could see that, even from afar. "She was beautiful. Strong. Sweet. Kind. I've never met anyone like her, even to this day. But, even being all that she was, she was willing to give her life for her kingdom, and there is no death more noble than that."

The service ended shortly thereafter, a team of Katherine's closest friends and relatives lowering the coffin into the pre-dug grave, everyone directing their condolences, tears, and words of wisdom towards Kova and her father. Vinnea had wandered off somewhere, most likely made uncomfortable by so many public displays of emotion by so many people in such large concentration. Kova longed to follow wherever she had gone, desperate to get away from all the crying.

She scoured the woods for her sister for a while, but eventually Kova got sick of wandering the woods. She contemplated heavily the idea of going back and rejoining Orion, but an overdramatic wail somewhere far off in the distant direction of Katherine's service got her up and moving again. After a few minutes, she began to once again call out for her sister.

Vinnea finally replied not too long after Kova's second wind. "Shouldn't you be back at the service?"

Kova's sister's voice echoed from above. A quick glance upward was all she needed to see that Vinna was hanging from a tree branch by her knees, staring down at the young nes'kär with idled curiosity. Kova shook her head, her bangs sweeping over her face briefly. "No, I'm tired of acting sad."

"You're not sad?" Vinnea skillfully leapt off her branch and landed beside Kova, steadying herself before pulling an apple from her pocket and dusting it off on her trouser-leg. "Your mom is, like, dead. You know that, right?"

"I used to be sad," Kova breathed back, a shrug peaking on her shoulders. "But it's been a long time. Sadness doesn't last forever."

There was a long silence as Vinnea bit into her apple and chewed for a long — almost pointedly so — time. When it passed, Kova's sister turned on her heel and threw over her shoulder. "I think it does, sometimes."

"Where are you going?" Kova's tone had taken on something that resembled desperation. She was tired and Vinnea's pace had always been quicker than hers. She didn't want to have to jog to catch the redhead's stride — in fact, she was feeling quite dizzy. "Hey … come back!"

Vinnea paused, looking back over her shoulder at the other, who had leaned up against a tree for support. "I was just heading back. Are you okay?" There was no response. "Hey, Kova, hey!"

The last memory Kova had from before she woke up at home was of Vinnea's arms wrapping around her, shielding her from a harsh impact with the rocky ground. After that, she vaguely remembered being tucked into bed, her eyes open yet droopy, burning from the heat of tears that had already come.