BRUTUS

Before Caelum threw his fit, and while he was drifting about the city peering through windows, a fragile girl with long, black hair and unblemished skin was ascending the spiraling stairs of the temple spire, a sacred flame in her palms. Only when she reached the top and stood before the altar did the stone beneath her bare feet begin to tremble to the sound of his curses.

The wind came, as did the rain. The thunder knocked her to her knees and bloodied them. Her hair lashed her face and her raiment was torn from her body, but she kept her sacred promise by crawling for the altar and setting it afire to turn the offered dove into smoke. 

Once the altar was lit, the shivering girl clung to a pillar and held on with both arms and legs. She wept as lightning blinded her eyes, thunder deafened her ears and shook her to the bones, and rain flogged her exposed skin. She did not shirk her duties, for as she hung on with fear of being torn loose and thrown to her death from the heights, in quavering voice she offered a prayer.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor,
Exhale the answers to our prayers,
Offer our devout ears the rustling leaves,
The whispering wind,
Amen.”

Despite the punishing wind and rain, the sacred fire continued burning, consuming the dove, feather, flesh, and hollow bone, and she was thankful it had not blown out, for her duty was to carry it in her hands up the stairs of the spire, to the altar, and back again. For the priests, the continual flame was not only a sign of Caelum’s appeasement, but proof the girl chosen to bear it was unblemished.

Like a terrified child clinging to her mother, trembling Gayla kept hanging to the pillar, and from her trembling lips she whimpered her prayer again and again.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

Gayla’s wounded knees bled down her porcelain shins. Never before had her skin been scratched or torn.

Just as the chilling wind and rain licked the blood away, the storm subsided.