BRUTUS

The storm subsided into silence once more.

Caelum took a deep breath, and it was enough to fill the sails of many ships. He inhaled the smoke and stench of the altar’s burning dove, the must of the girl’s lilac skin and salty blood, the scent of the rain soaked floor, the odor of wet mud mixed with dung in the streets, the earth, trees, and lighting’s electricity. Then he blew out pure air, keeping all the tiny parts he’d stolen through his flaring nostrils.

“I will fill my body with flesh and will become flesh!”

“Take ME as your dove!”  

“The girl shall be mine!”

She remained submissive and patient, on her bleeding knees, her hips offered up and open to him, her head down. He kept taking deep breaths, which made the wind whisk over her skin and whip her hair as it rushed into his lungs.

Still the words they spoke were unknown to one another’s ears, but hers were nevertheless enchanting music, and his were gusts of passion.

“Take ME as your dove!”  

“The girl shall be mine! Flesh shall be mine!”

Unable to take it all in fast enough, Caelum leapt from the spire and high into the air. He spun into a terrible funnel with lashing tail and descended for the farmland outside the city walls.

“Caelum? Where have you gone, my Lord?” cried Gayla, sensing her sudden abandonment.

With clouds as shoulders, hurricane winds as body and feet, a lightning countenance, and thunder in his throat, Caelum penetrated the earth like a deadly spear. The mantle quaked and broke at the seams, the city walls cracked at their foundations, men and women were thrown from their beds, and horses kicked open their stable gates and galloped away. 

“I should have had more to drink before bed,” lamented the shoemaker after tumbling to the floor with his blankets.

“The brightest star has fallen from the heavens!” cried a priest running in the streets in his nightgown, before falling to the ground.

“Mother Dirt!” howled the angry and determined, fallen star.

As the writhing earth collapsed rooftops and toppled walls, the temple spire began to sway, its stones to crack at the mortar. To save herself from tumbling off the platform to smash into the cliffs and sea below, Gayla dove for the altar and clung tightly to it.

“Please spare me!”

The sacrifice, a flaming dove floating in a golden chalice, leapt from the altar and bounced across the floor, spilling fire, blood, and oil. Taking flight from the spire, it crashed into the jagged cliffs below, and then met a quick end, doused in the tumultuous waters of the sea. 

“Caelum, why have you awakened me?” whispered a voice from the depths.

“Please spare me!” cried the girl.

“Fuck me,” exclaimed the shoemaker as the floor beneath him kept rumbling, as the plaster broke from his ceiling and landed in his face.

“There is a void in the Heavens!” screamed the fallen priest in the streets.

With lashing tail, Caelum kept churning the mud and gulping it down, shaking the earth with his violence.

“Flesh shall be mine!”

Just mix the waters with dust, rot, and dung, and give it breath? Is this all it takes to make animated meat, to create what it takes to satisfy lust?

Flesh.

Into Caelum’s gaping mouth the soil kept pouring, stretching his belly with indigestion, filling his ethereal veins, and giving his feathers weight.

This way, with sucking wind, He filled his emptiness with substance, with Flesh. His twisting tail lumbered more with every swallow, his hands, feet, and face appeared. His wings became burdened and heavy.  

When Caelum lost his lightness for flight and transformed into a man, he leapt for the temple spire and crashed down before the girl.

“Caelum?” Gayla stammered.

Though the storm and quake had finally left the night to silence, tears were still running down her cheeks. Her arms continued clinging to the altar.

He just lay there, naked, sweating, suffering for air.