was with a voice that was as ancient and cold as bleached bones.
It was the voice that haunted my dreams. The voice of God.
And God was both painfully beautiful and horrifying beyond words.
The sound of Its feet padding slowly across the damp stones toward me made me shudder, and I had to cover my eyes because I couldn’t bear to look at It. I wanted to run, to hide. I would have flung myself into a pit if it meant being able to get away. But I couldn’t move. Even raising my hands to cover my eyes felt life an enormous effort, and keeping them covered was even worse. I couldn’t bear it. My hands fell back trembling to my sides, and my burning eyes wouldn’t close even when tears flooded down my face.
It stood before me, enormous, all-encompassing. The cavern around us had expanded indefinitely, the walls hazy, unable to contain the true mass of the being within. Its nearness made me sick, but It also flooded me with so much pleasure that I could hardly breathe.
Within the rapidly changing, unnamable colors that made up Its being, I could see something like a human face, as pale as mist, with numerous eyes that slowly winked open and closed as It spoke.
“A mere century ago, I spared three of your kind to go back into the world, to prepare it for me, to spread the word of awakening. Three lives spared, must one day be returned. The work is done. The oath is fulfilled. Look at me, mortal.”
The longer I looked, weeping, my chest aching as if I was drowning, the more Its misty face solidified. It could have been carved in marble, It could have been painted by Michelangelo, or created by some computer algorithm with unwavering perfection. So beautiful It was terrifying, so overwhelming that I thought I would melt away and become nothing just from having Its gaze on me.
“I’ve waited for you, Raelynn Lawson. I have called to you, even when you wandered so far from your home. But you returned to me, as you were meant to.”
I tried to shake my head, but my movements felts so slow. “No,” I whispered. “I’m not yours. I’m not.”
There was a glitch in Its perfection. Beyond the beauty, I could see gray, slimy skin. I could see a massive form, with coiling tentacles, covered in dozens of blinking pale white eyes. I could smell rotting fish. I could smell the ocean.
God smiled, with perfect white teeth. Like static cutting through a television screen, for a moment those teeth were jagged, curved and sharp, like some predator from the deepest parts of the ocean. Then it was gone, and it was as if a switch was flipped in my brain and I forgot how to be afraid.
“Do not fear your fate.” Its voice reverberated around the cavern, rumbling deep in my bones. “Always, you were meant for me. Always, you were meant to return. This place called you back, and you answered willingly.” There was another rumbling sound, deeper and darker that made the hairs on my neck stand on end. God was laughing. “You came to me. You left your family behind. You followed my voice in your dreams. Even as you wandered in the darkness of this deep place, you chose the path that would lead you to me.”
I wasn’t here willingly, I wasn’t. But as It spoke, my protests died with barely any fight. It reached for me, and I wanted so badly to cringe away, to scream and fight but I just…couldn’t. It touched my face, but Its fingers didn’t feel like flesh and blood at all. They were cold, thick, and slimy, and wherever It touched me my skin was left numb.
Then It pressed Its palm against my forehead, and it was as if my skull was being split open, cracked like an egg. Memories, as bright and vivid as if I was reliving them, flashed before my eyes. I was a child, running through the trees with bare feet, climbing over fallen logs and hauling myself up onto mossy stumps. I’d heard a voice calling me, and I thought it was my fairies. I ran and ran, like it was a game and they were hiding from me. Then I paused, knelt, and pressed my ear against the dirt. The voice was down there. I dug my tiny fingers into the earth, as if I could dig my way down to it.