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c o r n e l l
male ✦ adult ✦ writer
created by the gods to remind
mortals of their origins, a gryphon-
shaped construct compiles a book of
their stories.
personality
quiet ✦ awkward ✦ thoughtful ✦
creative ✦ loving ✦ curious
✦ dutiful ✦ reliant on others ✦
quick to learn ✦ focused ✦ likes
music ✦ often stares at the sky ✦
shrugs a lot ✦ loves drawing ✦ prone
to idolisation of others
physical quirks
strange brain structure; not
mentally ill but unusual in many
ways ✦ enhanced multitasking
abilities ✦ dulled claws/talons ✦
fur fluffs up when scared ✦
above-average senses of hearing
and touch ✦ neurologically
incapable of dreaming
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The gods had little power over the Earth these days. Cornell didn't understand much of what Sakura had told him about why, her words seeming to blur together even as she said them. They hadn't thought to implant in him much metaphysical knowledge, Prism had told him. Vex's explanation had been simpler, though apparently lacking in nuance: "We can't mess with anything mortal-made."
(There was still curiosity ringing in him, of course, a constant stream of questions whispering within him. But he was a construct, not a
person, really, and his purpose was to write, not to learn.)
Here in the forest, the gods' powers were more or less limitless. That was how they'd built the temple, how they kept him fed and safe. He could do that himself too, of course, but Wisp insisted he didn't mind, and Vex seemed to take a guilty glee in eliminating every threat that came near Cornell.
He knew the word for someone like him: spoiled. But he wasn't about to argue with the gods.
He spent his days writing, instead. That was what he was made to do, and that was what he would do. He scribbled stories of the gods in the paper they'd provided with the devotion of a gryphon with little else to care about.
---
The first thing he ever felt was talons against his feathers.
He wasn't sure how he knew what a talon was; the word simply appeared when he directed his thoughts toward the thing prodding him. The talon withdrew for a moment as he came up with the name, and he felt something: air moving past his shoulders as its owner turned.
Then came sound. Fuzzy, at first: a distant chime was all he could make out for long moments, and he embraced it, drinking in the sensation of hearing. It quickly faded, though, replaced with a vividly distinct voice.
"-not in front of him."
Silence. Something moved from behind him, scraping against the ground with a loud harsh noise. He couldn't classify the
whump that came next, but a bird in flight came to mind.
And then he could see.
There was a gryphon hovering in front of him, tiny with wide flaky wings. "Hey!" she said. Her voice was bright, the same as the voice he'd heard earlier, though the disapproving undertone was gone.
"You're probably awfully confused by now," she continued, warm. "You're being really calm, which is good, but. Uh." Her eyes - iridescent, changing each time she moved her head - pulled into a frown. "Wait, can you move?"
Movement. He knew what that was, but not, it seemed, how to do it. He flailed against himself, scrambling to solve this enigma, to will his form to kick out a limb or open its beak, but found nothing.
"Stars. You can't, can you? Hang on. I can fix this, just give me a moment." She fluttered closer to him, placing one talon on his forehead. A moment later he spasmed, unable to stop himself from kicking her hard enough to send her flying as he tumbled to the hard white ground, sending white powdery cubes flying up around him.
The sheer thrill of movement was rivalled only by the panic of having hurt the tiny gryphon. He tried to speak as he lay tangled on the white floor, but he couldn't find the words, now he was the one trying to form them. He struggled to his feet instead, every movement feeling as glacially slow as if he were moving through molasses.
(What were molasses? Why were they the first thing to come to mind?)
"Okay," she said, and he turned to find her no worse for wear, already up and flying as if nothing had happened. "Usually Sakura does this stuff, Goddess of Knowledge and all, but she's busy right now, so that's why I'm here instead! I'm Prism, resident Goddess of Life, and - I'm not sure if you heard him, but Vex was here just a bit ago. God of Destruction, black all over with gold eyes. You're probably really confused right now, wondering who I am and all that, but!"
"Okay," he said, mimicking the first thing Prism had said. It was easier this way, borrowing her words rather than coming up with his own. "Who- I am? Why?"
"Who are you?" It was a question, her way of making sense of his words. He nodded, uncertain. "You're
you. I was thinking we could call you Cornell, or something like that, but really that's up to you. Why are you here? I was just gonna get into that! It's a long story, though. Hang on."
---
"Why are you even
worried?" said Vex. "Do you know who I am?"
"We get it, Vex, but killing everything that gets in our way is never going to be the best solution." That was Wisp's voice now, deep and smooth in spite of the annoyance that roiled in it.
"Of
course it's not always going to be the best! I never said it was! That's just not the
point.They'd been fighting since he'd returned to the temple, growing bored of staring at the dusk. He hated it when the gods argued; they were always hooked into his mind, meaning he was effectively always privy to their arguments. He didn't want to be. He hated seeing how spiteful they could be at their worst, wished he could always think of them with the warm, kind veneers they'd presented from the start. He loved them, of course - how could he not? - but it was hard
It wasn't like he could stop the gods, though. He focused on his piece of charcoal instead, etching symbols and images into paper. There wasn't any purpose to these doodles, no rhyme or reason to what he was drawing. He just wanted his hands to be moving.
"Cornell," said Sakura. Her voice was filled with the quiet confidence he'd come to expect from her, so often free of the doubts and insecurities that plagued the others.
He'd been blessed with enough multitasking ability to listen in on the argument and talk to Sakura at the same time. It surprised him, though, that she was talking to him; she was usually more an observer than anything else, sitting in the shadows until the time came to shine. Prism was generally the one to strike up conversations with him. "Sakura," he said in acknowledgement. "Where's Prism?"
"Playing around with her powers," she replied. "On a deeper level, trying to avoid listening to these two fight. That's not why I'm talking to you, though. How's the book going?"
The book. More or less the entire purpose for his existence: there'd be more, after this, but he didn't want to think about that. He'd been made to spread belief of the gods, and the compilation of their stories was only one small part of that, but it was the only thing he was interested in, the only thing he could do.
He was a poet, in one sense. A puppet, in another. That was just the way he liked it.
"Well," he said. He still hadn't gotten the hang of speaking, telepathically or aloud, but he didn't need to. The question was more a formality than anything else; Sakura knew just as well as he did how he was doing.
"I'd like to see it," she said.
He frowned, groping around the wooden desk for the scattered sheets of paper on which he'd written the stories. There weren't many of them just yet; he'd existed for less than a week, and half of that time had been spent making sure he knew how to write at all. Laying them side-by-side on the table, he went back to his drawing.
(He still devoted one tenuous part of his mind to listening to Wisp and Vex. He knew they'd want him to be aware of what was going on. What he didn't know was what they were even arguing about anymore.)
Sakura hummed as she read, and the low thrumming melody wound its way into his mind. His pencil strokes matched its rhythm - long winding lines that ended in sharp points, flowing into each other and intertwining. Like noodles, he thought, as if he had any idea what noodles were.
"What's that song?" he asked.
"It's centuries old," she said. "You don't know the language, and it's hard to translate. 'Red Beryl of Battle-Related Hopes', roughly."
"Oh," he said.
They lapsed into a brief silence before Sakura spoke again. "You work fast."
"I don't have much else to do."
"That, yes, but most people take years to hone skills like this. And you wrote it in
meter."
So he had.
"It's going to be hard to translate in future, if you want to keep all the double meanings and puns," she said.
He looked over the sheets of paper, taking in the words he'd so carefully laboured over. He hadn't considered how other languages might render his efforts pointless, hadn't thought at all about what would happen after he finished writing
this."It's fine," she added after a long silence. "Focus on the present, for now. Most people around here speak Avis, and you can just read it aloud to those who don't."
He shrugged - a gesture he'd found exceedingly useful when he wasn't sure what else to say - and continued drawing.
---
"Wisp!" called Prism. "Come on! We're all waiting for you."
"I'm coming, I'm coming," said Wisp. "Calm down."
He wasn't graceful, exactly, but there was something deliberate about the way he moved, even running. He fluttered up to sit next to Prism on the pure white ridge above the others, spreading his wide blue wings as he looked over the horizon.
Cornell was still utterly bewildered as to what was going on around him, but he'd discovered one thing: he was a fast learner. Prism had explained all that she could while they'd waited. They were on the Astral Plane, the only entities capable of accessing it, but he'd leave soon, for reasons not entirely clear. She'd held on to an irritating amount of information, insisting on letting Wisp tell the story.
"He's way better at this than I am, trust me," said Prism now, gliding down to stand beside Cornell. "He has a really nice voice, and he's great at explaining things. He's the best storyteller I know."
"The only storyteller you know," said Wisp, putting a paw to his chest, "but I'll accept the compliment all the same."
Prism opened her mouth in protest, but Wisp raised a hand to stop her. "Ah-ah-ah!" he said, wagging a finger at her. "Please, stay silent until the end of the concert."
Prism burst into giggles as she stepped back, and apparently catching something in Cornell's face, Vex grinned. "He was
worse way back when, if you can believe it," whispered Vex. "He copies this stuff from the mortals."
Cornell looked at him for a brief moment before, breaking eye contact, he looked back up at Wisp.
With some pomp he dove into the tale of the gods, beginning from the very moment Wisp, God of Creation, was born and winding to the creation of Sakura and Vex and at last Prism. He gestured as he spoke, his voice wavering high and low, loud and soft to fit the mood of the story. Sakura piped up a few times to correct some embellishment or falsehood, which Cornell quickly noted and absorbed, but for the most part he simply listened in captivated silence. Prism was doing the same, he noticed, for all she must have heard this before; Sakura and Vex seemed distant, meanwhile, unconcerned with the story.
The story continued past that, though, shifting gradually from an almost dreamlike sense of wonder to something darker, Wisp's voice tinged with melancholy as he spoke. Their creations moved on like chicks leaving the nest. They didn't need the gods anymore, could fend and care for themselves, and they forgot how helpful they'd been, forgot how they'd once been needed.
"But that," said Wisp, flying down to stand in front of Cornell, "is where you come in." He looked at Cornell, his gaze burning with hope so bright that it seemed to physically sting Cornell, knowing that
this was why he was here, the culmination of millennia's hopes and dreams. To mess up was to crush all of those.
"Wisp," said Sakura.
He glanced at her, then, remembering himself, he relaxed, his gaze softening into playful melodrama, his voice losing its edge as he backed off.
"Now, now," he said. "No need to be alarmed by my display of passion."
---
"You're going today?" asked Sakura.
"Yes."
It wasn't right to say that Cornell didn't have a choice. He always had a choice, had never really been pushed into anything. It was fairer to say that he just wasn't interested in making a choice. He knew this was what they wanted, and walking to a village looking like someone you might accept a prophecy from couldn't possibly be that hard. He could do this, and so he would.
The book hadn't even been finished yet. He would have liked to stay and keep writing, but he had promises to keep, a duty to fulfil.
"That's great!" said Prism. "I was wondering when you'd start making friends. Your psychology's a lot different from most living things I've made, but I'm thinking loneliness is probably gonna grate on you anyways. I dunno, I haven't done a lot of gryphons. You were kinda based on us, mostly Wisp, and gosh I'm rambling aren't I?"
"Yep," answered Vex, but Cornell could hear the wry grin in his voice. It'd been hard to reconcile his cutting words with his kind devotion, once, but Cornell knew better now. "She's right, though. Sitting around with nobody but us for company can't be good for you."
The gods were all he'd ever need, but he nodded all the same as he stepped out of the temple. The sun had barely risen, the grass still wet under his feet as he moved, his feathers stiff with the cold.
"Wisp?" said Sakura. "You've been quiet."
"Yeah," said Wisp pensively. Cornell padded along the dusty path carved into the grass, cocking his head back to stare at the sky as he listened to the gods. "Just... thinking."
"Wisp, thinking?" joked Vex. "Outrageous."
Wisp laughed, and all at once the energy returned to him, every shred of passivity vanishing from him. "Why, I never!" he said. "I am a budding philosopher; I do nothing
but think."
"Oh, really?" said Vex. "It doesn't seem like it."
"As if you would know anything about that," scoffed Wisp.
Prism made a noise, a small silvery peal of surprised laughter. "Oh, gosh," she said. "You guys are
mean."
The banter continued, and Cornell looked back. Already the temple was distant, the ornate patterns carved into its exterior just golden swirly blurs. He could feel their power fade as he moved, the air seeming eerily still compared to the barely-perceptible buzz that cloaked the temple. Yet their voices still rang crystal-clear in his mind, their presence suffused into him.
He wasn't alone.