Page 132 of Gift of Dragons
No, beautiful was too bland.
More likemagnificent.
Glorious. Resplendent. Devastating.
Hmm. He’d certainly never thought in so many superlatives about anyone else before, or anything, for that matter, and Benjamin D’Angelo was a merehuman.
Gods didn’t normally fixate on living beings, becausefeelingswere involved. And gods didn’t tend to feel much.
When one had existed for countless thousands of years, since the dawn of civilization really, one tended to be inured to feeling.
Besides, all gods were created with emotional handicaps, as humans would say, if a human psychologist ever examined Michael, Eve and Ruth.
Ironically, the gods’ creations, immortals and humans, tended to feel too much. Perhaps as a way to compensate for the lack. Everything must be in balance, after all.
Michael sneered at the thought.
Fucking laws of the universe. So many rules. So many constraints.
Who was to say what they should be? Michael only knew thatpowerat the end of the day was the most important thing. The gods or god in power was the one who got to set the rules.
Once upon the time, when Michael possessed his full powers in another form, he tried to take that power for himself. Not because he wanted to rule the universe; he couldn’t care less.
He merely wanted to befree. To make his own rules. To not be under the thumb of someone else.
To not bepunishedfor breaking arbitrary rules.
He’d learned his lesson. He had.
If gods could feel and regret, he regretted. He didn’t understand at the time that it was happening what it meant.
How could he?
He’d never known “love.” How was he to recognize it when it was given to him? How was he to know how to give it back?
Now, after all this time, if his punishment had taught him anything, it was regret. He still didn’t know what “love” was. Still didn’t understand why it was given to him, and how he would have given it back.
But he regretted hurting the one who loved him. And he’d spent the rest of his existence atoning for it in the only ways he knew how, with what little powers he had left.
“You going to stand there all day or come over to collect the wood?”
Ben’s low, bemused greeting brought Michael out of his thoughts. So wrapped up in introspection was he that he hadn’t noticed that Ben had stopped chopping.
A large pile of basswood chunks lay at his feet. Michael had been sent out here by Tal to bring them back to the shop for carving.
He’d been apprenticing at the woodshop for almost as long as he’d been stuck here in the human realm. And over the past many months, he’d become a constant fixture at Tal and Ishtar’s house.
He saw the rest of the family, Inanna, Gabriel, and of course, Ben, quite often because of this. After all, Ben’s own cabin was just a short distance away in the back, on the edge of the woods.
On the weekends, Michael arrived before dawn, and he didn’t even complain. He was actuallyeagerto see Tal, for the blind immortal was another one of his favorite people to fixate on.
He and Ben had similar auras. There was an air of command and wisdom that drew people to their orbit like the gravitational pull of twin suns. Sometimes, he even bunked down in one of the guest rooms in the main house because it was more efficient that way when he worked late in the shop.
Michael grunted noncommittally and shuffled forward, keeping his head and eyes down.
He didn’t like to look directly at Ben when Ben knew he was looking. It was like staring directly into the sun. Might burn his corneas.
They picked up the wood and balanced the pieces in their arms in silence.