Ira

She is a god, and she is of heaven.

Or what mortals call heaven, anyways. Something holy and immortal, a being with a power too great for their bones and body. It seethes in trickles down her forehead, presses in glowing lines across itching scales, burns an untamable fire in her gut. She is a god. This she knows.

She is powerful, a star shining hot and fiery, collapsing and inflating and pressure and stardust, a being of light and gravity and eternity, or close to it, anyways. So much. So much.

So little.

She is immortal, and she wanders.

All the skies above are the realm of hers, omnipresent and everlasting. On the mortal planes she feels too small and sore, trapped in a body too fragile and fleeting, born and dying over and over in a hundred cycles of rebirth. A god trapped in a mortal's cycle—what a joke.

She's of her realm but removed from it, can never reach those twinkling lights of hers that hang in the sky, almost taunting-

Stars call, and she is just dust.

She wanders, and she sees - the sky sees the world, see the people's suffering laid bare, these are the people of hers, her people. Her people, the people she watches over and the people that pray to her, pray to gods, that ask her to save them, but she cannot. She cannot do anything.

The skies see, and they cry, and rain falls. Their people. Their pain.

Children of sky, of space, of air and light. Creations of stardust, of supernovas long died. Her being rests in their bones, buried deep and aching. They hurt, bleed and wear and cry and ache, and she cannot. She cannot.

She hears them, the prayers. The words reach her, begging, pleading, damning—save me, save me from this hell, from this earth that is too evil and this cruelty that I cannot bear. They ring in her head at night, echo off her power and prestige and shine like glittering fractals—binding her, pleading for her to save them. Save us.

They chain her. Their weight buries her wings, and she cannot return to where she is meant to be—above, above, above. There is something ironic about it, she thinks, her people being what anchor her in this horrid world.

What kind of god is she? All her power rests in realms above, realms she cannot reach. She's a god, and she is mortal. All her power is above and she is buried below here, struggling, always yearning, and she is entitled to so much and yet has so little.

Save us.

There's something funny about it, she thinks. They pray for some god to save them. But she can't even save herself.

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Her first life, she was an astronomer.

Charting the stars by their faraway lights, the lamps by her bedside became her best friend. That first cycle feels so long ago to her, now; she doesn't recall much, no friends or lovers or faces, but she remembers her work. Remembers being the first to depict the paths of the planets, the first to draw the maps that would lay down the roadwork for generations to come.

Her second life, she was a philosopher.

She studied as a scholar, learned all she could of mortal ways and so much more, observed and mingled. She never truly approached, however—she could not bear to get too close to the lives too short and fast and fleeting, how frail they were. So young, so naive. So weak.

She was always different, and that distance yawned in her actions, a dissonance she never truly could convince herself to brush aside.

Her third life, she was... she doesn't remember. Most of her lives blur together, really, but she's pretty sure she was a wanderer. Or an explorer. Or a priest. Something along those lines—she doesn't remember, really. It's just... too much, even for her immortal mind.

What of her power? The deep knowing in her understands, somehow, just what she is. Of and from infinity, eternity and grace and stardust, but removed of it. Unable to ascend, she sits here, down on this earthly plane. The universe likes to taunt her, it seems.

It tastes like just that—a taste. No matter how many life cycles she experiences, she's just mortal. Immortal but mortal.

And she knows what she is, but it simply isn't enough. Because knowledge alone—it cannot save her. It cannot save anyone.

She cannot save anyone. What is she good for then? What kind of god is she?
































bought a spiral with starmap/peregrine/ghost

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a god of the stars, cursed to forever wander as a mortal admiring them from afar. bereft of her birthplace, she can only hear her people's cries, and wish she could save them with the power she is owed.


(basic premise: her people's prayers weigh her down and trap her in a mortal body, apart from heaven, where her true power resides. the irony is, if they didn't pray, she would be able to save them, because then she would be free to wield her real strength. but they pray. but they cry. but they call.

but they tie her to this earth, believe she must save them and can save them, but by believing they project their ideal of her into a mortal frame that in the end, cannot do anything at all.)

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these realms above i cannot reach
are taunting and tormenting me
so close—like if i flew, i'd be
right there, heart bared, and almost free.

so twisted, teasing, torturing
to learn to live with settling
'cause this is my reality
look ever skyward, bitterly.


if i could ascend,
if all heavens would bend

and make it true,
let me through,
get me through
and burn away this fragile form

scales and fur and more

cloaked in prayer's thorns,
heaven-born
for i am of the stars yet ever reaching for.