Death

He prepared for a few seconds before making a gargantuan effort to get up from his seat. While his mind worked with the same precision and his eyes still had the omniscient gaze, his lower body strength left much to be desired.

He walked haltingly to the window and looked down upon the world.

At first glance, the sight took away his breath. The world below was buzzing with life, shimmering like a diamond with a billion different facets. He was relieved. But as he continued to look and began to make sense of the chaos, realization dawned, and he felt his heart beginning a downward journey to the soles of his feet. In other words, it sunk in that the decisions taken eons ago had not played out like he had intended them to..

******

..It was the beginning. When he was youthful and virile, could move as fast as mercury, and take decisions with the speed and rashness of a young God. Which he was.

He was immensely proud of his handiwork and the strategic bent of mind which had led to this undulating green ecosystem appearing out of nowhere.

He had thought of everything. The fundamental truth which his world would be based on was that all living beings were part of him and were ultimately to become one with him. But it would not do to make it easy for them to attain this salvation. It would have to be earned, in steps; through different births, in different avatars; one better than the previous or worse, depending on their deeds or misdeeds.

Death was inevitable. The food chain made pure economic sense.

He was a God who believed in balance and self-sustenance. Every day should have a night, and every flower a thorn or two. The river would lend itself back to the sky, and the sky in turn would squeeze those scuttling clouds like a sponge when the time was right.

He thought long and hard about man. By far his favorite, he had given man just enough to rule, but not enough to be truly happy. Maybe it was his ego, most likely his incompetence that man was the most imperfect of all his beings. Flawed and frightened, this man would be the only one to come close to solving the cosmic riddle, and yet never entirely there.

Man was his masterpiece. He made him over and over again, never satisfied. He wanted him to be strong, and beautiful; simple yet complex, capable of achieving happiness from the smallest of things yet yearning for more; generous yet selfish; humble yet grandiloquent.

He realized he would have to make two of them. Two parts of a whole he was attempting to create. On their own, each would be incomplete, too much of one thing or the other. Together they would achieve the balance he so longed for.

Man and Woman. One strong, the other beautiful. They would complement each other so well. And seek each other out. Woman, the life force, an enigma in herself, softer than snow, harder than ice. Man, the preserver, pliable yet solid, mountain of granite yet putty in her hands. He made her beautiful so he would come to her. He made him strong so she would go to him.

He felt his world complete. He breathed life into it and started dreaming.

*******

He woke up with a jolt. Sitting up, he felt acute disorientation and something akin to a headache.

As his bearings returned, he realized that he had gone to sleep for far longer than he had intended to. He felt thirsty and as he looked around for water, he suddenly remembered a vision, as if from a long forgotten dream, of great floods, water everywhere and his beloved earth drowning..

Pulling himself together, he prepared for a few seconds before making a gargantuan effort to get up from his seat. While his mind worked with the same precision and his eyes still had the omniscient gaze, he realized that his lower body strength left much to be desired.

He walked haltingly to the window and looked down upon the world, his world.

It was slick and red. It had the pink shimmer of a bloodied diamond. What had sounded like an energetic buzz at first was the resonance of a million screams. He looked far and wide and deep within its heart and all he could find was dismay and sorrow.

That fount of life, mother of all mankind, that beautiful creature, the woman, was getting flogged to within an inch of her life. Her once soft beauty had faded into pulp and her spirit itself had long been gone. The worst thing of all was that her slaughterer was none other than man.

Man, picking strength over nobility, lust over love, a hollow victory over all who were weaker than himself, never more flawed than when he pretended to be invincible. Over land, over destiny, over woman.

He averted his horrified gaze just as his knees threatened to give under him. He clutched at the window-sill to steady himself, reeking of desperation, the desperation of a tired old God looking at the last moments of a dying decaying world.