The Trapeze Swinger
A Short Story Set in the World of Shoes For Men & Beasts
Blurb:
The Goddess of Life, who mends animals, and the God of the Night, who guides souls in passing, fell in love, one death at a time. Now, as a God's time to fade arrives, how do they bid their farewells?
Check out the world of Shoes For Men & Beasts right here!
Cast of Characters:
Ohdros:
Ohdros, the God of the Night and the revered master of The Frozen Lake school, imparts the ancient wisdom of celestial magic, teaching students the intricate arts of astrology and enchanting astronomy. He personifies the solemnity of death & the night and guides souls to the afterlife, but beneath his skeletal exterior lies a longing for the warmth of life's fleeting moments.
Idelia:
Idelia, the Goddess of Life, embodies the very essence of existence, her touch breathing liveliness into the world, and her melodies inspiring harmony and renewal. As a healer, she tends to animals and beasts, mending their spirits and nurturing the circle of life.
Year 7,999
A pale, soft hand moved over the blue-grey skin of an otter. The fur on its skin was usually alert and scared, but today it lay peacefully on a small, black-framed bed covered with a white blanket. The otter’s head was visible over the blanket, but its body was hidden beneath it. One of its tiny hands rested on the white blanket, while the other held the fuzzy paw of a woman who sat beside the bed. The woman had teary lime green eyes and wore a lime green full-sleeve dress with four bright yellow buttons near her neck. Her sleeves and the round collar, which popped up a couple of centimeters, also had a bright yellow lining. She had pale, glowing skin and shiny brown hair, tied in a single long braid that fell over her shoulder and reached her waist. Her mouth was small, and her eyes were large.
“Can I go where you go?” asked the woman in her soft, bird-sweet voice.
The otter squeaked softly, and the woman did not know what to say. It was the first time that Idelia, the Goddess of Life, was speechless. She held the otter’s paws with both of her hands, the right hand resting under the fur and the left hand grasping softly from above. She looked around and saw that she was sitting on a bed in a room with empty beds. The vast windows revealed heavy rain outside and a gloomy night sky above. The windows were shaped like a crown, with three evenly placed mullions in the center and two more on both ends that curved inward.
The floor of Maison Dieu was made of light blue marble, with large patches of dark blue marble that were so clean and clear that they reflected the happenings on the floor upside down. Loads of dark oak wooden barrels were piled around the room, and there were lamps placed on them that illuminated the room slightly. Two large pillars, arched into the ceiling, supported the roof of Maison Dieu and had a pattern of wooden leaves on them. There were wooden cabinets with green algae slipping out of them and many glass potion bottles with funky liquids standing on the cabinets. A large, lightless chandelier hung from the ceiling, looking more haunting than grand. The soft green walls complemented the blue beautifully.
The reflection on the clean marble floor had patches of light as well, some due to the lanterns illuminating the room, and one of them was the large patch that the Goddess of Life radiated. Her lime green eyes looked into the otter’s brown eyes, and they looked struck with grief. “Tell me… tell me with your eyes…” her lips quivered. She silently sat there with Olly, the otter occasionally squeaking and flapping its paws.
The lamps, which were placed on the barrels and shelves, started to hover slightly over the ground. A dark shadow of the metal frame of the lanterns loomed under them. Idelia looked at the floating lanterns, but she didn’t think it was anything special. They were meant to be floating lanterns, but their magic had run out. Some force of mysticism must have powered them up, she thought. She looked out through the windows and heard the raindrops pelting down from the clouds, caressing the leaves of the trees. Idelia suddenly felt a soft flicker and looked at a nearby lantern. The hovering lamp had started to shake. Idelia smiled softly, and the lantern began to flicker, and so did all the lanterns around the Maison Dieu’s hall.
She sat with her back facing the hall entrance but could sense everything that entered and left the place, as this place of healing was her home. The Goddess heard a rumble of thunder outside looked at the lightning with curiosity and love in her eyes, but lightning has no mercy. The flickering became heavier and heavier, causing the trees to sway in the restless wind, revealing the full moon of the night. The moonlight illuminated the hall of Idelia’s home as the lanterns went out.
“You realize that every time you come here, I have to conjure up new lanterns,” she said softly.
“I understand…” replied a grim voice that walked behind her. It was a large skeleton in a soft humanoid form. His rib cage bones had gotten slightly brittle, but the other bones were as shiny as the moon. The God of the Night’s skull had a small crack on top, and he raised his bone hand as a deep violet robe covered his bone torso. The long sleeves covered most of his arms, and he grasped the robe’s hood from behind his skull and pulled it over his head.
“All these centuries, and I never asked you, why do you come without your robes every single time?” asked Ohdros, the God of the Night. He walked toward Idelia and sat on the empty bed opposite her. He sat there with his bone fingers clasping the edges of the bed.
“The moon doesn’t allow me to wear my clothes there anyway. The clothes are a part of the mortal world, not for us Gods,” said Ohdros.
“Who was on this bed?” asked Ohdros, looking at the glowing woman.
“You took her yesterday, the cat, Clara…” she said with grief in her eyes and voice.
“I’m sorry, Idelia… I had to….”
Idelia sniffed slightly and asked, “Did she go safely?”
“She took me to her old home…” answered Ohdros. He summoned a small cigarette between his fingers and grasped the flame from the nearby lantern with his other hand, lighting up the cigaretteette. “I said to her, ‘Kitten, we have to leave now.’ But she said, ‘not yet.’ I asked her, ‘when?’”
He took a long puff of the cigarette from his shut-off skull mouth, and his hollow eyes filled up with darkness. “She didn’t answer me immediately,” added Ohdros. He imagined Clara the cat, her ghostly turquoise blue form, jumping onto the kitchen counter of her old home. She looked at her grandmother who was staring at the box of cat food in front of her. Poor woman, she could not read the expiry dates without her glasses. But she had forgotten her glasses often, whether they would be on top of her head or on the table, she would not know. The grandmother poured the cat food into Clara’s food bowl every single day. “And as she finished filling the bowl, she would walk away and sit on her chair. Watching the rain with sorrow in her eyes. Then Clara told me, ‘when… she finally stops filling my bowl… okay?’ And I respected her wish.”
Idelia looked away from Ohdros’s hollow spots.
“The grandmother… Emma… she is old. She has always stuck to her routine. But Emma sometimes forgets that things can change….”
“Is Clara still in this world?” asked the Goddess of Life.
“No, her soul is long gone, she could stay here for a day, but she had to leave….”
Idelia buried her head in her hands. “It’s tough… our jobs are tough. You heal the injured, you have to watch your creations struggle and fade; and I guide the dead,” added Ohdros, taking another puff of his cigarette. He shook it a little with his bony fingers, and some dry ash fell on the clean ground. The pile of ash stood out like a sore thumb, but he wouldn’t know…
“You forgot the worst part… I have to sit here and see you take lives away,” said Idelia.
“I know… I’m sorry. You won’t have to deal with this any longer,” said Ohdros in a rather loud tone, but his voice faded away until the end of the sentence, as if the rain pelting down on the window, but softly becoming just a drop on the glass, in reality.
“There’s still time,” Idelia said softly.
“Just about half an hour left, love,” replied the God of the Night.
“Are you sad, Ohdros?” she asked, keeping her glowing warm hand on the God’s robe-covered bony back.
“Yes… I know we receive strict instructions about not getting attached to the other Gods… but I failed,” admitted Ohdros.
She started rubbing his back softly. “It’s okay, and it’s okay. We cannot do anything about it, Death. We serve for a millennium in this world and then fade into oblivion for the next part of our journey…”
“But I still have a century left…” he said softly, as if he murmured to himself, but he wanted her to hear it. “What will I do without you?” he thought.
“I don’t know… but I think you and I have known each other for a few lifetimes,” she assured. “There will always be another.”
The darkness and silence weighed on him.
They shared a moment of silence. “Do you remember how angry you were when you first met me?” asked Ohdros, looking at her with his hollow eyes.
“I didn’t know a new God was assigned, and he would have such a horrible task,” she said, smiling a bittersweet smile, as if it was stuck between death and life, like a trapeze swinger.
“Who was the God that I replaced? I don’t think you remember… it must have been a millennium ago,” he tried to joke.
“Of course, I remember Ohdros; life is, after all, built on memories,” she poked. “His name was Duxteus, God of Chance.”
Ohdros nodded, all of his bones moving with his skull.
“Since so many centuries, you’ve changed quite a lot,” she said.
“I have indeed,” he agreed. “Earlier, when I started, I used to be rough and mechanical at my job. Not caring about what the beasts and the people feel, not caring what they say or if their souls are not comfortable. I used to push them towards death rather than guiding them.”
Idelia kept her hand on Ohdros’ skeleton hand.
“At the end of the day, I wasn’t the God of Death, was I? Merely a puppet, the God of the Night. I simply guided the dead as the night is the hardest time to be alive, and the darkness before dawn knows everyone’s secrets…”
“But you’ve changed…” she added.
“I have… I make sure only to do one soul a night and let them have their time, do the things they want to do, one last time,” he finished.
“Like you’re doing tonight?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“You’ve come to visit me, to claim a soul over here in this Maison Dieu… one last time,” she said.
Ohdros gazed into the distance, unsure of what to say. “I am tired of this world,” he said, finishing his cigarette and tossing the remaining piece into the air. It disappeared in a rush of light blue waves. He looked down at his reflection on the polished, dark blue floor, wondering what he had become. “What have I become? My sweetest friend,” he murmured. “I’m tired of this world,” he whispered again softly.
Idelia wrapped her glowing, pale arm around his skeletal shoulders and pulled him closer. “The world is a beautiful place, Ohdros. Only if you could open your eyes to it,” she said softly.
Ohdros silently rested in her embrace, keeping his skull on her shoulders as she held it with her warm hands.
“Do you remember that one time you helped a bird?” she asked, reminiscing about the past.
“It was the first time someone made me do something… a God doesn’t often listen to others, does he?” asked Ohdros.
“No, she doesn’t,” replied Idelia with a smirk.
Ohdros released a soft, bittersweet chuckle. “I remember an injured robin. She wasn’t going to make it in the next few minutes, but my night magic did wonders and healed her just enough for a couple more years… but her destiny was written.”
“You didn’t do one soul a night then, did you?” she asked.
“Nay,” he denied.
As sometimes happens, a moment settled, hovered, and remained for more than a moment. Sound stopped, movement stopped for much more than a moment. There was silence. Idelia took her hand from his shoulders to his hand. “Is there anything you wanted to tell me? All these centuries?” she said, her leaf eyes fixed on him.
Ohdros looked up, his hollow eyes staring into the blankness. “I want to thank you for everything.”
“Thank me for what?” she asked.
“For making me a better God, a better entity.”
She sat there silently, looking at his skull.
“I could never see the burning truth of life, the beauty and heart. All I could see was my duty as the God of the night, and I did that and helped my students, but that was it. Heartless,” he sniffed. He rubbed his non-existent nose and continued, “You helped me see the emotional, the more poetic parts of life and death, unlike many humans who waste away this gift of life by trying to be productive and efficient. I was one of them, trying to be productive and efficient.”
Idelia smiled, glowing brighter and brighter. She practically lit up the entire room on that rainy, dark night. The lamps had gone off, and they sat there in the dark with the otter occasionally squeaking. “What do you think actually happens when our tenure ends as Gods?” she asked, looking at him.
He remained silent as the night.
“Do you think I will become a ghost? A scary one, maybe?” she tried to be funny.
“All ghosts sit quietly in the dark. I feel their silence, and it feels like mine…” he said grimly.
Idelia became hushed, and she didn’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t know…” he answered finally. “We fade out into oblivion… but I don’t know whether they have a heaven or hell for gods,” he said in a grim tone as he always did.
“What if there was?”
“What?” he asked.
“What if there was a heaven?”
“Then I want you to remember me… please, remember me, my misery, and how it made me lose what I wanted… But at least you’ll be in a better place, away from all of this suffering and perhaps even a short break from this cycle of birth and death,” he said with a calm smile.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“When you are gone, I’ll be caught in between…” he explained, with soft tears in his eyes. A god’s eyes were teary. “Caught between hell and heaven like a trapeze swinger.”
“Why a trapeze swinger?” she asked with her voice cracking. Her glow reduced, and the room had turned slightly dark. The small otter on the bed beside them squealed, and its squeals echoed in eternity.
“Trapeze swingers take part in an act that cannot be done alone… the night cannot exist without the day, death cannot be without life… Idelia….”
“You’ll be okay, Ohdros,” she said, holding his hand more tightly than ever. His bony fingers slightly hurt her delicate hands, but she didn’t care.
“I’ll talk to you when you’re not here….”
“I know you will, but we’ll be reunited a century later.”
“A century is too long, love,” he said.
“When I fade… all of this will appear to be nothing more than a baby’s dream….”
“Don’t say that,” he pleaded.
“Do you think the lights will guide me home? Or will the angels of heaven come?” she asked as if those were her last words. “Have you met an angel?”
“The angels don’t understand what it’s like to leave the world,” he said softly.
She patiently waited for an explanation.
“Because they live in a place where there is no death, seasons don’t change. They’ve come to see humans passing through this place as another number to be processed, another sinner to be judged. Their handshakes are hurried and gray….”
“So much angst against angels…” giggled Idelia in all of this darkness.
“I used to see them… from the moon,” he reasoned.
“Yes, you do have a good vantage point for spying,” she giggled. He chuckled softly.
“You know, I used to spy on you from the moon….”
She listened patiently.
“I used to see you sing to the animals in your care. You held their hands as if they were babies. It gave my work another level of meaning….”
“The meaning being you would get to meet me?” she playfully taunted.
“Perhaps,” he went along.
“The meaning of life might be that it ends, but living like you’re just waiting for it to end is not living at all…” he said.
“Do you remember what you said about what it means to live when you first met me?” she asked.
“No?”
“You said, ‘in the end, everyone knows this: all pockets are emptied, all gold left behind. We take nothing with us, except what we gave away,’” she said.
“That remains true.”
“Oh my, you’re still so stubborn,” she chirped.
A wry smile appeared on his face, the first time this starry night, he smiled.
“Do you remember when we were selected as gods?” she asked.
“I remember… I remember everything.”
“At the gates of Eternity, did you see what was written?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“What do you remember?”
“The ‘don’t look down,’” he answered.
“Do you know why they wrote that there? It was advice,” she added with a smile.
“How was that advice?”
“You spend so much of your time on the moon alone with your thoughts, and you’ve never thought about it?” she asked.
“I have, but I want you to explain it to me… I like talking to you,” he said, finally looking into her eyes.
“Someone had spray-painted it on the gates of eternity. ‘Don’t look down.’ It’s a warning not to look down at those on this world due to the heartbreak that will ensue…” she said. “But you did that already, didn’t you?”
Ohdros nodded softly.
“You looked at me from the moon, from the window of the tallest tower….”
“I used to call you, to speak to you, but I was much too high to be heard,” he sniffled.
“Do you remember the time…” she reminisced. “When we got so drunk with each other that we forgot each other?”
“I do remember, and it was a fun night… I don’t know who I will drink with after you’re gone….”
“Hetotl is always there….”
Ohdros stayed silent.
“Do you remember the other things written there? On the gates?” the God asked.
“‘We’ll cross paths soon,’ and ‘Fuck men.’ And ‘Tell my mother I’ll be okay.’”
“Do you know what they mean?” he asked.
“No idea,” she giggled. She giggled with the irony of being a God, of walking through the gates of eternity and still not knowing about any of the advice written on it.
She kept both of her glowing hands on his and softly said, “I am going to start a new chapter in my next life; I don’t know if I’ll be a God or a human or a beast. Whatever happens, I have to go on and move forwards… only Gods have the privilege of living a millennium.”
“I understand,” he said. Looking behind them, he saw the otter had covered himself entirely with the blanket, and a vast bulge had appeared inside the blanket. He felt empathetic towards Olly; like the otter, he was stuck behind on the idea of forever. “I am not able to trust a new trapeze swinging in my direction…” he thought in his mind.
“I can’t let go of things… I can’t reach out for new things,” he said finally.
“But I can, Ohdros, and I have to. I have no option… I’ll try to find you whenever my next life arrives if you’re still here.”
The ‘frightened trapeze swinger’ instead clung to what he knew.
“You know, after all these centuries, I understand why you come here,” she said, looking at him.
“To guide the dead souls back to the gates of eternity?” he asked.
“No, because you see yourself in these beasts. You relate to animals chasing after distractions, after things they can’t catch: the rain, trams, and coloured birds above them. They run in circles… It’s futile,” she concluded, her final thoughts in her last moments.
“I remember another line from the gates… but who the hell can see forever?” he added.
Idelia smiled; she had always loved his grim optimism. She looked at him, and the Goddess of Life saw the God of the Night sitting with both of his hands supporting his body, his head down, looking at his reflection on the floor.
“But it’s okay. All of living has always been trying to catch the last train of happiness that is never going to come, but it does come again, at the its own time.”
“I don’t know what happiness is,” he added.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized and hugged his body; he remained still.
“But sitting next to you and talking to you feels just right,” he declared.
He stayed in his place, receiving no replies. He assumed she must have been as quiet as life was. He lifted his skull up slightly and removed his hood, revealing the moon-white skull with a small crack on it. He looked next to him and saw nothing; Idelia had gone. Maybe fate had other plans…. sometimes the book of destiny would not see eye-to-eye with its writer.
“My words are too tied anyway,” he murmured to himself and got up. He let out a soft groan and looked back at the place, the Maison Dieu; who would now take care of the animals and this place again? And then he finally looked at the bed with Olly the Otter, and he was perfectly wrapped in the blanket as if a burrito. “It’s time to go, my friend. Everyone and everything has left.”
He bent down and picked him up with the blanket. He carried the soul with both of his hands and walked out of the large wooden doors of the Maison Dieu. He walked out onto Eagle’s Nest Street, with a few lanterns floating near the pathway. He calmly sat down on the pathway and rested his legs on the empty roads. The healing point was a large mansion with multiple huge windows; the walls seemed a dark green in the darkness of the night. Ohdros kept his hood up on his head with the rain pelting down on him. He took the rolled-up blanket on his lap and looked up at the moon. He wished he was home on the moon, away from the world and all the death.
The raindrops gathered into a puddle of water on the blanket on his lap. He cuddled the soul of Olly the Otter and looked at it.
“Maybe I’ll see you in another life…if this one wasn’t enough. So much time on the other side,” he murmured alone.
“Ohdros?” asked a familiar robin-like voice.
The God of the night looked up and immediately saw Idelia standing in the rain, holding a large leaf over her head; it was nearly the size of her body. He looked at her with despair.
“Ohdros, why are you sitting here alone in the rain?” she asked.
“Because he’s not ready yet,” he said calmly. He softly lifted the blanket from his lap and revealed a fading light blue outline-like soul of Olly the otter.
“Oh, Olly…” the Goddess of life said. She walked towards the scared soul of the otter and looked him in the eyes. “Don’t be scared. It’s okay.”
“Take your time,” she held the otter’s face in her hands, her entire body glowing brighter than the floating lamps around the street.
“She wants to watch the rain last time,” explained Ohdros.
“I see,” she said, looking at Ohdros with the hood of his robes upon his head. The rain slid from his hollow eyes as if he were crying. But she knew Ohdros never cries. “May I sit with you?”
“Of course,” he replied.
Idelia sat softly beside him, the leaf covering her head and protecting her from the rain.
“Idealia…” he started. “Do you remember that otters have a favorite rock?”
“Yes, I do; why?” she asked.
Ohdros looked at his open skeleton palm. “This little one gave me his rock before we left for eternity… he was afraid it might get lost….”
His eyes were hollow, but they were indeed sad. He closed his fist and opened his palm in the hands of Idelia. “I think you should have it….”
“Huh?” she was confused.
She opened her hands and saw a rock lying there, a perfect heart-shaped rock; the raindrops slipped and fell on the rocky surface.
“When you go away, it’ll remind you of me… please… remember me….”
She kept the rock in her hand, her fist tightened hoping to extract all the emotion out of this product of nature.
“Do you remember,” she said, her voice gentle as the rain, “when we were chosen to be gods?”
Ohdros didn’t look at her. His gaze was caught by the moonlight sliding, and for a moment, it seemed as though he might not answer at all. Then, softly, “I remember… I remember everything.”
Idelia’s glow dimmed, not all at once but slowly, the way a fire learns to make peace with the night. Even so, it held steady, stubborn and delicate. She reached out and placed her hand over his skeletal fingers. Together, they looked like an unfinished thought—something broken and something still trying to hold it together.
“Do you think we’ll be chosen again?” she asked, the words barely more than a thread of breath. “Or does the universe let gods like us fade for a reason?”
Ohdros tilted his head, the weight of too many lifetimes pressing down on the silence between them. “If we are,” he said, “maybe it’s only to remind us that nothing—not even gods—lasts forever. But if we do meet again, Idelia—” His voice broke, not loudly, just a quiet fracture. “—I hope it’s somewhere we don’t have to leave.”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile you only see when someone is carrying more than they’ll ever say aloud. Her lime-green eyes caught the faintest flicker of light from a lantern in the distance. “I’d like that,” she said. “A place where otters stay young forever, and the moonlight doesn’t belong to the night.”
Ohdros lowered his head, and his bones shuddered under the weight of words he couldn’t bring himself to say. The rain was easing, and a faint blush of dawn began to stretch across the sky.
The otter let out one last sound, a tiny squeak, soft and fragile. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
“I’ll see you in the next cycle,” Idelia whispered, her glow pulsing once—brighter than it had been in centuries—and then fading, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left.
Ohdros reached for her, his hand closing around hers even as her fingers turned to light. “Don’t forget me,” he said, and his voice cracked like the first thaw of ice in spring.
“I couldn’t,” she said. Her words were barely there, but they carried something vast. “Even death can’t take what’s been given freely.”
And then she was gone, dissolving into a quiet rain of green and gold light.
Ohdros stayed still, sitting in the silence she left behind, quietness that went against his bones like the ocean. He turned toward the horizon, where dawn was spilling across the sky.
For the first time in a thousand years, he didn’t look away. He let the sunlight touch him, warming the hollow spaces where his heart used to be, filling them with something too quiet to name but too important to ignore.
When the last traces of her light were gone, he spoke to the morning. His voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be.
“Life fades, but love stays. It’s the only thing death can never hold.”
He turned back to the otter, its small body’s soul was the only other thing left in his hold. He knelt, cradling it with care that was almost reverence, and he carried it into the light of the new day.