A Temple of No Gods

The Meeting

"You carry the heavens

in your eyes

like one of those old

Greek tragedies.

And I'd call you Atlas,

but he wasn't given

a choice to hold the stars.

You were."

- Yet still you break your back by holding the sky in your palms

Inside Lan Wangji's heavenly palace, time was but a mere concept of no consequences. He had been alive for so long that day or night did not make any difference to him. His existence was beyond such trivial things as time. He might not have been alive for the beginning of it, yet as an immortal of invincible power, there was a fairly good chance that he would be alive to witness the end of time. Sometimes, just like this particular night, Lan Wangji caught himself idly wondering about such things as he mindlessly strummed his guqin, sat under the haitang tree just outside his palace, about how it all will end, or how to end it all. He had all the time in the universe at his disposal and no motivation to use it in any way. If he wasn't already used to it, he would say it was sad. But he thought he knew better.

Even though time and all the changes it brought with it were so insignificant to Lan Wangji, he still had a liking to the night time. It reminded him of a childhood long gone for some unknown reason. Nights where his mother would sing him to sleep in her soothing but small voice. Lan Wangji had learned how to play his mother's favorite lullaby on the guqin when he was seven, but he never got the chance to play it for her. She was not a staple in his childhood as most mothers were in their children's. His uncle rarely ever let him visit her, and before long, she had passed away, unknown to little Wangji, who hadn't truly known what loss felt like until he had to wait for a mother who was never coming back. The pain was fresh in his heart for a long long time since.

But now, it felt like something that happened to him in a dream. Or a story of something that befell a stranger. Immortality had brought a gift of numbness with it.

Night time was also Lan Wangji's favorite time of the day for another reason as well. During the night, the world was quieter. Or rather it was quieter than the day time because a god's world was never truly quiet. Instead it was constantly filled with murmurs of prayers like bees buzzing around in his mind. It was something he had got used to in the long years of his godhood, and with his inaction in the mortal world had even led most of his believers, who were once a great number of people in the kingdom, to give up on him and waver in their faith. Now the buzzing sound was something he was completely used to, like a song without words being sung in the far distance. The melody was often sad, if not frantic, yet Lan Wangji had meticulously trained himself to phase it out.

Hence imagine his shock, on this completely calm and ordinary night when a voice that could only be described as drenched in pain, rang out loud and clear in his mind with intensity of a hundred clear bells.

"Help me," The voice had pleaded, "If you can hear me praying, come save me!"

His smooth forehead creased in a moment of uncertainty that flickered in the god's mind at this extraordinary occurrence. There was no reason for just one prayer to be heard so clearly when a thousand other voices went unheard every hour. Yet the voice had been filled with unfathomable pain, a kind of suffering that Lan Wangji had never felt in his life either as a mortal or an immortal. It sent shivers down his spine and made his fingers shake. This was a plea like no other. It was only natural for him to be curious about this mortal. Maybe he should go down to the mortal world and indeed help him. Save him if he was not already beyond saving. It was what was expected of him, was it not?