A Home for Misfit Monsters

Chapter 6 - The Hellish Truth

Ezra laid Rhia down on his bed after he cleaned her hands and muddy feet. He tucked the blanket around her and brushed a curl from her face.

"Is she alright?" Belle asked as she swirled into the room.

"Yeah, she will be." He sighed, standing from the bed. "It's my fault she's so out of it."

"You're just protecting her, right? I mean, I hardly understood anything you told me," Belle said, floating around him as he crossed the room to the door. "I can't believe you're Satan and you're so...so nice."

"Thank you, but I'm not nice. I do what I have to, to keep Rhia and this world safe," he said, looking over his shoulder at her before he closed the door. "She used to go by the name of Ruhina and we used to love and nourish this world together."

"And Godiran was jealous of that, huh?"

Ezra nodded as he shuffled down the hall to the kitchen. "Yeah. I was never meant to stay here. Our job in life was to build and destroy. It's just what gods do, I guess," he said, plucking a knife from a wooden block and picking up the slain rabbit on the counter. "But I was never like that. I hated being the one all species feared. The one who had to live in the shadows while my brother lived in the light."

Belle slid a hand to his shoulder. "But that's how people see you now."

He smiled, crossing the kitchen to the balcony. "It wasn't always like that. Humans never used to fear me when I walked the Earth with Ruhina," he said, taking a seat on the wooden chair. "This was the first place I felt like I belonged and the first time a being loved me for who I was," he said, suspending the rabbit in the air in front of him before he began the task of skinning it.

Belle floated down into the chair next to him. "I don't understand why God would want to stop that?"

"He doesn't understand love. We weren't taught that. Godiran was raised to be worshiped through fear and I was raised to be fear," he said, gently pulling the sable fur from the rabbit. "I didn't understand what it meant to care for the beings we manipulated until I bound my soul here. The goddess who created this world taught me that and then I fell in love with her daughter."

Belle smiled as she rested her cheek on her fist. "And that's Rhia?"

"Yes. Rhia is Ruhina reincarnated through her own bloodline," Ezra said. "She knew my brother was going to kill her, so she created her own children to safeguard the power she held over this world. They're what humans call witches."

"I always thought there was something different about Rhia and Callie. It makes sense now why they weren't afraid of those monsters they care for."

"Yes, they're Sedliw witches and direct descendents of Ruhina. She always cared for the more unsightly beings and spirits that didn't fit in and they carried on that task."

"So, let me see if I understand this. Rhia is a reincarnated goddess. You two were lovers and your brother, who I know as God, killed her to separate you?"

Ezra nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"And he did that because he was worried you'd be worshiped instead of him?"

"Mm-hm, that's the gist of it," he said, folding up the rabbit's fur.

"Okay," Belle said, sliding her hand to her chin. "So, where does Jesus fit into all of this?"

Ezra let out a bark of laughter. "The infamous son of God. Oh, Belle." He chuckled. "I hate to break it to you, but he never existed. Godiran made up that story and all the other versions of it." He sighed as the smile fell from his lips. "He and I filled humans' heads with the lie to make you forget about Gia the Divine Goddess and her benevolent daughter," he said, grasping the skinned rabbit hovering in front of him. "You humans grew from the Earth. You're a product of evolution. Gia wanted a race of beings made from this world instead of created and planted by the gods."