An Empire Fallen

Interlude: The Killing of A Sacred Deer

One is not born with a purpose. Purpose is something shaped for you as you grow, something you are moulded to fit or that is in turn moulded to fit you. My purpose was to kill the sacred deer.

The deer, my most sacred deer, was a beautiful creature. Eyes wide as the heavens, the windows to a world untamed, shimmering with innocence untarnished. Her delicate leather hooves tread upon cashmere carpets, leaving a trace lighter than a whisper of wind. Like a fleeting dream, she danced among gilded halls, each step a fluttering heartbeat. Her soothing bleats ringing out against the walls, the floor, my own two ears, in a harmony in tune with mother nature herself.

My beautiful sacred, deer.

And I was her faun. Her perfect and delicate faun. Smooth, agile, and capable of the most wondrous things. My sacred deer would tell me so herself. Together we would lay as she whispered of all I would be, all I could achieve. I was not disillusioned of course, I knew my deer was right.

But I was not alone.

My sacred deer had another faun whom she loved and cherished just as she did me. Loved with all her heart, my deers eyes shone with pride as she gazed upon him. She would always be my sacred deer, but he was her sacred faun.

He was weak.

Although her sacred faun was far older than I, he was a delicate, pitious creature incapable of the feats of my own. And yet, my sacred deer saw him as if he had hung the very crystalline stars that blanket our skies above. Her faun was nothing and I was everything, but he was given the world. The forest was to be his kingdom and I his subject. My dearest deer knew this fact well and still she would whisper of what I would be. Day after day and night after night, with the set of the sun and the rise of the moon she would murmur her sweet melodies of my success.

It was a lie.

My deer knew as well as I, I would be nothing but a footnote under the hoof of her most sacred faun, the beloved prince who would become king. A passing memory in the vast expanse of the tree that would be his legacy. A single, sickly winding root twisted against the rest. Fighting for a taste of the sweet waters beneath the dirt. I resented my sacred deer, for she did not grant me my due. But I did nothing, for it was not my purpose, it was no ones. None would even dare to think of killing the sacred deer.

Until I did.

By the time the night came I had long since shed my deerling skin and become a huntsman, for what good did it serve me to be a faun when it would not grant me what I so deserved. The forest was calm at first, nothing but the dull patter of rain on trees could be heard. And then the screams of its people rang out, shaking the trees and causing their roots to curl away in terror. These were not the screams of any frightened creature, these were the shrill and blood curdling cries of my sacred deer. I ran to her of course, perhaps out of misplaced loyalty to the one I so cherishe. But I felt no fear, only pain. Anger at my lovely deer for casting me aside for one so benign. For the years spent listening to her mouth spill honeyed tales of what would be mine while her hooves carefully preened her sacred faun into a stag undeserving of his horns.

When I finally reached the glade only to see my most sacred deer surrounded by hunters while her beloved faun stood behind shrubs of blue and white, trembling as he always did, I could only think of these feelings. This hate that had built inside me for so long. That had festered and bubbled and broiled and would now tonight, after so many years of waiting, boil. I watched as the hunter raised its gun to the sacred deer. As beloved faun dawned his antlers for the very first time, primed to strike and destined to fail. I watched all this and finally, I fulfilled my purpose.

I shot the sacred deer. 

My beautiful, perfect, sacred deer...