The father had explained. How he'd found the god lying dead out in the cold. How he'd been awed by its great majesty, so potent that even in death the otherworldly lord was a sight to behold.
Igor had seen Rhodes' colossus when he was a young man, thanks to his serving in the army for a little over four years, during which he'd had to dismantle a group of terrorists (they were planning, before their interception, to commit a long series of crimes on greenland's soil for reasons only their warped minds could understand). And even then, the gigantic bronze statue which had long been hailed as one of Humanity's greatest technical achievements, a treasure cherished enough to be given a place among the pantheon of the world's seven wonders, had not made as lasting of an impact on Igor Akensen as the dead god had. This quiet power, these unchanging features which suggested strength, simply doing so by existing, massive, shining amidst the darkness of the night... A beacon of divinity. Akensen often shivered just thinking about the deity.
And so he'd promised himself that he would gift his daughter whatever he could steal from the skeleton. He thought that, perhaps, such an act would repay the difficult childhood that Ania had been put through, one unfit for a young lady, he believed with certainty, drowning in anguish even though he tried to stay positive about the course of her existence.
He'd discovered the carcass on a sunday. On the following monday, he'd gone back to the same hunting spot as the day before, and having killed enough creatures to ensure his and his daughter's survival for the next three days or so, he, as he'd done back when he'd first discovered the corpse, got to work on extracting more of the anthropomorphic beast's bodily fluid in order to gift it to his daughter.
On the the tuesday after that, he got bolder, and using an axe, he cut a piece of one of the skeleton's ribs in order to carve it into a pen for his beloved progeny. He'd think, reminiscing of his years reading the Bible at home with his scholarly wife, of how God had made Eve from one of Adam's bosom bones, and how allowing Ania to write using that of a god would enable her to craft stories so creative they'd take shape.
He'd laugh at the thought then.
On the wednesday of the same week, he did the most egregious thing a man ever could have enacted upon the body of a deceased noble. He cut off one of its immense fingers, and chopping at the skin left upon its bones, managed to separate the flesh from the golden ring that had been fixed around it.
Proud of his skill, he'd taken it upon himself to go home with this evening's dinner's meat as well as the piece of jewelry he'd separated from its, supposedly, righteous owner. That was a true challenge, for the ring appeared as tall as the man himself, possibly wheighing more than a hundred kilograms.
But Igor was so adamant about making Ania happy that he'd dragged the object all the way from the shore to the hill where he lived, a good few kilometers away mind you.
Alas, he wasn't disappointed by the reaction of the juvenile Ms Akensen, who, reticent about using blood to write at first, had eventually gotten around doing so when her father had shown her the magnificent white pen he'd devised for her using his skills in craftsmanship and the small part of the god's rib he'd stolen back on the shore.
And she'd fallen in love with the liquid. Pure black, thick, with impact, yet fluid, with grace, however that was possible, it was a pleasure for Ania to write with her first new toy using her second.
The poems she wrote on tuesday were more detailed, more complexed than they's ever been, yet they remained as impactful as the simplest of her works, and she reveled in the acute understanding of her own mind that she seemed to rapidly develop while she was lost in her thoughts, using blood and bone to write.
But then came wednesday, and with it, the ring.
Ania fell in love with it. Truly beautiful it appeared, made out of a gold so pure the young miss was doubtful even the best of ore-workers could have ever made it so lustrious; though what most captivated her about this shining structure was not its glittering aura, nor even its size for that matter (which by all accounts, was truly shocking).
No, this honor was given to the carvings running serpentine along the ring's edge.
Ania Akensen immediately thought, gazing upon the writings for the first time in her life, that the one who'd produced them must have been a man (or god) of commandable taste in all that touched the arts, for the font that he'd used to lay out his message was... Regal. That was the only word she could think of. And it was perfect.
Oh... - she'd think back then. If a creature can write so beautifully, then surely it must only be able to express beautiful thoughts with its pen. I must study the words, lay them on paper over and over again until I assimilate them and become of purer standing myself.
Now it's thursday afternoon. The sun is already leaving the land, for even in summer, in this part of the world, it never stays up for too long a period of time.
Darkness is coming out of the depths of the mountains, assimilating the landscape into its shadowy enveloppe, nesting itself in every crack of every rock of every mountain of the country.
And there she is. Ania Akensen. Waiting for her father's return for tonight's meal, writing away her dreams using the god's blood and the god's rib.
Suddenly, satisfied with what words she's laid on the page for her imaginary lover, the young lady decides that it's time to try and replicate the message from the ring onto her own notebook's paper.
Consequently, she goes downstairs, sits at the dining table, and studies the gigantic golden ring laid against the wall in front of her.
She's never seen the god (and she couldn't have, for she's frail of constitution, unfit to wander in the cold outside for over a short period of time), but it truly must have been gigantic. It's ring stands a few heads taller than she, and even though she isn't the tallest out there, she isn't short by any means, and now that she thinks about it, even Igor himself would find himself beaten in size by the object.
Let's see if the words written on your edge are as much of a pleasure to lay down with ink as is looking at you, says the young maiden to herself in a joking manner.
So then she writes. Focused, as much as possible, she write. Letter by letter (or at the very least, she thinks the symbols she is strangely chaining together are letters), she writes down the entire content of the ring's surface.
And when she puts the last drop of ink onto the page, something magical happens.
