Holly and Mistletoe

[alittlehinky]

The three highland calves that Cricket and Loki own are all named for tender spring flowers, and he's mindful of that as the weather turns from chilly to bitter. Daisy Belle, Dahlia, and Daffodil are very furry and very cold-hardy, though, so they do quite well on milder days, and the snow isn't deep yet. He's brought them outdoors here and there to brush out their coats, and the activity made him think of someone in particular. It was a brief but memorable encounter, with Thymos and his retinue.

No one really gives gifts to the sad and scary gods, Cricket imagines. Not often, not unless they need them specifically.

He lays out the deerhide he was gifted, which he has now tanned and preserved, spreading it over a bale of hay at the end of the animal pen. And he sets out a few small things: a jar of cranberry moonshine, a bunch of holly tied with red ribbon and some carefully selected gifts. For Kuyutha, he bought a pony's chew toy, something sturdy he can bite and fling around. For Athena, a braided sea-grass ball that's probably more for parrots than raptors, but it looks like something she could get her talons in. Last but not least, he's carved a wooden figure of a highland cow and carefully attached scraps of combed-out fur to make it look properly hairy. That one is for Thymos, himself.

"Um...Thymos, I...Dunno if you can hear me," he says, leaning against the fence near the offering, "but these are gifts for you on account of the season. Don't know where to find you, so I was just hoping you'd know if I left 'em for you here. You don't have to come for 'em, even, if you don't want 'em, but I thought it'd be right to offer 'em."

Comments

[bloodysacrifice]

What comes is not exactly what he saw last time but the call is answered regardless. The angel that lands, perhaps too close for comfort, seemingly appearing out of nowhere is covered in blood down the front like an animal that's been eating. He's all in black leather, black wings with silver flight feathers that grate like swords against each other. His skin though is pale as snow with red ringed golden eyes that fix on the human. He does have his cattle horns visible, those are the same as the minotaur he saw in the past.

"I've heard you." He says quietly while his teeth click ominously as his mouth moves. Moloch is incredibly dangerous but there are those who have found a way to be safe in his presence regardless of his reputation. This human was near to it in the past, to offer a sacrifice secures that safety. His wings fold down, relaxed against the ankle length black leather coat he's wearing. The two young ones are not with him. He left them in the cave he's decided to occupy in the wilds. Moloch wonders though if these offerings come with a request, usually they do.

[alittlehinky]

Cricket was not prepared for this simultaneously beautiful and horrific visitor. He's visibly startled, shrinking back against the fence, but while the click of teeth is unsettling, the voice is familiar, and so after the first flinch, he recovers, and looks more awed than rattled.

"...you're one of the angels," he says softly. "Didn't realize that, sir; I'm sorry." Not that that would have changed his approach much. He might have just left the gifts with Lucifer to pass along, though.

The bright sharp edges of the wings give him an idea just which of the angels he's talking to, also. Good thing Loki isn't here; he'd be...concerned. Especially after the minor crisis that was Coyote's prank on him. Cricket is back on his feet now, although those feet still wear leather and metal braces. He straightens and gives him a little bow and a tentative smile.

"I was just thinkin' about you, is all," he says awkwardly. "The other day when I was brushing the girls. And I figured...well, I ain't Greek, but I know there used to be winter sacrifices that probably not many folks in the Nexus are doing, and also people are depressed, so."

Now that he's saying it, it sounds kind of stupid. A Yule gift for a Greek god who is also an angel? But it's done, now, so he might as well soldier through. "Anyway, it's a gift. And I got a toy for Kuyutha and one for Athena, too."

[bloodysacrifice]

Moloch grins at the startled reaction, showing the mouth full of stark white, razor sharp teeth. The angel is intimidating but to Cricket not overly dangerous.

"Angels have many forms. We may hide in a guise but the presence is unchanging." Angels made a place feel a certain way when they inhabited it and for each angel that alteration of mood was unique. Moloch's alignment with fear, depression, and the darker elements of the world left a mark no matter the form he took.

His eyes have turned down to the gifts and the carved cow is the first one that he picks up. It's been many centuries since he's been offered the image of a cow as a gift. "The people are depressed?"

Moloch could feel it though he's curious about the human's perceptions. "Then your instincts serve you to call me to this place. I am the angel of despair among the other dark spaces I inhabit."

He's pleased but it doesn't show in his body language which remains sullen and vaguely dangerous. "It was not the Greeks that first worshipped me as the bull. Minoa, Crete, and Canaan were my homes."

This was not normal for the angel to share his history but the feeling of being worshipped, or at the very least presented with offerings, had an effect on the angel whether he wished it to or not. Unlike many of his brethren, Moloch liked to be worshipped.

[alittlehinky]

Still kind of beautiful, in the way a landslide is beautiful. Destruction in slow-motion, inescapable and fascinating. Cricket can only hope the antiviolence field and a friendly gesture will protect him, but while he is certainly afraid, he's far from panic. Maybe he's been over-exposed to predators by now; his best friend is a wendigo.

"Yes, sir," he says in response to the comment about a guise. "Might be I'm just slow to recognize that. I read a lot of Greek stories as a kid. Still do, sometimes. But I ain't a scholar. I know what Thymos means, but there's a hell of a lot I don't know."

He seems to like the cow, which makes sense. Cricket can't help but be pleased. "Mortal folk don't handle winter too well, I guess. It's dark and scary. And holidays get people messed up in the head, on account of they think they're supposed to make them special and they feel like they're failing if they don't."

That kind of pressure is something he is mercifully free of. Winter makes him more introspective than sad, but he understands despair. He basically lived there full-time until he died and showed up in the Nexus, a kind of stoic certainty that struggling to get by was as good as it was ever going to get, and he just had to keep at it until he couldn't anymore.

He nods again, attentive to the lesson. "I don't know much about that, sir. I seen pictures, of the folk leaping over the charging bull, though. Was that part of what you did then?"

[bloodysacrifice]

Moloch is impressed by the lack of fear though not as much as someone actually giving him offerings after so many years of isolation.

"Our eyes and presence never change." Once a person knew an angel the way they appeared no longer mattered. The nature was in the feeling in the air and the depth of the eyes. Some things even angelic illusions couldn't hide.

"Few things, mortal or divine, embrace comfort in the darkness." Moloch was one of the few that saw the dark and cold as a place of sanctuary, perhaps Astaroth as well because of the empty, cold, dark of space. Astaroth though was much brighter than Moloch's true dark disposition.

He sets the things aside for now as his presence settles to it's inevitable sense of depression and doom. That he couldn't subdue even when he was calm or peaceful. "God commanded them to be fearful of us so they fed me their children then imprisoned me, for a time, in the Labyrinth."

He's not exactly happy with his treatment but he is not ashamed of what he is. "God cursed me to devour flesh during the fall, an idyll hope I would murder my kin and the humans who were near them."

[alittlehinky]

Cricket's already died once, and been close another time or two. There's a point at which you start to realize you can't direct the world to treat you gently; all you can do is watch what comes your way with open eyes, and maybe respond to it, if you can.

He sobers a little when Moloch talks about his presence never changing, nodding. He's a perfectly mundane human, save for the marks his prior divine encounters have left upon him, but he can feel the heaviness and pain. It reminds him of things he didn't like experiencing, but that ain't the angel's fault. Sometimes things just hurt because that's the way they are.

"I'm mostly the same as any human. Put me in the dark and I might be scared, too, but Winter was good to me once."

It seems like Cricket is fortunate once again in addressing a dangerous entity in a way that makes them disinclined to harm him. He is clearly riveted by the angel's story, though, eyes wide. "It was you in the Labyrinth? You must have so many stories..."

Probably terrible stories, dark tales of torture and human sacrifice. But like Joshua, on a far greater and darker cosmic scale, Moloch does not appear to have asked to be what he is.

"I'm sorry God did that to you," he says, a slight whisper, because he was, after all, raised Christian. The fact that he's about to marry a genderfluid pagan chaos god means he's probably a lost cause as far as the Church is concerned, though. The multiverse is bigger and wilder than the cosmology he was taught as a child.

[bloodysacrifice]

Moloch glanced around where they were standing and sighed a long breath before speaking. "Winter has been good to you every time you survive it."

Moloch had a perspective where survival, no matter how it came or the outcome, was a victory.

"Many entities have imprisoned me, for a time, but sorrow, fear, and death can only be kept at bay for a short time." He always found ways to escape and maneuver around anything that kept him contained. Lucifer was the only one who managed to direct him effectively but his methods were far different than most. "I have seen a vast amount of time as the tenth thing to exist in creation."

Perhaps he is arrogant over that point but there's cynicism to having lived so long drowning in despair. Cricket is right that Moloch never asked to be created and he certainly never wanted to be an angel of darkness, the only one in Heaven.

"I'm not sorry." Moloch brought a more serious tone to bear with these words. "God is a fool when he thought he could bend the darkness against the light. Only the ignorant or self aggrandizing would create two things in union and expect them to destroy one another."

He was talking about himself and Lucifer. He was the Dark and Lucifer the Light. They existed in constant companionship and conflict but one would not survive without the other at this point in the game, or Moloch thought that was true at least.

[alittlehinky]

That comment about Winter makes him smile, because it sounds like something the Old Man might have said. "Awyp. Ain't that the truth. Came close once or twice."

Well. Technically he was murdered, back home, and that's how he got to the Nexus in the first place, but that's a little different.

He looks thoughtful, and murmurs, "Y'know, a lot of folks will talk about accepting death being important, and fear, but you don't hear that much about sorrow. I guess pain of any kind is just...real hard."

For a second he looks afraid again, worried he's offended the angel, but as he goes on, he calms, listening. Cricket is nothing if not a good listener, and a quiet observer. "Sounds kinda brave when you put it that way," he tells him. "And kinda like you're livin' partly just to spite Him, too. Hope that ain't the wrong thing to say. I want to understand, a little bit."

[bloodysacrifice]

Moloch had stilled around Cricket, a calm he only found around Aziraphale and occasionally Beelzebub. To feel that around a human is new but not unwelome in the moment.

"Without the darkness we cannot know the light." Moloch repeated the commonly spoken adage. "Pain and sorrow are the darkness to comfort and happiness."

He's well aware of how those things partner in a cycle, necessary even if he has never really felt happiness.

"Many of the fallen live to spite God." Moloch let out a quiet, cold laugh that caused his teeth to click. "There's an abundance of pride in surviving when the universe itself wants you to die."