"-Sold the world," I sang.
Shadowboon was gone.
One second I was playing off-tune on my guitar, and the next I was sitting somewhere else entirely.
I looked around. It was a familiar sight.
It was a nice little parlor by a beach. As it was before, it was just shortly before sunset, and a nice orange glow illuminated the land.
The waves came in gently and went away the same. The water was a strange but pleasant purple.
The furniture was arranged for two people and more. There wasn't anything that was specifically there for just one person.
It was a nice place to be, even though I was pulled here without my consent.
"Hello," I heard a voice say.
On a chair opposite me, with a table dividing us, sat Lirbech, the god of love.
He waved gently.
Simply said, he was beautiful.
He had bronze skin and was muscular, but not overtly so, with long and soft blond hair. He wore loose clothes perfect for a beach and sandals.
His eyes were like a well of endless love and desire, like you knew that he would both love you and never reject your love toward him.
But I knew the reason why I was here was less about love and more about the end of my life.
"I am disappointed," he said, actually disappointed, like he expected better.
"You don't even have to say it," I said, laying the guitar on the table.
Lirbech looked at me, waiting for me to come around.
"Okay. You can say it," I relented after a few moments.
"You didn't marry anyone. You didn't even mate with them. No fruitfulness, no multiplication. You avoided it all."
"I almost kissed someone," I said.
I realized immediately that that wouldn't help me.
"But you didn't," Lirbech said, then he spoke softer. "You were asked to find someone. To choose love as an action. A commitment that limits you, and you go through with it."
"I know, but four days isn't enough time."
"Isn't it? Many creatures can have children after just four days, if you ask them. Beetles and aphids, for example."
"It's not the same for humans."
"What's the difference? You are like an insect, aren't you?"
"I don't know if I, or humans, am like them."
He furrowed his brows. "I don't see the difference."
He was a god after all. Humans and insects must have been similar to them, and Lirbech didn't seem to care much for more intelligent creatures.
But it was strange then that he demanded anything at all of me, seeing how he saw mortal creatures.
"Did you fear losing your freedom, having to pair up with someone, and having children? Cold feet, as you say?" He asked.
"Of course I fear it. I also fear dying. All of that is very human. But why is your penalty for me not doing any of that dying?"
I thought back to a few days ago, when I was spirited away to this place the first time.
I was confused at first, but the second I looked at Lirbech, and he had those same eyes as Geshich had, I was less so.
Before he even told me, I assumed that he was a god.
He told me that he became interested in me after he saw how much attention Geshich had given me over the years.
I didn't think it was much attention - a few visits when I was young - but the last ten years? There wasn't a lot.
He told me that he wanted me to marry, to find a partner, in four days' time. He wasn't here to make a request or to argue.
It was final, and if I didn't, he would take my life.
I couldn't ask him why back then because I was returned to my room before I could say anything.
Now, I sighed in frustration that he just didn't want to listen to me.
I guess listening was not in the domain of love.
He was the talker, and when I was out of his presence, I came to hate how he talked, but when I was around him, I more than tolerated it.
Lirbech folded his hands on the table, fingers long and relaxed.
He looked out toward the water. The sun was half-gone now, like it was a countdown to my death.
I leaned back in the chair. It was comfortable. Everything here was comfortable. It was a good place to die, I thought.
"What does life mean to a mortal like you? You live and die rather quickly, even those supposedly immortal. And not just in this world. You get time, and that time ends someday. Or your world does; it doesn't matter that much. What matters to me is love. I'm not just the god of love, or it being my domain. I am love itself. And you had little love in your lifetime. Specifically, you loved little. You are unfinished, or you haven't even begun. You've reached maturity in this world, but you haven't thought enough once about who you'd want to spend the rest of your life with. That's strange, isn't it? No fantasies or dirty dreams. Nothing like that."
"That's not bad, is it?"
"I think it is. And my opinion matters a little more than yours, does it? You got a second chance; for some reason Geshich thought you worthy. Not everyone gets that. Not that nobody does. Most just waste their redeemed lives. We're usually hands-off when it comes to that and let those responsible deal with it. But with Geshich... it's different. He's a strange one, always has been. So, I wanted to see what you were all about and allowed myself to play with you just a little, but you can't even get through the little hurdle I threw in your way. Doesn't that mean that you're worth nothing? Say, what's your double's name again?"
"Shadowboon."
"Yes, that one. He loves, but you don't."
"He does?" I said, surprised.
"He does. He isn't married or has a mate, or something like that, but he does love a woman. He thinks he cannot get her love because he is too young. I do love stories like that. If he had been a bit older, they could have been lovers, but fate dealt them a bad hand. Star-crossed."
I sighed again.
"Even if he hasn't written any of that in Geshich's little book, I know. Sometimes I watch and look into his heart. I know everything that's going on, said aloud or not."
"That sure is an overwhelming amount of love, isn't it?" I said.
I didn't want to say that it was stalker-ish behavior, but it was.
Lirbech finally looked directly at me. Not angry. Not offended. In a strange way that I might never understand because he was a god.
"Love is overwhelming. It is also a restriction."
I opened my mouth to argue, then stopped. He was a god, and I was a mortal, but still, it was kind of unfair.
"So, you were given a divine task, but you failed," he said. "What now?"
"I guess that's it then."
"Your love has been measured and found to be lacking," Lirbech said. "Don't cry now. Your family will be fine. The one who sired you, your father, is competent. Your siblings will endure long after your end."
I nodded slowly. That helped. More than I expected.
They'd manage.
But there was still someone, or several someones, that was missing.
"What about the girls?"
Lirbech tilted his head. "Which girls?"
"My girls. Catherine, Juliet, and Elizabeth. If you know so much about love, you must know about them."
"Oh, those girls," he said. "Why do you care what happens to them?"
"Well... because I love them? They're also family."
"You aren't bound to them by blood."
"No, but that doesn't matter."
"You believe they depend on you?"
"I know they do," I said.
He was silent and looked me dead in the eyes, and they opened a bit more.
He slapped himself on the forehead like he was overlooking something very obvious. "Oh, parental love. I completely forgot about that. You creatures have parental love."
"...Yes?"
"You did not bind yourself by blood," he said slowly. "But you assumed responsibility. There are so many creatures that would even eat their own offspring that I forgot that you could care for other spawn and not even eat them if more convenient."
"I guess that's one way to put it."
"Yes, yes, yes," Lirbech said thoughtfully. "A very inefficient way, from a biological perspective. High cost. No guarantee of return. No propagation of your own essence. Yet, you do it anyway, right?"
I nodded once, slowly.
The sun rose a bit more in the sky, and the waves came in a bit stronger.
"You feed them, you guide them. You shape them. You suffer from them, and in return? Nothing is promised. You expect no legacy? No continuation of what is your own?"
"No...?"
Suddenly it felt like Lirbech saw the whole situation in a different light.
"You are strange," he said. "You creatures. You too. You avoided mating bonds, yet you created something that's even more beautiful."
"Really?"
"Intentional love is common. Accidental love that persists is rare."
"That's good, right?"
"Very. I misjudged you. I took only romantic binding. Union and fertility. But parental devotion exists parallel to that. Messier than anything else. But that doesn't mean that you did not love; you did, and you were loved. Come, tell me about what you want in their future - your girls, I mean. What are your feelings for them?"
"I don't know. I guess I worry about them. I want them safe, and I want them to grow into fine people, like any father would."
"Parental love," he repeated softly and then was also giddy with it.
"You love them?"
"I do."
He looked at me seriously. "Say it."
"I love them."
He put his hand to his heart. "Beautiful. You'll live if you continue loving. And maybe consider romantic love too, in the future. You don't always want to depend on your non-offspring offspring, do you?"
"I guess?"