Three had offered him the world, one in the shape of himself, one in the shape of the land, and one in the shape of a woman.
(As if there had ever been a choice).
She came to him at night, lithe and bright and perfect, breathing light perfect kisses all over his unmarred face but when he kissed her back he tasted nothing but blood.
He notices sometimes, between the haze of her perfection, how much she resembles the goddess. How sometimes she is cruel, how sometimes she seems to be greater than he, how her porcelain skin seems to glow in the moonlight.
But of course, she is his perfect woman, she was fashioned for him, he never had a choice.
(I never had a choice, he’ll echo, years later, when the walls come down and the people flee and they are so few when there were so many, she was perfect and I never had a choice.)

