Ruby Red and Gentilberry Green: A Fantastical Romance - Part VI

This is the sixth part of an ongoing serial. Here are Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Updates every two days.

In time, and yet not in time. Alive, and yet dead. Immortal, and yet as fragile as a bird.

He had the power to create a world, to rule, to traverse the planes like water. He had a perfect body, immune to death, a house of wonders that spanned Infinity…

And yet, in his chest, still, the heart of a mortal, crying out, bleeding with all its needs and wants and fears.

They’d asked him to have it out at Skalathos. It was barely anything, after all, compared to the advantages being heartless brought. Immortality did have its downsides, of course, but once you got rid of that pesky conscience - why, anything was possible!

He still wondered, sometimes, why he’d said no. He supposed there was still some chance of getting it out, but somehow his disgust remained as strong as the day he had heard of it.

He supposed he could do it himself, but he knew, deep down, that he was too much of a coward to even try.

His fear was all that he had left. The eating, all-consuming fear, of never finding fulfillment, of always being alone. Of being worthless. The pleasure had never taken root. Not women, not men, not even the joy of creation - and what good was wealth, after that had run dry? What good was an Infinite with no-one to share it with?

His classmates scared him. The heartless, soulless creatures they had become, too empty to laugh, too sated to cry… hadn’t they striven, once, for something greater?

No. For them, anything was possible. Anything at all. And so it went, and on and on it went. World without end…

Necristo the sorcerer stood up in his bathtub, lowered his hands, and said a word. The water fell off him in a cascade like rain, the world changed, and he was standing on a verdant hill, dry and garbed in his best clothes. The morning sun shone bright ahead, beaming. He scattered the hill with flowers, graced it with trees and wispy clouds. The soulstuff changed and warped to his will, danced around his fingers like a whole harem of enslaved Nereids.

When he was satisfied, at last, he called up the door, and stepped back to the interworld walkway. His suit shone white as snow, perfect to match his dove-like skin. His eyes were still pensive, but searchingly, piercingly hopeful.

He had another chance. He had her. Perhaps she wouldn’t be like all the rest of them. Not Enid, not Ceres, not Matilda, not a single one of the countless girls he’d tried to love.

Perhaps she was the one.