Spring unfurled its first green, and the god watched Arepo walk the field with his youngest son, showing him how to read the wind. He knelt beside the boy, not to speak, but to listen. And the god, nestled deep in its cairn, listened too.
By summer, the temple had changed. Its walls were taller now, built with care and the occasional complaint about old knees. Arepo had woven a roof from twigs and straw to keep off the worst of the rain, though the god said it preferred the open air.
“It’ll rot faster this way,” it said, watching him thread the last branch into place.
“That’s true of everything,” Arepo replied, tying off the final knot. “Might as well keep the sun off your altar while it lasts.”
“You act as if I deserve comfort,” the god said.
Arepo shrugged. “I act as if you’re here. That’s enough.”
But the harvest came thin.
The wheat sprouted pale and weak, trembling in the wind. The grapes soured on the vine. Across the village, families scraped bowls with their fingernails, rationed their flour, whispered about curses and poor omens.
Arepo knelt at the temple and laid down an offering of dried wildflowers—more stem than petal.
“There is nothing here for you,” the god said from the shadows of the stone. “Not anymore. Not this year. I cannot feed you. I cannot fix this.”
“I know,” Arepo said.
The god faltered. “Then why are you here?”
Arepo looked up at the gray sky. “Because no one else is.”
His wife grew quiet that autumn.
She no longer hummed while stirring the pot. Their youngest son chewed slower, his cheeks thinner. His eldest sold the last of their goats and didn’t look his father in the eye for a week afterward.
Still, Arepo woke each morning and crossed the field to the temple. Some days he brought nothing but a breath, a memory, a moment of stillness.
He and the god sat in silence.
Winter was lean. Arepo learned to boil roots three ways. When snow fell, he dug beneath it with numb hands to gather frozen herbs.
One night, he returned from the village with an armful of scrap cloth—mended sandals and half-frozen carrots. He found his wife near the hearth, holding their son’s too-thin wrist as he slept.
She didn’t look up when he entered. “What will you do when even the stones stop answering?” she whispered.
Arepo didn’t reply. He simply crossed the room and took her hand in his.
At the temple, the god withdrew.
Its voice grew faint.
“There is nothing left here,” it said, barely more than the crunch of frost beneath Arepo’s boots. “No one leaves offerings anymore. Not even you.”
“I left something yesterday,” Arepo said, brushing snow from the altar.
“A piece of rope,” the god said.
“Twisted from my wife’s old scarf,” he answered. “She wore it every spring. Smells of rosemary and dust.”
The god fell quiet.
“I know it won’t help,” Arepo said. “But it mattered to me. And I thought... maybe you could keep it.”
When spring returned, it was not triumphant.
Crops planted in fear rose reluctantly from the thawed soil. Half the village had left to seek better land; the other half remained, hungry and bitter.
Arepo’s sons dug irrigation trenches with hollowed eyes. His wife slept often and woke exhausted.
Neighbors laughed at the temple now.
“Still praying to your pile of rocks?” one of them called out.
Arepo nodded. “Seems rude to abandon someone mid-conversation.”
One day, the god broke its silence.
“I don’t understand you,” it said. “You are not foolish, Arepo. You see how little I offer. How meaningless I am.”
“You’re not meaningless,” Arepo said.
“I am the god of dying leaves,” the god hissed. “Of soil. Of the air between moments. I cannot bring rain. I cannot bring grain. What kind of god is that?”
Arepo laid a hand on the altar.
“The kind that stays,” he said.
The years passed.
Some seasons were better than others. The vines grew again, but the wheat stayed thin. The fig tree never recovered.
Arepo built a bench beside the temple. Sometimes his sons joined him, sometimes his wife brought apples, cutting them into thin slices and laying them on the altar in quiet offering.
Children from the village left acorns and feathers. Some mothers came to murmur the names of lost infants into the stones.
The god never asked for more.
And Arepo never missed a day.
One afternoon, Maren brought a bundle of herbs to the temple. She pressed them into Arepo’s hand. “For the aches,” she said.
Arepo placed them on the altar instead.
The god stirred. “That was for you.”
“She gave it freely,” Arepo said. “So I’ll share it freely.”
The god fell silent for a long time. When it spoke again, its voice was softer.
“You are so small,” it said. “And so faithful. I wish I could be worthy of it.”
Arepo leaned back on the bench. “It was never about worth,” he said. “It’s just about being here.”
Then came the drums.
Faint at first—just rumors of war beyond the mountains. But each week, they grew louder.
Arepo and his sons dug trenches not for water, but for defense. His wife salted meat they did not have enough of. Travelers stopped coming. Priests fled their golden temples.
The wind carried smoke.
The world was shifting again.
The god watched as Arepo packed grain into hidden sacks and hid tools beneath floorboards. It said nothing, though the stones shuddered beneath its weight.
“I know,” Arepo murmured, resting a hand on the altar. “Worse is coming.”
He left an old iron knife on the stone. “I was hoping I’d never have to pass this down,” he said. “But I’d rather give it to you than sharpen it myself.”
