Characters: Xelor (god)
Prompt: #46: dust from the 64 damn prompts on livejournal
Genre: general
Notes: I'm trying out other styles; I'm not always one for present tense, but I think it fits a being who sees all. Also published on my AO3.
Of all the pantheon, Xelor best understands how finite the universe stood. Be it ideas or lives, all would disappear. Time is a wind that weathers all, bit by bit until they disappear as dust on the wind. Immortality is a lasting shell, but the bellowing winds will eventually tear through it like it does for Mortals. Xelor, with His watchful eyes, witnesses the collapse of all taken as immortal. He sees their beginnings. He sees their endings.
He knows it is foolish to step out of the shelter for more than one moment. How could He not when the marks on His soul from the lashing winds too affected His body, now barely held together by metal and cloth-wrappings? He once warned His followers about tampering with time, of exposing themselves to the winds. But they disregard warnings anyway, wrapping themselves in cloth-wrappings in mocking reminders of how fragile both Gods and Mortals are.
Even time errodes. Xelor knows it is only a concept created by the Gods and Mortals. It is a fool's idea, a vain attempt to control the true nature of the forces beyond the Cosmos. Yet, He continues. One does not live unless they wish to survive.
So, Xelor keeps his Mayfly Clock ticking, holding back the inevitable when even he becomes dust in the wind.