Deus
He had long ago surpassed "ghost".
The definition of ghost is "the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons". He wasn't a shadow, or an evanescent form. He was not dead, never dead; he was half-dead, never quite fully dead.
I watched him grow stronger, with greater powers. Both of us did. It didn't matter what was happening to us, but what happened to him did matter. As the years bore on, he began to appear more and more like a classic superhero. He had all the traits of a superhero. He was, always, my superhero…
It happened sometime in college. Sometime around the crossing from undergrad into graduate school. Right after he married me. I think it had been happening slowly the entire time, but I didn't notice the odd glow he seemed to have before that time. It wasn't a glow like a light, but more like an inner glow. His skin seemed brighter; his eyes warmer – even his fingers and toes seemed to glow.
I had been passing by a park bench near to our apartment when I found a dead baby bird lying on the pathway. In sadness and knelt down and picked it up with a kerchief; I was still the animal-lover that I had been in the past. My heart went out to this little creature. It was the middle of January, and recently the temperature had been falling into the negatives at night. This little baby just didn't have what it took to survive alone in these types of conditions. I could tell he had been dead for a couple of days now.
He came out of nowhere, and came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me. Even though it was freezing cold out, he still emanated with heat. He cupped my hands in his, and laid his chin on my shoulder. I felt his lips at the base of my neck, and I almost dropped the little bird. But he returned concentration to the little animal, and closed his eyes again, his hands heating up.
His hands glowed, and the bird glowed. But this wasn't the same ghostly energy I had remembered. It was warmer, softer.
He forced me to close my hands over the tiny little animal, and I did so. I opened my hands again and, in my palm, was a little baby bird with all his feathers, puffing up his wings and chirping angrily at being knocked out of its nest.
My jaw dropped open, and I fell to my knees from my crouching position. The bird nibbled my gloved hands, and I dropped him on the ground, where he pointedly waddled away to what appeared to be a nest in a bush.
He remained behind me, his arms wrapped around my stomach, his face in my back, and I realized that he wasn't wearing a jacket. And I knew for a fact it was in the teens, maybe even single digits outside. His bare arms were warm and enticing, not cold at all.
I know that he had surpassed a simple ghost in our teen years. Even the most powerful of specters couldn't hold a candle to his power. He could have single handedly taken over the entire Ghost Zone. He had that much power. But he didn't.
He didn't.
And I will always wonder, from that day all those years ago, just when it was that this child, this kind superhero beside me… became a god.
All I can say is... ::shrug::. I honestly have no idea where this came from. All I know is it spawned from listening to "Hey Jude" from the "Across the Universe" soundtrack over and over again.