Prologue

Trading Mistakes For Sheep

He watched as the petite blonde woman danced ridiculously around her barren and pathetically empty apartment, looking far too foolish to be what he needed her to be, singing along to what he knew her equally pathetic race called 'headphones', although the 'headphones' themselves were hidden from his view by the waterfall of honey-coloured hair she possessed.

"Placing a smile at the perfect event,
Gracing your skin with the side of my hand.
If I ever leave I could learn to miss you,
But 'Sentimental Boy' is my nom de plume.

Let me save you, hold this rope..."

Oh, how I wish you would try, he thought darkly and maybe even a little bitterly: but you cannot change what is beyond your comprehension, even if I wanted to be changed by such a completely pointless being. But as much as that thought stuck with him, it was the chorus of her song that really caught in the back of his mind:

"I may never sleep tonight,
As long as you're still burning bright.
If I could trade mistakes for sheep,
Count me away before you sleep.
I'll stay awake 'til I trade my mistakes,
Or they fade away."

He wished that he could get rid of his mistakes, even by doing something as foolish and nonsensical as trading them all for sheep...but he knew that sins were not corrected so easily, wrongs not so easily undone.

So it was just as well for him to make new ones.

Add the reputation he had crafted.

Live up to expectations.

Wasn't that what they had always wanted?

And as much as a deeply-buried part of him wished for the small blonde mortal to save him, to help him fix his mistakes, who was she to do so? The unknown little mortal, just another pest in an ocean of millions, fixing the mistakes of an infamous and one-of-a-kind god such as himself?

God, monster, it was all the same.

It was beyond laughable: as ridiculous as trading mistakes for sheep. And with that thought in mind, he waved his hand through the air, through the vision of his mortal, dispelling the glowing image of the precious female. The hated, but precious little female.

He had things to do while he still walked free that didn't involve watching over his hated mortal: there was plenty of mischief to be caused, lies to be told...a loathed king to de-throne and a beloved mother to mourn.

I'll stay awake 'til I trade my mistakes,

Or they fade away...