Favored

They only have two appetites. Only two.

One, a need born of sustenance and the other a desire—a wanting.

They breed our kind for children. Children sustain them. They drink from the young lives and draw from their unlived years. It is how they mastered their own mortality. But, I am no child. And, I have my tongue. They let us keep them. We who are born here. In the castle. We are bred for another purpose, their other appetite.

His appetite.

‘A sacred office,’ or, so said mother, but I think she really meant something else. There's nothing sacred about the things we do—though we do them religiously—and our god is anything but holy. Our deeds are better left to the dark. That's where they are from—his kind I mean. They came from the dark. His kind own it. And, from it they came to us as gods… gods we didn't want, but gods nonetheless… and gods will be worshipped.

Mother calls our lot a gift.

It may be. While others are bred or bled, the breeders losing tongues to keep their lives, we sit here in satin or silk or nothing; whatever they prefer, doing whatever they desire, dying a new death every time… No, the dead die because they know better. We continue breathing because we are either cowards or fools… and there isn't a one among us you could say was brave—courage is a foolish endeavor for sheep—and he doesn't breed us for our wit or cunning. He likes his sheep pretty, that's it. A wise sheep has no place among the fold and usually because it isn't a sheep, it's a wolf. But no matter. There are no wise sheep among us.

The others would disagree.

Of course they would. ‘The Favored One,’ they'd protest. Mother. She is the eldest of us—but that's not the same as wisdom, though I don't think they know that—but, she is the Favored One. Of that there is no question. She is the only mother amongst us. It is known that He does not keep those who have been bred, not after they've fulfilled their motherly duties. There are no old among us. Yet, she is here… Favored? No doubt. I have heard them say, ‘Her beauty was bred from a thousand years,’ but even so, it is not her name that He summons.

It is mine.

I’m the only fruit my mother’s womb has ever produced. The only child of the Favored One. The only seed from a thousand years of His breeding. The others treat it with reverence, an austerity. Mock them, mock them all. Sheep. I’d gladly trade my skin for theirs. Let them have his maggot flesh to themselves. I don't want it, but He does. The man. The ‘He-god’. He thirsts for me, but not for sustenance. It is not my blood that He wants… But how I long for his. Not as they do, but I thirst for it. I would bathe in His blood. In their blood. It is a pity they made us so frail. The gods.

But, what would they be without the frail? Without the weak? Hungry no doubt. Who would bend? There would be no one to worship? And, they do need their worship. It simply wouldn't do if we could defy them. It wouldn't do at all. So they made us to break. They made us to bend. They made us to feed and please. They know we hated them, but it didn’t matter. We were sheep, we were their sheep.

…but, all of that was before.