God died quietly on a Saturday afternoon.
            He died on his back, His vast body unharmed and restful. He fell in a field of flowers. Just as a little girl might press expiring blossoms between the pages of her journal to preserve them evermore, God’s wings fanned out around Him, squashing the flowers. This meadow didn’t know it yet, but it would be eternal. Fed once with the lifeblood of a God, these flowers would thrive forever.
            The sky went into mourning immediately, shrouding herself in the dark veil of storm clouds. Lands sank deeper into the ocean, weeping themselves to drowning. The other Divine beings – the naiads, the dryads, the breeze – knew that they had to act fast to put the world back together again.
            They knew, too, that only thing capable of replacing God was another god.
            In the heart of the mountains, a god was being built. Piece by piece, limb by limb, he was constructed. His eyes, fashioned from the pearls of reticent clams in the deep Indian ocean; his hair from swan feathers. The skin of his body was wrought of lichen and moss, but that of his cherubic face, from the finest Persian silks. His patchwork skeleton of olive-tree branches and marbled terracotta was stitched together using violin strings. Rich pink petals gave the god lips.
            For each new body part that he gained, he adopted, too, wisdom. A fingertip from the Brazilian forests vested him with the knowledge of all the strife that those woodlands had faced in their lifetime. A rib from Japan, and suddenly he harboured a resentment towards malicious yokai that would suggest he’d been dealing with their antics since the beginning of time.
            His name was birdsong, bottled a thousand eons ago and gifted to him now as a token of identity. A housewarming gift. This is your body. This is your name. They are all you will ever have, so do not lose them.
            The name was this: Theron.
            All that this new god lacked was a heart. But what use would a god have for a thing like that?

---

Theron wondered if the god preceding him had had a name. He had only been known, to most, as God. Theron supposed that God might have put his name down someplace and just forgotten to pick it up again. He probably had a lot on His mind. (Enough to have taken His own life, anyway. Fickle, elusive beings like God were invincible to all but their own hand.)
            Theron had been god for one year or a thousand, now, and the ageless fatigue was beginning to creep in. He kept expecting there to be more; for things to change, for humanity to learn its lesson, for Death to shake Theron’s hand and tell him that it was over, the world was finished. We can rest now. It is done.
            But none of this happened. Not ever. Theron would remain forever in this bed of clouds, overseeing that rotting blue-green sphere, as he had been made to do.
            (You wait for him on the edge of the world. He is in the past, you in the present, but there will come a moment when this does not matter; an eclipse of time, a cross-over. He will traverse land and time together until he finds you. He doesn’t know this yet, but you do. You know all that he’s ever been and all that he will be. You are the Great Mother, Father, the beginning and end of all things.)
            Theron watched the world with the doleful attention of a housecat, staring out the window all day long. He watched life bloom and wither. He listened to the music of oceans and windchimes. He entertained the prayers he received and granted the ones that took him less than a day’s work to do so.
            For a while, his favourite thing to observe was religion. The forest gatherings, the white dresses, the gutted black lambs with doll beads for eyes who were thanked for their service to a god they couldn’t even conceptualize. Theron felt some intrinsic bond with these dancing, praying, bloodied people, though he could not quite comprehend their savagery.
            (O Godling, has it taken you this long to realize the wretched nature of piety?)
            The Wanderkind – the most notable cult – were gluttonous, feral, and rather obscene, and sometimes appeared to have more faith in their Wandering God than the young divinity had even in himself. They had a morbid affinity for sacrificing each other and fancied erecting absurd statues of their leaves-and-pearls god.
            Also, they were rather convinced that the world was coming to an end.
            (You have long-since been affronted by this sinister notion. You are, after all, effectively the world itself, and you’d rather think your time isn’t so limited.)
            As Theron spent more time on ground, observing these roguish gatherings, his trips to Earth became less visits and more an extended journey. His attention was a capricious thing, but occasionally it washed up on the shore of a new curiosity like sea-tumbled driftwood, and made a home out of that island for some time.
            The first thing to truly capture his wayward attention was a mortal family that lived in some mortal countryside; a place and a people that died each winter, and revived only in the summertime. At the first signs of snowfall, they gathered firewood and gathered food and gathered themselves to endure the emptiness of the incoming season. When flowers began to bloom again months later (when Theron whispered to the buds, wake up), the family spilled out of their brittle wooden home with their skin as white as the melting frost, untouched by sunlight for so long.
            There were four of them: two parents, a boy, and a girl. They all laughed a lot and cried a lot and spent a lot of time in each other’s arms. Theron might have been constructed with all the knowledge of the world, and yet it occurred to him as he peered through the window into this little home that his skin did not know the feeling of another’s; he had never been embraced.
            As the children grew up and their dog grew old and winters all over the world grew less severe, the stray god watched this family. The parents’ mortality began to show in their silver hair and the wrinkles, like picture-frames around their smiles. The mother became ill each winter. The children, who had moved out some winters ago to conquer the world (as children do), returned home. With the family, Theron watched her wither like overripe fruit. Like such fruit, however, she became only sweeter as she expired. The family had never loved one another more.
            She died on Creation morning – the day meant for exchanging gifts, celebrating Theron’s construction. She died sleeping. The father awoke to her stillness and allowed himself several silent heartbeats alone with her before he fetched the children.
            The more time Theron spent amongst humans, the more their mortality had begun to appeal to him. Death was the only promised thing in the life of a mortal. Between their first breath and their last, worlds of possibilities existed – but there certainly would be a first breath, and certainly a last.
            The eternal Wanderer had no such certainty.
            Theron wondered if the god preceding him had had a name. He had only been known, to most, as God. Theron supposed that God might have put his name down someplace and just forgotten to pick it up again. He probably had a lot on His mind. (Enough to have taken His own life, anyway. Fickle, elusive beings like God were invincible to all but their own hand.)
            Theron had been god for one year or a thousand, now, and the ageless fatigue was beginning to creep in. He kept expecting there to be more; for things to change, for humanity to learn its lesson, for Death to shake Theron’s hand and tell him that it was over, the world was finished. We can rest now. It is done.
            But none of this happened. Not ever. Theron would remain forever in this bed of clouds, overseeing that rotting blue-green sphere, as he had been made to do.
            (You wait for him on the edge of the world. He is in the past, you in the present, but there will come a moment when this does not matter; an eclipse of time, a cross-over. He will traverse land and time together until he finds you. He doesn’t know this yet, but you do. You know all that he’s ever been and all that he will be. You are the Great Mother, Father, the beginning and end of all things.)
            Theron watched the world with the doleful attention of a housecat, staring out the window all day long. He watched life bloom and wither. He listened to the music of oceans and windchimes. He entertained the prayers he received and granted the ones that took him less than a day’s work to do so.
            For a while, his favourite thing to observe was religion. The forest gatherings, the white dresses, the gutted black lambs with doll beads for eyes who were thanked for their service to a god they couldn’t even conceptualize. Theron felt some intrinsic bond with these dancing, praying, bloodied people, though he could not quite comprehend their savagery.
            (O Godling, has it taken you this long to realize the wretched nature of piety?)
            The Wanderkind – the most notable cult – were gluttonous, feral, and rather obscene, and sometimes appeared to have more faith in their Wandering God than the young divinity had even in himself. They had a morbid affinity for sacrificing each other and fancied erecting absurd statues of their leaves-and-pearls god.
            Also, they were rather convinced that the world was coming to an end.
            (You have long-since been affronted by this sinister notion. You are, after all, effectively the world itself, and you’d rather think your time isn’t so limited.)
            As Theron spent more time on ground, observing these roguish gatherings, his trips to Earth became less visits and more an extended journey. His attention was a capricious thing, but occasionally it washed up on the shore of a new curiosity like sea-tumbled driftwood, and made a home out of that island for some time.
            The first thing to truly capture his wayward attention was a mortal family that lived in some mortal countryside; a place and a people that died each winter, and revived only in the summertime. At the first signs of snowfall, they gathered firewood and gathered food and gathered themselves to endure the emptiness of the incoming season. When flowers began to bloom again months later (when Theron whispered to the buds, wake up), the family spilled out of their brittle wooden home with their skin as white as the melting frost, untouched by sunlight for so long.
            There were four of them: two parents, a boy, and a girl. They all laughed a lot and cried a lot and spent a lot of time in each other’s arms. Theron might have been constructed with all the knowledge of the world, and yet it occurred to him as he peered through the window into this little home that his skin did not know the feeling of another’s; he had never been embraced.
            As the children grew up and their dog grew old and winters all over the world grew less severe, the stray god watched this family. The parents’ mortality began to show in their silver hair and the wrinkles, like picture-frames around their smiles. The mother became ill each winter. The children, who had moved out some winters ago to conquer the world (as children do), returned home. With the family, Theron watched her wither like overripe fruit. Like such fruit, however, she became only sweeter as she expired. The family had never loved one another more.
            She died on Creation morning – the day meant for exchanging gifts, celebrating Theron’s construction. She died sleeping. The father awoke to her stillness and allowed himself several silent heartbeats alone with her before he fetched the children.
            The more time Theron spent amongst humans, the more their mortality had begun to appeal to him. Death was the only promised thing in the life of a mortal. Between their first breath and their last, worlds of possibilities existed – but there certainly would be a first breath, and certainly a last.
            The eternal Wanderer had no such certainty.
            Theron wondered if the god preceding him had had a name. He had only been known, to most, as God. Theron supposed that God might have put his name down someplace and just forgotten to pick it up again. He probably had a lot on His mind. (Enough to have taken His own life, anyway. Fickle, elusive beings like God were invincible to all but their own hand.)
                        Theron had been god for one year or a thousand, now, and the ageless fatigue was beginning to creep in. He kept expecting there to be more; for things to change, for humanity to learn its lesson, for Death to shake Theron’s hand and tell him that it was over, the world was finished. We can rest now. It is done.
            But none of this happened. Not ever. Theron would remain forever in this bed of clouds, overseeing that rotting blue-green sphere, as he had been made to do.
            (You wait for him on the edge of the world. He is in the past, you in the present, but there will come a moment when this does not matter; an eclipse of time, a cross-over. He will traverse land and time together until he finds you. He doesn’t know this yet, but you do. You know all that he’s ever been and all that he will be. You are the Great Mother, Father, the beginning and end of all things.)
            Theron watched the world with the doleful attention of a housecat, staring out the window all day long. He watched life bloom and wither. He listened to the music of oceans and windchimes. He entertained the prayers he received and granted the ones that took him less than a day’s work to do so.
            For a while, his favourite thing to observe was religion. The forest gatherings, the white dresses, the gutted black lambs with doll beads for eyes who were thanked for their service to a god they couldn’t even conceptualize. Theron felt some intrinsic bond with these dancing, praying, bloodied people, though he could not quite comprehend their savagery.
            (O Godling, has it taken you this long to realize the wretched nature of piety)?
            The Wanderkind – the most notable cult – were gluttonous, feral, and rather obscene, and sometimes appeared to have more faith in their Wandering God than the young divinity had even in himself. They had a morbid affinity for sacrificing each other and fancied erecting absurd statues of their leaves-and-pearls god.
            Also, they were rather convinced that the world was coming to an end.
            (You have long-since been affronted by this sinister notion. You are, after all, effectively the world itself, and you’d rather think your time isn’t so limited).
            As Theron spent more time on ground, observing these roguish gatherings, his trips to Earth became less visits and more an extended journey. His attention was a capricious thing, but occasionally it washed up on the shore of a new curiosity like sea-tumbled driftwood, and made a home out of that island for some time.
            The first thing to truly capture his wayward attention was a mortal family that lived in some mortal countryside; a place and a people that died each winter, and revived only in the summertime. At the first signs of snowfall, they gathered firewood and gathered food and gathered themselves to endure the emptiness of the incoming season. When flowers began to bloom again months later (when Theron whispered to the buds, wake up), the family spilled out of their brittle wooden home with their skin as white as the melting frost, untouched by sunlight for so long.
            There were four of them: two parents, a boy, and a girl. They all laughed a lot and cried a lot and spent a lot of time in each other’s arms. Theron might have been constructed with all the knowledge of the world, and yet it occurred to him as he peered through the window into this little home that his skin did not know the feeling of another’s; he had never been embraced.
            As the children grew up and their dog grew old and winters all over the world grew less severe, the stray god watched this family. The parents’ mortality began to show in their silver hair and the wrinkles, like picture-frames around their smiles. The mother became ill each winter. The children, who had moved out some winters ago to conquer the world (as children do), returned home. With the family, Theron watched her wither like overripe fruit. Like such fruit, however, she became only sweeter as she expired. The family had never loved one another more.
            She died on Creation morning – the day meant for exchanging gifts, celebrating Theron’s construction. She died sleeping. The father awoke to her stillness and allowed himself several silent heartbeats alone with her before he fetched the children.
            The more time Theron spent amongst humans, the more their mortality had begun to appeal to him. Death was the only promised thing in the life of a mortal. Between their first breath and their last, worlds of possibilities existed – but there certainly would be a first breath, and certainly a last.
            The eternal Wanderer had no such certainty.
            But as he watched the family, watched how the mother’s sickness brought the children back home and how her death drove them all into one another’s arms, the god could not help but think of how jealous he was.
            Mortals loved one another in fierce and self-sacrificial ways irreplicable by divinity. The only thing that made life worth living was its inevitable end.
            Theron longed for mortality. Longed, in some ungodly way, for death.
            He wanted to unbecome the very thing he’d been built to be.
            And so he set off.
            (You have something new in your possession. For him. You ask yourself how long it will take him to hear you calling his name, and whether he will follow the sound).
            Theron did not know, at first, where he was going.
            In forests, he stopped to watch the precise way snakes ribboned themselves over branches. In caves, he pricked his forefinger on stalactites and watched his shining ichor bead. He observed the ways of ants, and resisted the urge to replace fallen chicks in their treetop nests. If he did, the foxes would starve.
            More than once, twittering birds came to remind Theron that if he did not begin upholding his godly duties again, the world was bound for discord. Theron struggled to see the problem. Why was he prohibited from aimless wandering, in order to prevent humans from doing the same? Why was it his responsibility to manage a world that had never asked to be managed? So, he wandered and wandered, traversing lands that he’d created in his dreams years ago. Traversing, too, man-made cities with their big glass teeth and their diabolical glass hearts.
            Theron wandered and wandered until he became The Wanderer, and before long, he was nothing else.
            Gone was the humble, bottled-birdsong name of his youth. Gone was his bed of clouds.

---

            When the Wanderer finds you, you have been waiting for him for a billion heartbeats. The heart that did all that beating is still in your possession. You are at the edge of the world like you promised you would be, where sun meets moon meets sea and shore and metal and plastic. You are all these things.
            And he knows when he sees you that you are who he has been looking for.
            He crosses the sun-moon-sea-shore-metal-plastic space and stands before you.
            “I have come for my mortality,” he says.
            “You have come for your heart,” you say.
            He is stunned by the depthlessness of your voice. He thought he knew everything, but he did not know you.
            “Come,” you say, and he steps forward. You lift the heart. “This was a gift. A sacrifice they made to you.”
            “Who?”
            “The ones who think the world is ending.” You say it with a note of bitterness. You’ve started to realize the world is ending. This Wanderer will be the end of it. Please don’t tell him. Let him have his boyhood.
            You open his chest. He lets you. You unwind the violin strings and the olive branches. You remove clumps of leaves to form a cavity for this thing that has stained your nailbeds bloody.
            “What are you?” asks the Wanderer as you give him his heart.
            Oh, what a question! What are you? You are the heartache and triumph of a soul; you saw the beginning of time and you will see the end of it. In a lifetime from now you will be the buried-deep bones of a forgotten civilization. This god before you will be wormfood. And your fossil will still have bloodstained hands.
            You don’t answer him. You sew his chest back together. You have been holding that heart so long that you can no longer uncup your palms.
            You have unmade God.
            “What now?” he whispers.
            Let him find out.
            He will spend the next many years traversing back through time, seeing everything he missed before. Feeling the pain and depth of mortality. Then he will find someplace he belongs. Maybe in a countryside cottage with a dying mother. Maybe as a king.
            But the important part is that he is just Theron again, now. Just a boy. He has a life ahead of him and, more importantly, a death. He will see everything in colour. He will feel, for the first time, like he is immortal; because, for the first time, he is not.
            Theron will go and live, and the world will be left godless.
            And when, in another billion heartbeats, the godless world crumbles just as the Wanderkind promised, the boy will never know that it was his fault, because he will crumble with everything else.

---

Mercy Grey is 17 year old student from Samford, Queensland. She works at a small bookstore in her town and wrote ‘On Unbecoming God’ for her literature class.