Days With a Knight

The other participant’s stories can be found here: Allie, Tara, Pinky, Olivia.

Prompt:  Tell the tale of a turning point in a real historical event, but add divine intervention

Phobos could have been a month old kid from the toothy grin he flashed his father, hands clasping and wringing like an eager child’s, voice proud as a piper’s march – with a slight waver in the middle of it, like a half remembered accent. The middle aged man sitting next to him in a red suit said nothing.

“Look,” Phobos crowed, “Look! They’re coming down now. Watch me, Daddy. Watch the towers tumble!”

Deeper than his own affectations, however, the fear lord stewed. First came gods, in the dawn and with the fire, in the night and wirh blood. Then money, then science and art – mitigating, minimizing and immitating majesty. Growing ever on until the eras turned again to the realms of currency. Coins, gold, paper, beads, salted fish – it was all the same. More and greater offerings given to the religion of wealth, fewer and smaller to the religions of faces and names. Some of the old faiths survived on what was left, or adapted quickly enough to change their faces. Many didn’t.

Most recently Phobos had worn the face of an Imam, of several, trying on their fervors with practiced ease and supplanting their great God’s worship subtly with his own. He was sure the old man wouldn’t mind if he knew. But Phobos took a different face for this magnificent debut. It could have been a politican’s, or a fireman’s, or a news-caster’s. It may have been all three, this American face, but it was his.

As the first plane hit, he whispered a name most couldn’t even remember. “Deimos,” he said, trembling a little with the memory, feeling his father frown, loss still biting with a new hound’s teeth. Somewhere a little skirmish turned ugly to accommodate the mood.

“DEIMOS!” And the second plane hit. Somewhere, a man of faces threw fuel onto the fires. They spread, and for a while, Phobos forgot he was alone.

Tagged: Allie, deimos, divine intervention, fear, gods, greek, greek myth, greek pantheon, legend, mars, myth, Olivia, phobos, Pinky, random, Tara Barnett, writing