Gods

2025

Before the eras took names, there were only the Gods — older than weather, older than the surfaces that would later glaze them. They walk on foot through landscapes that have not yet decided what they are, carrying antlers, masks and prayer-feathers as the only inheritance of an unwritten cosmology.

Each figure here is a first draft of a deity, recorded as a single passing portrait. They do not pose. They are caught mid-pilgrimage, between one rite and the next, while the world behind them quietly hardens into the materials of every project that follows.

cloud warrior — Walks at the altitude where weather is decided. Carries no weapon — the office of warrior in this pantheon is mostly a matter of bearing, of holding a posture long enough for the air to thicken into a storm behind it. By the time anyone notices the figure, the front has already organised itself.

jungle shaman — Half-priest, half-undergrowth. Holds the green hour in place by simply standing in it; if he stepped aside, the leaves would resume their schedule and the day would end. The mask reads as ceremonial only because no one has a better word for a face the forest has approved.

moss antler — An old god kept in office by the moss. The antlers have softened the way old wood softens — fibrous, almost edible — and small lichens have started keeping time on them. Whatever this figure once announced has long since been absorbed into the rumour of the forest itself.

neon oracle — An oracle wired to a source nobody is willing to name out loud. The light comes from inside the bone rather than the eyes, which is what makes the predictions harder to argue with. Sits very still, the way old radios sit while they are doing the heaviest work.

raven pilgrim — Walks the way somebody walks who has been walking for centuries. The ravens are not pets but notes — each one a place where the pilgrim stopped long enough to be remembered by something. When the figure leaves, the birds stay where they were last addressed.

verdant titan — Too tall to be addressed directly. The titan has agreed, gradually, to become hill: vines along the shoulders, moss at the joints, an entire small ecosystem occupying what used to read as a face. To pray to a titan in this era is no longer a verbal act — it is a climb.