Tell Me Why

NOTE: Non-Erotic

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I hear him call out to me, a one-word prayer that I’m always on alert for.
 
“Cyl.” The tone of his voice tells me this is not a booty call. A glance ahead shows him sitting in the dark, brooding. I guess it’s time to address this, at last.
 
In an instant, I cross dimensions to appear before him. Instead of my usual skimpy red attire, I stick to my pitch black body suit, covering me fully from neck to toes. Impossibly form fitting, but so dark my body appears more like a silhouette. A Cylhouette, if you will. But this isn’t the time for jokes.
 
I give Don Joe, one of my favorite lovers, a calm gaze. I float cross-legged in the air, while he sits on his recliner, leaning forward with his hands clasped and staring straight at me. I keep a few feet of distance between us. I keep the glow of my eyes dim.
 
To most, his expression would be unreadably stoic, but I know him better than he knows himself. Omnipotence tends to make that inevitable when I deal with mortals.
 
I let him wrestle with his thoughts. He wants so bad to confront me, but when we first met, I made it very clear that the things he wants to ask me, wants to accuse me of, are topics I refuse to indulge. But in this circumstance, he can’t help himself.
 
I could alter his feelings. Make him feel as though we already had this conversation, give him the memory of a long, drawn-out diatribe, and argument, that ends in wonderful make up sex, and the matter settled for good. I could make him forget his concerns regarding me were ever something to be considered. If need be, I could make him forget me, and our time together, entirely, and spare him this existential angst.
 
But I like him too much to do that. And I don’t want to manipulate my Playthings on that level. He was my first lover in this reality, and I owe him more than to dismiss him when his feelings become inconvenient.
 
He stares at me for a long moment, and I just let him process everything. I have all the time in the world, after all.
 
“My Mom died,” he says. “Two days ago. Stroke. It was sudden, no indication it was coming. At least she went in her sleep, but...” He sits back in his chair and runs a hand through his hair.
 
“I’m so sorry Don,” I say, softly. I’d like to hug him, but I don’t get any closer, because he looks simultaneously like he wants to stab me, cry on my shoulder, or start screaming at me. He simultaneously feels angry at me, but feels guilty for feeling that way, but can’t find a reason why his feelings aren’t justified, but knows my reasons for being the way I am. He wants to blame me, but wants to not feel like he should. But he can’t help it. His mother just died. And I, who have the power of a God, and who has chosen him as one of my favored, did nothing about it.
 
“I know I shouldn’t ask,” he said. He’s holding back tears and anger. “But I have to.”
 
I let him.
 
“Why didn’t you do something?”
 
I parse my words. “I told you. I’m not a God. I’m not a superhero. I’m not a messiah. I’m not a cosmic janitor. I’m not here to interfere with the natural flow of human civilization. You are mortal. Mortals, by definition, will die. I am not going to prevent that from happening. Not even for you.”
 
“I guess I really am just a toy to you, then.”
 
“You’re not a toy. You’re a person. You’re my lover. And because of that, you have my Blessing. But my Blessing only goes so far.”
 
He stares at me for another long moment. He forces himself to take a deep breath. He wants to punch me in the jaw. He wants to hit me until he can’t move his arms any more. I would have let him, but he’s not that kind of man.
 
He wrestles with himself. I feel some pity, but I don’t try to steer his thoughts. He takes another long breath, before saying, “I... understand it’s not my place to judge you. You are what you are. But I just... I have to know, now. I have to know why.” He stared me right in the eyes. “You don’t want to interrupt the flow of human progress? You don’t want to disturb our timeline? You say this, but you come to people like me, and you fuck our brains out in ways we can barely comprehend. You give some of us mortals powers. You carry us off to fantastical worlds to have adventures. And yet you ‘don’t want to interfere’. It’s bullshit. You use us to get your rocks off, and then you toss us to the side until you’re in the mood again.”
 
His hands curled into fists. “Everything you do to us, and you just treat us like tissues, discarded the moment we stop being fun for you. You won’t really be our friends. You won’t be there for us when we’re really in trouble. You’ll make sure we’re healthy and safe so we’re still around for you to fuck, but when our friends and families are in need, you won’t lift a finger.”
 
Tears were in his eyes. “You could have at least fucking warned me it was going to happen. Told me to make sure she didn’t skip a check up at the doctors. Could have... done something to set up the dominoes of cause and effect so she didn’t have to just... die.”
 
He let out a choked sob. “You know, the others, I get. If everything I’ve heard about them is true, then I wouldn’t expect Shady or Whitney or any of the rest to lift a finger. They’ve made it clear they don’t give the slightest fuck about anything but their own enjoyment. But at least they’re upfront about that.” He gave me a baleful look. “You, though. You.”
 
I said nothing, and we sat there for another long moment.
 
He sighed and shook his head. “I’ve thought fondly of you all this time. I guess I thought you were different. Even if you were hamstrung by some Omny politics or whatever, I thought surely, if any of them are actually looking out for us, it’s probably you. You said you’ve helped keep the planet safe from danger, and I’ve taken your word on it.”
 
Another long pause. He was waiting for a reaction, but I wasn’t going to give him one just yet.
 
“I was just in awe of you at first. Then I genuinely started to like you. Not just because of the sex, but when we’d hang out together, I enjoyed the companionship. I knew it wasn’t ever going to be love, but I was glad to be your lover. And I want to believe my feelings have been real. But you’re all powerful, and you only care about pleasure. For all I know, you could just be making me feel grateful to you, making me enjoy the things you do to me, making me feel okay with it all, because you don’t want me constantly confronting you with just how fucked up our relationship really is.”
 
He stared me right in the eyes. “This time, I can’t overlook it. This time, I can’t blow it off as ‘it’s just not her way.’ I’m your lover, I’m your chosen, I’ve dedicated myself to making you happy, but you don’t care about me past how useful I am to you. If you actually cared, you would have done something! I know, she was old, I know mortals die, but... but... goddamn it!”
 
He struck the arm of his recliner and dropped his face into his hand. I watched him sob and try to force his emotions back under control.
 
After a few moments, he was able to compose himself enough to keep talking. “Why am I bothering? I know what you’re going to say. You have your reasons. I don’t know what they are, but I’ve trusted they must be valid. But I can’t look past this.”
 
He glared at me. “I know I realistically can’t stop you from doing whatever you want to me. I really want to think you’re genuine when you act sweet and caring with me. I want to believe you aren’t this callous for no reason. That you aren’t going to just erase these thoughts from my mind. But...”
 
He felt a pang in his chest. Despite how hurt he was, he also didn’t want to say it. But he had to. “Cyl. You either explain yourself right now, or I never want to see you again. I don’t care what I’ll lose. I can’t keep fucking you if you really are just this cold.”
 
I met his gaze and held it for several long minutes of my own. I debated my options. For a moment, I almost gave in to the temptation to erase myself from his memory, remove myself from his life. This is why we Omnymphotents were very selective with the people we chose to play with. So many mortals, once they found out what we are, just how vast our power was, would expect us to “save the world” for them. But we weren’t here for that.
 
I liked Don, though. I didn’t just use him for a pump and dump. We’d spent some days just hanging out, being more like an actual couple, just enjoying one another’s companionship. In his grief, though, those fleeting days probably seemed insignificant considering the majority of our time together was in coitus.
 
“Don. If I saved your mother, then what? Who do I save next? If I bring her back to life, she’ll want me to bring her husband and sister and parents back to life. And they’ll want me to resurrect their past loves. And they’ll want their loves returned. And on, and on, and on. We make the entire world immortal, bring back to life everyone who ever died, and you’re looking at trillions of lives crowded on this one planet.
 
“So we make new worlds and dump you all on them. And the vast majority of humans get bored and dissatisfied, and demand we do more for them. They demand we favor some groups over others. They demand we kill their enemies for them, that we elevate them above others. They rage at us for not being the Gods they thought they knew. They recast us as Devils.
 
“We send the violent and cruel ones back to the afterlife, just so the peaceful mortals aren’t under constant harassment from those who cannot be peaceful. But tribalism keeps insinuating itself. Human nature is to need conflict. So what then? We erase the need for conflict. You don’t strive for anything anymore. You sit there, and we use you as toys, and that’s all you’re reduced to. Unfeeling toys and listlesspets, the whole of humanity. You lose your soul, and we no longer find you worth being with, and we leave you, and we let you rot in your mindless brooding in some pocket dimension in the edge of the multiverse.”
 
He took his time mulling that over. “You know this for certain?” He scowled. “Stupid question, huh?”
 
“Yes, we know this for certain.”
 
“Do I want to know how?”
 
“No, you don’t.”
 
We looked at each other some more, saying nothing. I knew what he was thinking, but I was still a mystery to him.
 
He closed his eyes and took another long breath. “Okay. I get it. You have to take the long view.”
 
I looked down, debating if I should break my own rules. I touched my fingers to the left side of my face, feeling the echo of past lives undone. In another world, another time that no longer was, I had born a scar I never let other see, but I still felt no matter what form I took. The Mark was gone now, thanks to a terrible miracle, but I would never forget the thing that gave it to me.
 
I wanted to tell him of how once, we did try to “save everyone”. For the sake of an entire multiverse, we faced the crawling horror of an alien god. We thought we could do it easily, because surely our power was great enough and our cause just.
 
We failed. We failed so badly, that any delusions of messianic grandeur were wiped clean from our minds. We spent the rest of that timeline throwing ourselves into hedonism to cope with the survivor’s guilt; there were only Five of us back then, because we had been the only ones, out of hundreds of Omnymphotents, to escape the Dark God alive.
 
That old trauma wasn’t supposed to count anymore. We’d reset everything with our metafictional miracle. We were many again. We were all about fun again. Even I no longer felt the weight of the Mark.
 
But I still remembered it. And I remembered other timelines as well, the possible paths we could have taken, before we settled on this one. Even ignoring the Dark God, there had been so many mistakes.
 
The enforced utopia of the original Thrae, which gradually brainwashed humanity into a race of soulless automatons devoted to machine-like harmony, at the cost of their lives having any meaning save base survival.
 
Our attempt to act as reincarnations of humanity’s old gods, to encourage development through temptation, struggle, and enlightenment, leading to a legitimate war between the “Light Omnys” and “Dark Omnys” that tore multiple realities asunder.
 
The idea to merge all Omnys into a gestalt entity of ultimate power that would make perfect decisions, only for the conflicting desires of hundreds of minds to drive the singular Goddess insane, twisting her reality into a hellscape of living madness.
 
We’d managed to dodge those outcomes and more. No one knew better than us the mortal wisdom of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Call us cowards, but we were done trying to improve things in the vain hope that we might not fuck it all up again.
 
“Cyl? You still with me?”
 
I blinked, and looked up, pulling my hand away from my face. He’d been watching me for a couple minutes as I let myself brood. I reminded myself I wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. When I looked up, my expression gave him pause. For a moment, he felt a pang of dread that he’d gone too far. I composed myself, banishing the dark thoughts of worlds that no longer were.
 
“Don. I’m sorry.”
 
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
 
“Would you like me to stay for a while?”
 
He frowned, and glanced down. “I’m not in the mood to perform.”
 
“We don’t have to have sex. I just think you could use the company.”
 
“Are you sure?”
 
“I can suppress my urges for a while. I know it isn’t much, but I can at least offer some comfort.”
 
He hesitated, then moved to his couch. I floated over put my arms around him. Slowly his tension eased and he allowed himself to melt into my hug. He cried a bit more, and I pat his head soothingly. Then we sat in silence until he drifted to sleep.
 
With a thought, I moved him to his bed and tucked him in. I gave him a light peck on the cheek, and a small caress of mental energy to help ease his anxiety a bit. In the morning, he’d wake up feeling a bit better, more ready to deal with what needed to be done after a parent passed on.
 
With that, I vanished from his world and returned to one of my own. This was hardly the first time I’d had to settle things with a Plaything, despite our discretion in who we chose. It still wasn’t easy to tell our mortal lovers no in these matters, but we all knew the consequences of saying yes. No was far better than the eventual alternative.
 
It still put me in a sour mood. I decided to visit one of my fellow Omnys. I could use some cosmic comfort of my own right now.