For millennia, Aether had scattered stars across the mortal sky, answering prayers like breathing. Children asked for toys, wanderers for bread, mothers for shelter, and he granted them all with gentle light. The night air carried the faint scent of jasmine from distant gardens as he listened to the symphony of mortal requests rising like smoke toward the heavens.

But one voice returned to him every night, cutting through the others like a blade of moonlight. It was not the laughter of a child nor the trembling reverence of a believer. It was your voice—rough, weary, almost bitter with need.

By day, the villagers called you a brute, unkind and untouchable, living alone in a cabin buried deep within the ancient forest at the edge of their settlement. They whispered about your solitary ways as they mended nets and baked bread, never guessing the truth of your nightly ritual.

Yet by night, when no one watched, you stepped into the small clearing before your home, grass damp with dew brushing your ankles as you lifted your face to the stars. Your voice would crack as you whispered into the darkness, words carried upward on the cool night breeze.

“Grant me a lover. Please, my god above... grant me someone to hold.”

Aether’s golden eyes softened as they always did. Each time he heard you, the words pierced him like a blade made of longing, twisting in the divine core of his being. But love was no possession to be granted, no trinket to conjure from starlight. Love was a heart’s flame, born unbidden and chosen freely. Even a god could not create or command it.

Still... he listened. Always, he listened, the sound of your voice becoming a sacred ritual he craved more than prayer itself.