tiny pieces of glass from abandoned things

the pagan mountain god, El, made covenant with His servant. El divided bulls and doves and geese and dolphins in twain. leviathans divided in twain. fleas divided in twain. El divided everything alive except for a man and a woman on that long plain.
his servant, a diminished soul, trembled in the blood of so many dead things. he wondered how long ‘twould be before the divisions came for the servants.
the ritual was simple enough. one makes a vow. one passes between the divided beasts as many times as there are beasts. if one breaches the oath, one becomes divided like the dead beasts.
El made his vow, to his servant. his servant received it, in terror.
El’s footsteps through the bloody sands – red mud – steamed in the heat of the ancient fires. sand and blood melted into purple glass, cracking under the weight of the oath. In one long night, time slowed near still, and this old mountain God passed through once for each beast – a billion times.
the servant, terrified, watched as the old god made this vow. he aged a thousand years. he died and was raised from death a thousand times, watching this vow.
the cracked glass beneath the old god’s feet sparkled in the torchlight like the stars of the oath.
El had pointed to the heavens. El had said, “your descendents shall be as numerous as the stars.” to a foolish, dirty servant, as ignorant as the slaughtered beasts, El had withheld the truth. Your descendants shall fill the stars. Each and every star shall hold a child of man in the gravity well – a billion children of men. Let the universe fill with these creatures until a singularity comes where mortal passes – like waking up – into immortality.
after the ceremony, El returned to is family with the holy alphabet where soundwaves rattle and bend reality beyond the silver veil of atoms.
El had created himself in his own past.