God of Trash

Rhys slipped into the back of the class. It had been a while since he’d sat in on it, but it remained the same as ever. The man ranted away about mustelids to an empty room, with no visible acknowledgement of Rhys’ arrival. Rhys settled in to his seat and evened his breathing, letting his mind wander. Thoughts flowed in and out as he sat there, listening idly to the lecture. Today, the man was covering the details of the mustelid sleeping patterns, comparing that of ferrets and weasels.

Time passed. Days flowed by, marked only by the passage of sunlight across the floor. The man ranted on, and Rhys sat there, listening. Quietly, he smoothed the flow of his mana, peeling out the last scraps of impurities and storing them in his core with the rest. The same sense of potential flowed from these, telling him they were the second-level super impurities, rather than the base impurities he was currently able to process.

When he was done with that, there was nothing to do but listen. And so Rhys cleared his mind, and focused all his energy on the lecture. The man ranted on foraging and hunting habits, now, clarifying the differences between martens and stoats.

Foraging. Hunting. Rhys submerged himself in his subconscious. A vision of an enormous trash pile appeared before him. It stretched to infinity, so far that he couldn’t see its end.

No. He turned slowly, taking it in. It wasn’t an infinite trash pile. This was his hometown trash pit, it was just that he was small. Not just small, but tiny. He sniffed, and a blast of aromas met a more sensitive nose than Rhys had ever possessed in real life. It didn’t smell bad, though. It smelled delicious. His dinner was right around the corner. He scurried over the trash.

Scurried? a tiny part of Rhys wondered, but the rest of him pushed it down. This was him. This was his life. He lived in this mountain of trash, and loved every scrap of it.

A chitter caught his ear. He perked up. A friend approached, nose wiggling, black button eyes wide, fur sleek and healthy. The two of them greeted one another with a few sniffs, and then the friend scurried off. Rhys followed. The friend led him to a fresh patch of garbage, one that smelled delicious. Fresh food, still steaming hot, thick with sweet and salty scents. Rhys touched noses to thank the friend before he set upon the pile of tossed food, gobbling it down.

The friend joined him, and another friend, and another friend joined them. Soon dozens of friends all chowed on the delicious food together. When he was full, Rhys scurried off, back to his den. He snuggled up there and slept, curled up in a cozy den of trash.

His days came and went. He darted from shadow to shadow in the sun, and ran freely in the darkness of night. Sometimes he found food, and sometimes it was the others who found food first. They shared and gloried in the scraps, reveled in the garbage. He dragged soft scraps back to his den, along with fascinating tiny objects. As the years passed, he found a mate, and they made more friends, all in the cozy confines of his den. Life was simple, but it was good.

Until that night.

A sharp, acrid scent. His heart trembled instinctively. He chittered, warning anyone else not to come close, then went silent. Ears swept back. Eyes wide, watching.

From out of the dark stepped a shadow. It loomed tall, as ominous as it was large. Spotlight eyes beamed from above a vicious maw, so full of hunger and vicious hatred that he froze where he stood. The beast stepped forward. One step. Two.