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The world was new, clean and pure. Water lapped at the new land and wind moved freely. Quetzalcoatl looked up at the skies. There was no sun.
Dirt and water didn’t feel as fulfilling as he thought it would be, and adding anything more at the moment felt like a monumental chore. A gust of wind ruffled Quetzalcoatl’s feathers as he surveyed the barren, dark land without time. Tezcatlipoca was in a mischievous mood again and Quetzalcoatl wanted nothing else but to be left alone.
“A novel idea floats in the air,” Tezcatlipoca informed him, dispensing with the expected greeting, as he took form by Quetzalcoatl’s side. The cold wind rushed up, coiling over Quetzalcoatl’s legs, making his hair dance. “Eras of fun are awaiting us.”
“I told you eighteen hundred were too much,” Quetzalcoatl complained, still angry because the creation of new gods got out of hand, and he stopped his long stride. Each time Tezcatlipoca presented him with an idea, the idea exploded beyond any kind of restraint.
“Always looking at the downside of things.” Tezcatlipoca laughed and stopped by Quetzalcoatl’s side. “Four hundred and a half would never be enough to sort this world. We barely have enough to have a good idea.”
“I care not about your idea.”
Quetzalcoatl took a step forward and Tezcatlipoca cut him short, one hand over Quetzalcoatl’s naked chest, just by the ehecailacocozcatl. Quetzalcoatl looked at that hand and then turned his eyes up.
“Hear me out,” Tezcatlipoca insisted and the corners of his mouth curved with a small hint of cruelty. “Macehualtin…”
Quetzalcoatl sighed, pinned down by the weight of this new world they both had created together. His mind already distracted with many issues of great importance: What use could they have for servants when hunger, thirst, sleep, and greed could never bother the lords of creation? What good could they bestow to that new creation? The affair had too many consequences to be decided on a whim.
“I can feel your heart,” Tezcatlipoca said in a fleeting whisper. His words touched Quetzalcoatl like a wet breeze coming from the water, like the cold mist tumbling down from that newly formed clouds before a rainfall. “You are tempted.”
“To do what?” Quetzalcoatl almost felt like smiling at the juvenile taunt.
“To create them.”
Tezcatlipoca approached, as slowly as the smoke rising from wet wood. Quetzalcoatl held his gaze into Tezcatlipoca dark eyes. Those eyes never held a reflection like wells still water in this land without a sun.
“To have someone who shows gratitude.”
Quetzalcoatl groaned at the idea and he took a step back. Tezcatlipoca’s hand slid down and curled over the strip of skin between Quetzalcoatl’s ribs and his hip.
“Imagine this world with them to bring some life at this corpse,” Tezcatlipoca insisted while his fingers traced the line of Quetzalcoatl’s maxtlatl, “to make food grow, to dance, to worship…”
“To rule, to suffer, to die…”
Tezcatlipoca laughed. His was the laughter of thunder, like a rumbling boulder rolling down a slope. The complacent sound of shatter and ruin that marked the end and the beginning.
“To experience the joy—and the grief—of life.”
Quetzalcoatl twisted like an uncoiling serpent. His head was in turmoil because the two kinds of discomfort assaulting his heart. Tezcatlipoca turned with him, refusing to let Quetzalcoatl go.
“As always, you are shy as a rabbit,” Tezcatlipoca said, with a smile on his face and with adventurous hands roaming Quetzalcoatl’s hips. “As bashful as a maiden.”
“You are as bold as the jaguar,” Quetzalcoatl retorted, trying to push Tezcatlipoca away without success. “As unmanageable as the wind.”
Tezcatlipoca stopped his game and pressed Quetzalcoatl against his chest. Quetzalcoatl didn’t resist; resistance was bound to be taken as a challenge.
“Tell me you are not even tempted,” Tezcatlipoca taunted, pulling Quetzalcoatl even closer.
Quetzalcoatl cast his eyes downwards. The fabric of their maxtlatli was not enough to disguise how much Tezcatlipoca was enjoying taunting him. There it was, blossoming like this waiting life running under their feet. With Tezcatlipoca, there was never a moment of respite, his was the hurry that makes things glow or break.
“I am not,” Quetzalcoatl said because his was the wisdom of the gradual, unquestionable change. The risk of populating the land and let it thrive under its own devices was a sure way to sow a harvest they wouldn’t want to reap.
“Liar,” Tezcatlipoca challenged, hooking his leg over Quetzalcoatl, bringing them closer.
Incensed, Quetzalcoatl raised his head only to meet those dark wells in Tezcatlipoca’s face. A quick peer inside those made Quetzalcoatl tremble, for he saw himself without any disguise.
Quetzalcoatl had met the mirror behind the smoke
He saw the mighty feathered serpent roaming the clear sky. He witnessed cities raise to the sky, magnificent, perfect. He saw the macehualtin in their working, living, worshipping. He grasped the depths of their love, their grief, their hopes…
The head of the serpent surrounded by feathers repeated once and again on the temples, on the streets, on the houses. Quetzalcoatl’s name was repeated in all the hues of the human voice, from the grateful yell to the quivering whimper; from the threatening shout to the frightened cry. Poor childlike creatures at the mercy of the land and the time.
Quetzalcoatl contemplated the terrible sacrifice brought to the stone, the obsidian knife poised to reap the best, the most beautiful, the most cherished they had to offer.
And the serpent coiled around the tall building waiting to pluck the offering.
“I like you even when you lie,” Tezcatlipoca confessed with a voice like the soft caress of a zephyr.
Quetzalcoatl was ashamed of being tempted. He was disgusted by how easily Tezcalipoca could see through him, and so he changed himself to the strong current of wind. Tezcatlipoca clung to Quetzalcoatl relentlessly, twisting and whirling around him. Quetzalcoatl felt Tezcatlipoca’s might permeating him and refused to surrender. Tezcatlipoca’s thundering laughter ran between them like lightning between loaded clouds. Quetzalcoatl became a hurricane pulling Tezcatlipoca closer and closer with an increasing drawn that threatened to doom that land they just made together.
Their essence mixed together brought rain to the dry land, pouring like a flood from the top of the highest peaks, rushing down to the valleys where it pooled neat and quiet.
Quetzalcoatl finally pushed Tezcatlipoca away and ran towards the skies to that point in the East where he stayed for long until he could face his tormentor again.
Upon his return, Quetzalcoatl would discover Chicomecoatl roaming the land, with her arms loaded with flowers.