one who is loved more than all the world
Malos had an incredible quorum of admirable qualities, and an even more incredible store of rough edges. Minoth, lower-order being that he was, contained generally less of both. He was less bold, as an icon; less dramatic, as a force; less inverbose, as a giver of meaning.
Malos fascinated, both actively and passively - rather, he did so most passive-aggressively. He didn't like attention, yet he desired and fed on it. He didn't like being told what to do, yet without instructions or at the very least a prompt to respond to he was inert and restless.
Minoth would not designate himself so self-directed. But he did, at the very least, know how to cast down and blend in.
And this, then, was a lovely candidacy for relational forces to strife and strafe. Never let it be said that powerful relationships are built on grudging, gritting interpersonal differences that give rise to compromise only because the magnetism of the alternate attributes is so great, for therein lies the foundation for all manner of unequal and unhealthy dynamics settled atop.
Still, in Minoth, Malos found someone compelling to study and to - though he'd never say it - learn from, while in Malos, Minoth found someone (something, truly) compelling to observe, and nurture, and regard sorrowfully, in a star-crossed way.
No goals had they. No long-term life plans had they. No aspirations had they, whether normative plots along human timelines or not. They simply existed. One star, another. Winking space, and the next moon.
Minoth wanted to chronicle history, artistically and singularly. Malos wanted to make it, or end it, or...something.
The passive. The active.
The scholar. The athlete.
The long, and the short; the soft, and the loud; the light, and the dark; shadow versus negative space.
To each other, imperfect complements which were far more desirable than those perfect, because they had no other place. No one wanted them. They didn't want anyone else.
But then, as the gears of the war continued to turn, Malos was left alone, and Minoth was subsumed into a merrymen band with a designated expiry date that those within it alternately worshipped and ignored. And they known themselves temporary? Had they cared at all for forever?
Jin had an indeterminate lifespan. Addam had a human one. Minoth, also indeterminate, puzzled about Malos, who seemed to stretch beyond their sentient struggles into the lapse of forever.
He wouldn't profess himself such a profound and immediate spy, such as to know these things in an instant. But Jin and Malos fought the same way Malos and Minoth had sparred, verbally and otherwise. A sort of great romance, despite being devoid and unneeding of the conventional notion, enacted in bursts of sublimation, absolution, flickering lights flashed out.
Not only fast, no. The realm of frozen vapor also owns glacial slowness, and the ballet of large steps with loud soles (souls) mincing, sliding, eliding, shivering into place.
The country is slow. The leading edge of history is bullet-quick. And you know how that story goes.
Think back, again: those traded descriptors of one on one, the capsulation of perfect tragedy over imperfect peace.
"You know, I...can't help feeling for Malos."
Not bad, not sorry; no pity, no shame. I feel for Malos. Because we were, for a short time, the same. Trapped, confused, full of impulse with no outlet, desperate to show what we had that was worthy of not salvation but consideration in any light at all.
"Mm," Addam replied, clearly making stow of his judgement, because he'd learned in spades to respect Minoth's judgement and the process of discourse that intelligent men relished the space to prosecute.
"I loved him."
Not sorry. No shame.
"Do you know why?"
"Because no one else did."
"Pity, then?"
Not bad. No pity.
"You couldn't be more wrong."