#specifically buildings meant to represent a deity with strong ties to life and creation

[welcometomybraincomics]

The Temple of Life and Death

Buildings are so lifeless. Wood is dead, but stone was never alive in the first place. Buildings are dark and must be lit artificially unless one wants to pay for expensively large windows, specially engineered not to break under storm’s wind. Buildings are kept clean. Dirt is frowned upon. Insects are pests. Any animals uninvited are intruders who may be killed. Plants are kept in neat and tidy pots that limit their growth for lack of space.

Buildings cannot be a temple for Life and Death.

Worshipers gather around a clearing full of plants and covered in fallen leaves. Surrounding them is life, growing and consuming. Beneath them is death, decomposing and feeding. Death leads to life as life leads to death. The never-ending cycle of reality that shall continue long past any mortal’s imagination. Plants grow beside them. In their roots and bark and leaves, creatures live: scurring, biting, birthing. The plants grow and their leaves die and the ground is covered in their corpses. The leaves decay into dirt. Within the leaves live beetles and worms and all kinds of insects that aid in their decay. They grow and live and birth upon death and the cycle continues. The bird eats the worm, the bird feeds the wolf, the wolf feeds the tree, the tree feeds the worm. Again and again, life consumes life and death begets death. The holy cycle continues forever.

A temple to Life and Death starts as a clearing. A priest directs the construction of the temple. It is a community activity involving all attendees. They bend the young trees to form arches and doorways. They are careful not to damage the plants. Children run underfoot, weaving crowns and baskets out of flowers and reeds. Some try to help, tying long grasses to the base of a tree in a messy knot. Parents laugh at the adorable sight. The temple is not made in one lifetime, nor two. The temple has been alive and growing for thousands of years. Millions of families have dedicated their lives to it and thousands of plants have been woven into it. Where once it was simply trees and dirt, it is now a towering figure full of wood windows that let in pillars of light. There are floors of live tree wood and bridges of growing vines. The temple is not a building, but a living creature, an ecosystem, alive and dead and growing.

Light shines through the leaves, speckling the ground with green-yellow light. Each layer is full of open spaces, each floor designed to allow light to pass from one floor to the next. The center of a temple is an open column of air. Laying down within it allows one to gaze at the sky, where woven fences and tree crowns frame their vision.

The temple is full of life. Animals come in and out, birthing, killing, and dying. There are no doors, there are no windows. Only arches to the world.  

Each floor is covered in dirt from aeons of decay. Leaves and insects layer the floors. When it rains, rivulets of water trickle down through its many cracks, making small rivers that wet each floor. New growth drinks from these rivers and the cycle continues.

#Inashia #creative writing #life and death #gods #So uh #this came to me completely unprompted after going through a class on church construction (part of an Art History course) #clearly I have strong feelings about buildings #specifically buildings meant to represent a deity with strong ties to life and creation #but also this is about ocs #lmao #specifically the gods Life and Death #who have recently been redesigned to be faceless to fit with the idea of “Gods conforming to the viewers expectations” #Life's got a sheet over their face wears nothing else #They get the comedically convenient environmental censorship treatment whenever they've got body parts to hide #Death on the other hand has a skull for a face and wears clothes appropriate to the culture of whoever sees him #They're best friends #world building #I think I spend more time world building than actually working on plot #strike that #I totally spend more time on world building than on plot #its why I have 1 story done that has like 0 world building #and about 20 unfinished stories with a bunch of world building #at this point plot is just an excuse for world building