Each morning, they came to pray inside the stone house. And on some days, His hands were raw. And on others, Her eyes were swollen. Yet the old priest knew better than to speak his mind. It wasn't that he was afraid of what that large, foreboding mountain of a Man might do. Or at least, that's what he liked to tell himself. What kept him from speaking was that these two were the last remnants of his erroneous flock.
One by one, they'd deserted him. Blaming the priest for being stuck in his ways. For making them kneel and pray down in the mud. For advising punishment to tame even their most unhinged pleasures. And through all their accusations, he'd stuck to the Good Book, and what it had taught him these past fifty years. Until one morning, he opened the doors to the stone house, and found the crowd that was a-coming grown a little more sparse. Not significantly, at first, and though the priest knew on the spot the names of those missing, he'd said nothing.
What purpose might it serve, if he asked the remainder sheep about what had happened to the others? From that day on, his words had grown harsh, and his castigation even more severe. Almost as if he was inviting them to leave.
And to his delight, they had. One by one, the families in his congregation had fled. Under cover of night, always in the pitch black. Because they couldn't quite imagine running into the old priest, as they abandoned God's path. His path. For in the years since his flock had started to thin, the old priest had become a God to their village.
Sitting on his front porch one night, hidden to all eyes, but for his dimly lit pipe, he was struck by a revelation. That it wasn't because of his failings the believers were leaving. It was the absence of God that drove them to desperate measures. For the God he'd been taught to trust was not the God their village needed. In His Glory, He was too perfect. And to them, too inexplicably strange to ever make an impression.
For years, they'd listened to the old priest drone on and on about the magnificence of the Heavens up above. And he saw now, it had been his own ignorance and childlike nature that had eventually driven them away. The villagers didn't need ascension, just like they didn't need saints to guide them. Weren't much concerned with the glory of the Heavens, because most didn't expect to make it quite so far. So a loaf of bread, or a beast to guard their crops, so that they wouldn't starve this winter - that would've been miracle enough for them. Theirs had been a village tried by fire, for whom the wafer and pitched of wine were far too little consolation.
Unfortunately, this realization had come far too late. When the old priest finally began to cement his role as Protector, the villagers had grown few and harried. Many of them avoided his services, and those who didn't quite dare, spent them plotting their escape. Until only two were left, neither the church-going type. Perhaps it went to show that the first time they bothered was the day the stone house was truly empty. Except, of course, for the old priest, struggling with his faith. Struggling to become his own God, 'cause he saw now that the one above wasn't going to save him.
In time, they developed a semblance of an understanding. The Man and the Woman didn't come to him with their sins, and he never claimed to be able to grant absolution. Truth be known, he'd never fallen too well into the role of healer, and now he'd finally found the strength to discard those robes.
He'd decided he wouldn't be a deity of divine absolution, or harmony amidst the clouds. The old priest saw all too clearly that that was where his predecessor had failed. The Man and the Woman didn't need a God to forgive, but not one to punish, either. For decades, and centuries before that, his robed brothers had seen no other way but to seek to combine the two. Absolution and chastisement. Birth only to maim.
Yet, sitting quietly in the alcove, watching the Man and the Woman take their places inside the front - and only - pew, the old priest could finally claim some wisdom.
He knew now that humanity had never sought a God that would forgive or damn it, but one willing to get on His knees and worship. As he gazed out, across the old stone church, at his two miracles, the old priest thanked the Heavens for these two deities that kept him from slipping into assured madness.
End.
Once again, inspired by the freewrite prompt from 