The failure of the "Parade of Pretty Fools" was a quiet, but significant, defeat in the celestial realms. Svetovid, who had orchestrated the campaign with the strategic precision of a master general, received the reports from the winds and the whispers of the disappointed suitors. He sat upon his stone throne on Biokovo, his four faces presenting a rare, unified expression: not of anger, but of bemused, grudging respect.
The warrior's face scowled, but it was a scowl of concession. The seer's face was contemplative, its eyes seeing the unbreakable golden thread that now connected Korčula to the divine. The face of the lord wore a faint, ironic smile. The face of the fertility god simply looked impressed.
Svetovid's four voices merged into a single, resonant groan that echoed like a distant rockslide. "She is faithful, I give her that," the combined voice admitted. "The charmer, the artist, the king, the scholar, even the good man from her own world... she dismissed them all as if they were gnats. Her heart did not even flutter. It is not mere infatuation or fear. I suppose... she really loves him."
This was a conclusion that carried weight. For the god of war, loyalty was the highest virtue. For the god of fertility, steadfastness was the bedrock of growth. Ina had displayed both, not through divine power, but through the simple, unassailable strength of her mortal will. It was a weapon they had not accounted for.
Perun, upon hearing this, merely grunted, a sound like a thunderclap swallowed by a mountain. Morana's icy silence grew even colder, a sign of her profound displeasure. But the direct assaults and the subtle temptations were, for the moment, exhausted.
It was then that Mokoš, the great earth mother, who had been a silent, weighing presence throughout, decided it was her turn. She did not speak her intentions to the council. She did not need to. As the weaver of fates and the deep, patient consciousness of the soil, her methods were not of confrontation or temptation, but of profound, inescapable truth. If Svetovid had tested the vessel of Ina's love, Mokoš would test the foundation of Juraj's.
Her approach was not a dream, but a waking vision, woven directly into the fabric of his perception as he walked with Ina through the recovering lavender field. One moment, he was holding Ina's hand, feeling the sun on his face, listening to her talk about the resilience of the new lavender shoots. The next, the world subtly shifted.
The sun remained, but its light became the thick, golden light of a late autumn afternoon. The lavender around him was not the vibrant purple of high summer, but a faded, silvery-grey, its harvest long past. The air was cool, and held the smoky scent of woodfires.
Ina was still beside him, her hand in his. But her hand was different. He looked down. The skin was thinner, mapped with a delicate tracery of blue veins and brown age spots. Her fingers, once so strong and nimble, were slightly gnarled with arthritis. He could feel the delicate bones beneath the papery skin.
His heart gave a violent, sickening lurch. He turned to look at her.
It was Ina, but it was Ina decades hence. Her face, still beautiful, was framed by hair that was more silver than light brown, pulled back in a simple bun. The charming freckles across her nose were lost in a web of fine lines, and deeper grooves framed her mouth and eyes—lines carved by a lifetime of laughter and worry. Her sea-blue eyes, once so brilliantly clear, were now faded, like sun-bleached sea glass, and clouded at the edges with the beginnings of cataracts. She leaned on a carved wooden cane with her other hand.
She smiled up at him, a smile that was still entirely hers, still filled with love, but tinged with a weary acceptance. "The light is beautiful today, isn't it, ljubavi moj?" she said, her voice softer, raspier, the cadence slower.
Juraj felt as though a fist of cold iron had closed around his heart and was squeezing. The air left his lungs. This was not the abstract concept of mortality; this was its brutal, intimate reality. This was the future Morana had threatened and that he had vowed to face with reverence. But facing the idea was nothing compared to seeing it, feeling it, holding its fragile hand.
The vision shifted again, seamlessly.
He was in her cottage, but it was night. A single lamp cast a pool of weak light. Ina was in her bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. She was shivering, though the room was warm. Her face was pale and waxy, damp with sweat. A deep, rattling cough shook her frail body, a sound that spoke of congested lungs and waning strength. The scent of lavender in the room was now mixed with the faint, sour smell of sickness and the cloying aroma of herbal remedies that had failed.
He was kneeling by the bed, just as the Shepherd had in Morana's vision. He was holding her hand, and he could feel the frantic, bird-like flutter of her pulse against his fingers. He poured a trickle of his life-giving energy into her, as he had done a thousand times before to ease a minor ache or warm her on a cold night. But this time, it was like pouring water into a cracked and bottomless vessel. Her body, her mortal frame, was simply… giving up. It could no longer hold the life he was offering.
"Ina," he whispered, his voice choked with a panic he had never known, not even when facing Perun's storm. "Stay with me. Please."
Her faded eyes struggled to focus on him. "Do not be sad, my love," she breathed, each word a labor. "It was… a beautiful spring…"
The pain was excruciating. It was a vast, desolate emptiness opening up inside him, a winter that would never end. He saw not just the loss of her, but the agonizing, slow-motion process of it. The fading, the weakening, the incremental theft of her vitality. He, the god of rebirth, was utterly powerless before this most natural of all endings. He could not rebirth her. Not the her that was Ina.
The vision dissolved.
He was back in the sun-drenched field, the lavender young and purple, the air warm. The real Ina, her hand smooth and strong in his, was looking at him with concern.
"Juraj? You suddenly went so pale. Are you alright?"
He stared at her, his soil-dark eyes wide, his breath coming in short gasps. The image of her aged, sickly form was superimposed over her vibrant, present self for a terrifying moment. The contrast was so violent it was nauseating.
He pulled her into his arms, holding her so tightly she let out a small squeak of surprise. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of sun and lavender and vibrant, healthy life, trying to burn it into his immortal soul, to overwrite the haunting specter of decay.
"Ina," he murmured, his voice raw. "My Ina."
She held him, sensing the seismic shift in him, the tremor of some profound and private agony. "I'm here," she soothed, her hands rubbing his back. "I'm right here."
He held her for a long time, letting the reality of her—warm, alive, now—anchor him. The vision from Mokoš had been a torture of the most exquisite kind. It had shown him the abyss, not to make him turn away, but to make him appreciate the precarious, beautiful edge upon which they stood.
When he finally pulled back, his eyes were clear, but filled with a new, fierce intensity. The pain had not weakened his resolve; it had forged it into something unbreakable. The vision of her end did not make him love her less; it made him cherish the present, the now, with a desperation that was almost religious.
"You are my spring," he said, his voice low and fervent. "Every moment with you is a spring. I will not waste a single one of them worrying about the winter."
He did not tell her about the vision. That was his burden to carry, his lesson to learn. But from that day forward, a subtle change settled over him. His love for her became even more present, more focused. He was less the powerful, sometimes distracted god, and more a man savoring the last, perfect day of a season he knew was finite.
He would watch her for hours as she worked, not just with desire, but with a deep, aching appreciation for the simple miracle of her movement, her breath, her laughter. He memorized the exact blue of her eyes, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand in his. He found joy in the most mundane moments—sharing a meal, watching the sunset, the simple comfort of silence shared.
Mokoš's test had been the most brutal of all. She had shown him the inevitable decay, the pain, the loss. And his heart, instead of breaking and retreating, had broken open. It had made a conscious, eternal choice: to love her because of her mortality, not in spite of it. To see the breathtaking beauty in the fleeting, precious flame of her life, and to tend it with a devotion that would make her one, mortal lifetime worth an eternity of his.
High on Biokovo, Mokoš felt his resolve solidify, a new, unshakable mountain rising from the plains of his passion. She did not smile, for the earth mother's expressions were vast and slow. But a sense of… acceptance… settled over the council. The tests were over. For now. The god and the mortal had passed them all. Their love was not a folly. It was a fact, as formidable and undeniable as the mountains themselves.