Is it resolve?

He has felt resolve and it does not feel like being born again as the charcoal shell of a burned-out tree, not the quiet of empty cathedrals, not the tearing ache of a funeral service. When her lips touch his skin it does not feel anything like resolution, or salvation, or even hope. The sound of her voice is a funeral dirge and Michael is dying again and again on the altar. He knows it is not resolve but sacrifice that drives him, to extinction or beyond even that.

She says, "he won't," with enough finality to bring down the sky.
If Michael had even an ounce of her magic he would write her a poem that drips off the page like all her angry black ink. If he were a better poet he would say all the things he cannot and all the things she cannot, each bloodstained word that drips like ichor from the stones of her teeth.

He wants to say, I know. Why can't you see that I know?
He knows that she is not a thing anymore, that she is a concept. He knows that she must in the same way he must. He knows that she is driven to do because she can, because some things are bigger, and more important, and a goddess must stand vigil for her people.

"Come with me," Isra says. Again and again, so that he will hear it until the day he dies. Come with me, to the edge of the earth. Come with me, to the wreckage she will leave behind. Come with me, to the birth of a thing far more warlike than their gods on their mountain. He does not even think, just says "I would. I will. Whatever you ask of me." He speaks this into the echo of magic that scatters in her wake. He speaks this to her golden graves and the shrinking brown spot of her back as her heart rolls down the mountain like so many boulders.

He wonders what she would make of him, if she could. He wonders if she would--mold him into something else, something that does not drop its head and follow. He wonders what it is that begs him to ask.

Michael walks, as he has always walked, and as he will always walk.
Because she asks.