Written for and by request of Heather Mirassou whose poetry you will find here

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I. Departure from the Red God

It leaves the rust-bright altar bare,
an eye unstained yet marked by war;
it rises through the iron air,
a witness from the crimson shore.

It climbs beyond the dust-lit rim,
a spark released from ancient flame;
and Mars grows faint, its edges dim,
still watching though it knows no name.

The i looks back, a single bead
that holds the planet’s wounded glow;
its iris keeps each buried bleed
that stains the plains it witnessed low.

But forward through the frozen sweep,
between the gods in silent rows,
it moves where voids grow wide and deep
a pilgrim where no story goes.

II. The Corridor Between the Gods

The i drifts on through voiceless dark,
its pupil fixed on far-off fire;
the war-smoke fades from every mark,
but memory hums like buried wire.

It threads the halls no god has claimed,
the gulf where exiled legends sleep;
its sight holds names no star has named,
its iris tuned to distance deep.

Three glints appear: past, present, goal
triadic sparks along its run;
they pulse like wards upon its soul,
a trinity of void and sun.

III. Entry into the Realm of the Prime God

The Jovian crown begins to rise,
a swelling throne of storm and glare;
the i tilts upward, widened eyes,
to meet the king who rules the air.

A thousand tempests split the night,
their thunder rolling like decree;
the pilgrim feels the pulling might
a summons from divinity.

The cloudmass roars its fractured hymn,
its colours twist in molten bands;
the i draws in each shifting limb
of godhood shaped by titan hands.

IV. The Initiation / Rebirth Through Storm

First lightning strikes: a white command
that carves a rune across its frame;
the i endures, though iron-scorched,
and burns anew beneath that flame.

A second bolt: magnetic crown,
it crowns the lens with polar fire;
the i turns slowly, gaze cast down,
then rises, fuelled by strange desire.

A third descends: the breaking spark,
the rite that severs what it was;
reborn within the Jovian dark,
its sight aligned with sovereign laws.

Now Atlas bears the storm’s decree
no longer war’s, but majesty.

V. The Final Vision

The storms fall back. A hush unfolds,
a chamber in the planet’s crown;
the i drifts through the amber folds
as if the king himself knelt down.

Its sight grows tall as orbit’s span,
its pupil deep as sculpted night;
it sees the map beneath the plan,
the threads that weave the gods in light.

It reads the tides of ancient law,
the pulse that binds the spheres in place;
it sees what mortal eyes once saw
in myths that tried to mirror grace.

Then out beyond the prime god’s throne,
a further dark begins to wake;
the i resolves,now forged, now grown
to chart the roads no fates could make.

And Atlas turns, with sovereign sight,
and carries onward through the night.