Long before his name was spoken in worship by satyrs, he was simply a child of nature, like many of his kind.
He was no god, nor did he have his symbolic pan flute. He was just a typical satyr, born to laugh among the trees and sleep on moss beds, content to play with the dryads and wood spirits. His world was small, just the forest and its quiet rhythm, the pulse of roots below, and the rustling of the leaves above.
And then there was Syrinx.
She spoke little, but in his eyes her presence filled the glade with a song of spring. She was one of the few dryads who questioned the gods aloud. She never accepted the absence of a nature god and believed that having one would help maintain the balance of the wilds that the gods were blind to, allowing the nature spirits a voice in this world. None listened to her, well, none except him.
And, in listening to her, he fell deeply in love.
He tried to chase her, but every time she rejected his advances, he kept at it, over and over, until soon his love had silently turned into an obsession with her. This led to Syrinx fleeing from him as he chased after her, intent on claiming her for himself. She ran, and he followed close behind, but when he reached her, he saw what she had become.
In an attempt to escape his pursuits, she had called for help from the river nymphs who, misunderstanding her plight, transformed her into reeds, tall and thin, swaying gently in the wind at the edge of the marsh.
She was gone.
He froze in shock, his mind coming to terms with what had happened and what he had done.
He collapsed before the stalks, clawing the mud with trembling fingers. His breath came in sobs. He did not scream for shame had taken his voice, the pain of causing the one he loved to turn into this was too great.
Night fell. Then another. He remained there on the banks of the marsh for many nights. Hunger gnawed. Thirst cracked his lips. But he stayed by the reeds, as though the marsh itself were a tombstone; he couldn't bring himself to accept it. Then, at his lowest, when even guilt dulled into numbness, he heard the wind pass through the reeds; a sound like her voice, thin and haunting, came.
He broke a handful of them. Gently, reverently. He shaped them with his mud-caked hands, binding them together with river-thread and root fiber. When it was done, he raised the pan flute to his lips and played.
It was her voice. It was his grief given form.
He played beside her for many more nights, letting the melody be carried over the winds. And the winds carried them far.
The melody was carried upward, beyond the trees and toward the stars, toward the spaces between the stars. And something heard it.
It was not a god. It had never been born and would never die. It was the first thought formed in the breath between creation and silence. Chaos's opposite and equal. The weight behind the veil. A silent observer.
And it listened.
The satyr's song tugged at its gaze, not for the sound, but for the possibility beneath it. The admission. The guilt. The break in a soul that made room for something more. A mind open not to power, but to possibility.
It did not speak. It could not, for like its sibling, it had no form. But the reed-stirred wind changed. Grey mist surged around the grieving satyr, bringing him to another place. Here, there was mist all around, and before him a barrier, a veil that he felt hid something he should never witness. The veil between reality and that beyond it shimmered like a mirage. Something passed through him, not a voice, but a feeling. An offer.
He accepted.
Not for himself. For her.
With the power this place offered, he could hope to redeem himself, fulfill Syrinx's dreams of protecting the wilds and representing the nature spirits on the divine stage, allow them to have a voice in this world; as for why he couldn't change Syrinx back, her spirit had already rejoined nature, it was too late for his love, but not too late for him to do the right thing.
The mist vanished, and he was back where he originally was, pan flute in hand.
He rose, and he felt the change. His horns grew, twisting and growing like tree roots; the forest felt closer than ever to him. He knew that with a mere thought, it would obey his whims. The breeze clung to him, offering its support to carry his voice to all.
He was no longer mortal.
But he was never truly divine.
His godhood was not complete, for while he gained the power of a god, he never gained immortality. That is what the offer entailed. It was a veil-thin existence, a borrowed state, sustained only by the power of the one who turned him and thus could be taken at any time he failed to complete his side of the deal. He remained, immortal in moments and forgotten in the next, a trick, a lie hidden in the roots of reality by the being who watched through the mirror of the world.
He wandered. He helped. He planted ideas like seeds, knowing that while some would die, a few would bloom.
He guided a scholar toward the crossroads to delay their demise. He helped a god find love. He whispered an odd dream to a young satyr, creating many coincidences and insignificant events that were overlooked by the gods but would one day change the world.
And then he waited.
Watched.
Played.
Always near the edges of the veil.
Waiting for the one it would finally choose, so he may finally rejoin nature and hopefully reunite with Syrinx.