There were many things Hastur hated.
Noise. Order. Weakness. Repetition.
The blindness of lesser beings to the structure of reality.
The arrogance of gods who believed themselves eternal.
The arrogance of mortals who believed themselves important.
How can these beings not see how meaningless everything is?, how meaningless they are.
If you're only a dream, what's the meaning of existing.
But one of the things he hated most was what was happening now.
He could reveal the lies of gods. He could show the truth in the lies of demons. He could lie to entire civilizations and let them worship the lie for centuries.
He could shape myths, twist memories, rewrite histories, and plant false realities inside entire worlds.
But in front of the human called Ellios—
He didn't want to.
The thought came naturally: Invent a story. Simplify it. Make it human. Make it safe to believe.
A businessman father.
A distant mother.
A broken home.
A tragic but normal past.
He could have created a perfect narrative in less than a second.
But something inside him refused.
It wasn't fear.
It wasn't morality.
It wasn't guilt.
It was something far more alien to him—something that felt like resistance from within his own being. As if some deeper layer of himself rejected the idea of lying to this human at this time.
Not because Ellios was important to the universe.
Not because Ellios was powerful.
Not because Ellios mattered cosmically.
But because he wanted him to know never to believe in this family of his. Besides, sometimes the truth is the best lie.
So at last he spoke his version of family. Although subtly.
"My family is… humanly strange," Hastur said slowly.
Ellios tilted his head slightly. "How strange?"
Hastur looked at him. Really looked at him. At his human face. His human eyes. His human understanding.
"As strange as not even understanding the concept of family," Hastur replied.
Ellios blinked.
"That doesn't make sense," he said gently. "Do you mean like… an orphanage family? Or—"
"No," Hastur interrupted. "We are more than just a family."
Ellios frowned slightly. "More than a family?"
"It's hard to find words for it," Hastur said.
And that part was true.
How do you explain a structure older than universes to a human mind that struggles to grasp centuries?
Ellios shifted closer to him on the couch, curiosity replacing fear.
"Then talk about them individually," he suggested. "Start with your parents. Your father. Your mother."
Hastur went still.
For a fraction of a second, his mind remembered what exist—through dimensions, through time, through layers of existence that no human brain could survive perceiving.
And there—
Yog-Sothoth.
The All-in-One.
The Gate and the Key.
The Totality.
The omnipresent paradox of existence itself.
The being that exists at every point in space-time simultaneously.
Father.
Hastur spoke carefully. Words sounding strange to him expressing this.
"Our father," he said, "is everywhere. For everyone. In all of space and time."
Ellios listened intently.
"But nowhere," Hastur continued, "for us. His children."
Ellios processed that in a very human way.
"Oh…"
He nodded slowly.
"So he's… emotionally absent?"
Hastur didn't correct him.
Ellios's mind immediately created a human image: a man devoted to the world, to work, to helping others—too busy saving everyone else to care about his own family.
He thought of his secretary's father. A firefighter. Always running toward danger. Always saving strangers. In return he was rarely home. Forgot his family needed him.
"He helps everyone," Ellios said quietly, "but not his own family."
Hastur said nothing.
Then Ellios asked softly, "And your mother?"
Hastur remembered Shub-Niggurath.
The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.
The endless womb.
The devourer.
The birther of abominations.
The fertile chaos that consumes even its own offspring.
"Our mother," Hastur said evenly, "is a danger even to her newborn children."
Ellios stiffened.
"A danger?"
"She sleeps with many things," Hastur continued. "She births more than rats."
Ellios's expression changed.
Sadness.
Pity.
Understanding—human understanding.
He thought of a broken woman. A neglected wife. A mother abandoned by her husband, searching for love, validation, comfort in countless arms of other mens thus forgetting her own children on her grief. A woman overwhelmed by her children and her self, unable to care for any of them properly watching her family break apart.
"Oh…" Ellios whispered. "So she… lost herself."
Hastur did not correct him.
Ellios felt a quiet ache in his chest for Hastur.
He didn't want to ask too much.
He didn't want to hurt him.
So he changed the question gently.
"How many siblings do you have?" Ellios asked.
Hastur paused.
"I never counted."
Ellios laughed softly, thinking it was a joke.
"You don't know?"
"I don't count them," Hastur said.
Ellios tilted his head. "Then how many do you talk with?"
"We don't enterfer with each other's affairs. Beside we don't like each other," Hastur replied.
Inside his mind, images flickered:
Cosmic wars.
Eldritch betrayals.
Devourings.
Sealing.
Imprisonment.
Madness.
Endless conflict.
And deeper still—
It's better that they sleep.
Better that they remain sealed.
Better that the stars are not right.
Ellios nodded slowly.
"I get that," he said quietly. "Not all families are meant to be close."
Hastur looked at him.
The human interpretation of his cosmic truth was almost… poetic.
Wrong.
But poetic.
They sat in silence for a moment.
Ellios leaned slightly against him, warmth against Hastur's side. The simple physical contact grounded something vast and ancient inside him in a way that made no logical sense.
For the first time in his existence, Hastur felt something unfamiliar:
Something quieter.
Something closer to… connection.
Ellios spoke softly.
"Thank you for telling me."
Hastur didn't answer immediately.
When he finally did, his voice was low.
"You are the first person I have ever told that to."
Ellios looked up at him in surprise.
"Really?"
"Yes."
Ellios smiled.
"That means something."
It shouldn't have.
But it did.