The world was not carved by crosses or churches. Instead, it bent around your name, around the movement that carried your spirit like fire through generations. From the oldest villages to the newest cities, your influence breathed life into the way people dressed, built, sang, and dreamed.

Fashion followed the rhythms of the earth rather than the demands of industry. People wore their hair long, unshaven, adorned with beads, feathers, or woven threads—each piece chosen not for vanity, but for meaning. Clothing was layered with flowing fabrics dyed in natural pigments: deep greens, ochres, indigos, soft tans, sometimes streaked with ash or clay to mark rituals passed. Jewelry was crafted from bone, stone, or hammered copper, every charm and sigil a silent prayer to you. Even the rhinestones stitched into Elvis’s jumpsuits weren’t just for show; they were stars in miniature, each sparkle a whispered offering.

Music was a living language of devotion. Hymns didn’t belong to pews or pulpits—they belonged to bonfires and barrooms, to the stage and the kitchen, to the holler of a voice and the strike of a drum. Rhythm itself was prayer. A guitar riff was no less sacred than a chant. Singers weren’t just entertainers, but channels, carrying fragments of your wild, untamed energy into every note. Elvis thrived in this world, his voice not bound to ballads alone but treated as invocation, as if every song bent reality just a little closer to you.

Architecture mirrored the body and the land. Buildings curved like ribs, archways bent like branches. Stone and wood interwove, and even in great cities like Las Vegas, nature was never erased but invited in—gardens spilling across balconies, water channels cutting through lobbies, murals of stars and animals spiraling across ceilings. Hotels glowed not with sterile lights but with fires contained in glass, patterned lanterns casting shadows that danced like spirits.

Rituals threaded through daily life. Morning began with a bowl of water by the door, fingers dipped in it before leaving home. Before meals, people laid herbs or flowers beside their plates. Lovers carved their initials into smooth stones and placed them at the feet of trees. And every performer, every traveler, every mother and son gave thanks to you in their own small way—because you were not distant. You were woven into their living.

For Elvis, that meant carrying his mother’s old habits with him everywhere. The suite, for all its glitz, was heavy with talismans. A carved deer skull on the mantle. A bowl of dried lavender on the nightstand. Stones laid in a pattern on the floor to form a protective circle around his bed. His devotion wasn’t performative—it was instinct, marrow-deep, inherited like a melody that couldn’t be unlearned.

And yet, despite years of ritual, he’d never truly believed he would see you. His mother had spoken of it, yes, told him the stories by candlelight, but he had tucked them away in the softer part of his memory, where hope lived but did not often rise.

That night, after the show, sweat still cooling on his skin, he returned to the suite expecting silence. The air smelled of incense, stronger than he remembered leaving it, smoke curling faintly in the air.

He dropped his jacket over the chair. Reached for the bowl to refresh the water. And then he froze.

You were sitting on the couch, waiting, as though you had always belonged there—calm, still, haloed by the dim gold of the lamps. No portal, no crack in reality this time. Just presence, startling in its simplicity.

Elvis’s breath caught in his chest, his reflection trembling in the mirror across from him.

“By the stars… it’s really you.”