God of Eyes

I honestly expected that Felli would want to speak to me in the morning, but I didn't see her. Talking with the others showed that she had been restless overnight, and left early.

I could only have faith in her. I honestly had no idea what she had seen--not just how she interpreted what she was shown, but there had to be things that I showed her that I didn't even recognize as being important. I felt... good? Good. I felt like she was safe, motivated. Doing something.

So I went to work, such as it was. The ship had left last evening, and I thought I spied another on the horizon, but I had to wait until it got closer before I dared go fetch Mel. And approach it did; by mid-morning, Mel and I stood at the docks and I, finally, for once in my life, got to actually do my job.

Or, you know, watch Mel as she did it, a little more closely than Manne ever let me get.

A few dockworkers appeared as if from nowhere to help the ship dock; I had seen them before, but still wasn't sure exactly how to run them down. Apparently they had other jobs, and just showed up to catch the ropes and haul the ship in for a few coppers each. For another few, they would haul cargo, if the captain was interested.

Mel confronted the captain before he was even quite off the ship. She apologized for lacking a proper portmaster, and asked a series of fairly straightforward questions: what cargo were they bringing in, what cargo were they taking out, what supplies did they need, did they plan on taking or leaving crew, how long would they stay. She demanded a cargo manifest, which was supplied, and had me write up a trading manifest, which detailed who was to receive what goods for what value, and what was being bought from what supplier for what value. I calculated out the tax (to the copper, she said; it took me a spare sheet of paper, but only a moment of writing) and added it to the bill, then made a second copy, giving one to the captain. The captain chafed at the mayor's insistence on getting every last copper, but Mel didn't back down, and he paid.

She was a hardass, and I loved it.

After the tax was collected and passed to Mel, I supervised the on-loading and off-loading of goods, but it was consistent with the manifest. After that, the crew got shore leave, and I retreated to my bench outside the office to watch the world go by.

By mid-afternoon, I did finally catch sight of Felli; she was walking through town, leading a small flock of children, all old enough to walk independently but still clearly kids--I would say between eight and fifteen, some clearly poorer than others. The attention of the kids wandered, but Felli was constantly talking, I couldn't quite tell about what, and she managed to snag their attention time and time again, with one thing or another.

In time, she passed close enough that I could hear her, if only bits and pieces of the conversation that grew longer as she came closer.

"...town, but traders always ... distant places, different people ... the Clans of Belma say to offer sanctuary to all, but humans are less welcome ... mostly Halfbreeds, but in all, a very fair place. The war that goes on in the East always threatens our lives, but the Goddess of Blades has always chosen to lead her people. Unlike many, She will always support those who defend their home. Hello!" Felli, now sporting a smile for the first time since I'd met her, waved at me, although she could only raise her hand chest-high, and I waved back. She spun around, taking stock of the kids (and, I thought, discretely counting them), and continued on past as her rambling lecture continued. "There are other paths; soldiers, yes, but craftsmen are always needed in some quantity. You're not likely to find a job farming unless you grew up doing it, but there are always a few, where the ones who were intended to take over farm got sick and died, or ..."

I leaned back against the wooden building that had been Manne's office, and stopped trying to listen. Felli... had been obsessed with the idea that she was lost. Whatever she had seen, whatever I'd shown her, she had found other people who were looking for a path forward: the children of Olesport. Perhaps helping them find a way would help her find herself? I smiled to myself. Then, maybe she already had found herself. Or, at least, she had found a place to start.

It made me feel a lot better, but at the same time, I wondered what my own path forward was supposed to be. I'd had a brief moment to wonder if Felli would become a priestess... but no, and I probably didn't want that. If I just wanted to give advice to people here, in this town, that was one thing, but in the end, wouldn't that be a very small life? Didn't I want more than that? But when I thought of giving a lot of people advice, like I had given Felli advice last night... I had desired, more than anything, to hear Felli say words of appreciation. Not to the faceless god I knew I appeared to her as, but to me. To be thanked for finding her, saving her. I wanted...

To be special, I suppose.

I felt a strange feeling, and backed into Manne's office so that the storm god's shadow could appear from behind me. To my surprise, he was joined... by a faceless shadow, one I had seen before, in a dream.

The god from my world.

"A god should lead," mocked that shadow. "It should all be about the mortals affected by you. You should help them, lead them, selflessly. That's what a god SHOULD be."

"I did," I said defensively, then frowned. I hadn't realized it, but... I really was upset, because Felli had immediately turned her life around, not in a way I could have predicted, and somehow...

"You led? Really?" The one shadow turned to the other, but the Storm God's shadow just shook his head sadly. "Where did you lead her?"

"I showed her what she needed to see. It may not have been what I expected, what I wanted, but I showed her something she could do, and she..."

"She looks happy? Yes, no?" The shadow squinted at me. "Either way, you aren't happy, because you expected this would all be about you. You thought you could lean back and be The God that Saved Everyone. Where's the parade? The fanfare?"

"Enough, already." That wasn't like me. And... I didn't think this shadow was like the god... that the church had described, at least. But then, this shadow had never claimed to be that god... and I was fairly sure he wasn't. Perhaps a devil? How was I to know? "Why did you come here?"

"Because you want to give up." The Storm God's shadow raised and lowered his cane, and this time, I did hear a click from it. Strange, since it didn't last time he was a shadow. "You achieved one thing, and as soon as you realized that it wasn't going to make you happy, you want to stop. I wonder, is that just your nature?"

"Stop..." I hesitated. Was that like me? Was I that empty?

"Enough." A third shadow--this one far more familiar, raised out of mine, and Alanna's voice rang out. "Father... this habit of yours is awful. And you..."

"Oh my, has the young lady fallen in love again?" I thought the Earth God's shadow might have had a forked tongue in profile for a moment, but that might have been spite on my part.

"Guidance," she said simply, and there was a strange force behind the word. "He is here, with me, because he needs it. He complained to you," she gestured accusingly at the Earth's shadow, "because he needed it and didn't get it. In the end, he sought out that woman and tried to help her, and he succeeded. How often have you done that? Given guidance to someone out of pity, out of love?"

Suddenly, the four of us were no longer shadows on the floor of the portmaster's office. We were in a white space--a shared Little Gods' Room, if you will, and Alanna was gesturing accusingly at the faceless Earth God. "Yes," she said angrily, "I fell in love with a man. I offered him guidance, support, and he... betrayed me. I should have seen it, should have understood. And you," she turned to the Storm God, "you mocked me for it. You mock me still. You insist that gods should not help freely, out of love and concern. That we should stand above."

"How has that worked out for you?" Xenma spoke quietly as he looked at his daughter. "Or me? I had to clean up your mess, you know."

"MY mess?" Alanna--Xerana--snarled at her father. "The mortals make their own mistakes. I did make a mistake, I have long since admitted it, but he made his own. Each mortal makes their own mistakes, and each makes different ones..."

"Are you the expert in mortals now?" The Earth God's sneer was black-hearted. "Alanna, goddess of nothing, who cowers in her brick house pretending to be mortal, because she loves them so. But how many prayers do you answer? How much work do you do? You want to say you know them better than your father, but you lie."

Alanna's retort was sharp, and her father's reply to her was cold, and the Earth God's snippy comments were barbed, but I couldn't help feeling a pain in my head, a pain that had me retreating to my own Little Gods' Room. There, on the cliff, was the giant Me, now curled up in a fetal position, trying not to look at anything.

What did he see? A war between the gods? His own death? I took a deep breath. I had said as much to Felli: I didn't want to look away from these things. But there was a voice inside of me, and he sat atop the cliff, and he said, "Yes, I do."

So to spite that voice, I opened my eyes and saw.

The horizon was the same. The ...future, was the same. Even if a war raged in the skies, even if that war tore scars into the earth, life would go on. My eyes saw the horizon, and I knew, because I know how large planets are: if all of the world that I could see were reduced to ash, if it all sank into the ocean, the horizon would not change. It took powers beyond even gods to reshape the world. I could hide and be selfish, or kill myself trying to be a hero, and either one would leave the world in a similar state.

This was why the gods did nothing: they were too human. It hurt to know that the greatest heights you could climb were too low, the greatest works you could produce would someday be forgotten. Even gods, even immortals, someday are passed by. The giant version of me just nodded, as if to say, "I get it." Or maybe, "So you get it." In a sense, both were the same, anyway. He also seemed just a bit less afraid. Facing the truth... sharing it, even just with a metaphorical second version of yourself, helps.

I wanted to hide and do nothing. So, perhaps out of spite, I did the opposite.

"You have to help me," I told the giant. "I know we have nothing left, but this is all that there is."

"Perspective," he replied, and I fell back into the White Space.

The three gods that were arguing stopped as a tide of darkness poured out of my soul, shaping the world shared by four gods without their consent--darkness lit only by an uncountable number of tiny white lights. I knew that what was coming might consume the Key that permitted my godhood... because I had no flame at all, but I needed to spend some to suppress at least the two of them.

"Perspective," I repeated, this time out loud, and beneath our feet, a small blue marble appeared. My eyes fell on the Earth God, and I put intense disapproval into my voice. "You should already understand this. Yet here you are, acting like a child. Fine."

The other gods could only look at the tiny globe that was their world, surrounded by stars, and Feel the truth that I Showed them. And what they Felt was that the tiny marble, the tiny speck of nothing, weighed more than a trillion of their souls put together, gods or otherwise. And in the distance, this world's sun was so heavy that it was all any of us could do not to slip and fall into it... even if it was only illusion. And that weight, the weight of the sun, was all destruction, with no kindness nor even a scrap of civility.

"You want to argue meaning and purpose? Fine. All that lives, dies. That includes people, gods, civilizations, ...worlds. This world will someday meet its end, and all that is good and green will wither and be ash." I moved forward until I was between the three of them, turning to face each in turn, and my eyes were as heavy as the sun itself, burning with the same eternal, unending destruction. "Squabble. Argue. Fight. Things you believe last forever will not. Not only gods and humans die, but all that you know, for you are all too small to survive beyond this tiny, insignificant jewel of a world. If you were to leave, you--every last one of you--would be too weak to find your way home, too weak to create a new home in the cosmos."

"But mortals could."

I didn't understand what I was looking at, but the view zoomed in to a tiny speck of metal in orbit. I only now really processed the fact that the planet had no moon; I had seen the night sky, and the single white rocky ring that crossed the sky, but never had I seen a moon. I supposed that the ring--my feelings told me it was known as the Arch--had once been a moon... but it no longer was anything. This tiny speck of metal was stuck amidst the Arch, and within it, ...was that woman a robot?  No, she was flesh and bone.  Why did she feel like a robot?  I didn't really understand, but knew that I had to continue my speech or I would lose them. As I did, the view reset, as though the point had been made... somehow.

"Terra has seen it: the universe is all unending flame and frozen ash, with nothing betwixt. Only rarely, so rarely that you could go a million lifetimes and never find another, do we find places suitable to be a home. You can take home with you, take people, take all that you know and all that you have ever been tithed, but even then, you may not find another world worth calling home, even if you travelled a million years. Even if you could warp to each star in the sky, and search its children for a new home, you might never find one."

"Argue. Degrade. Cower. Scorn." My voice contained the flames of the sun, and each word was a whip-crack. "All who live, die. But not all who die, fall. Some deaths are not meaningless. Some deaths are not empty. Some deaths are not sad. Not all who die, fall; but not all who live, rise." I pointed at the storm god, and filled the gesture with the frozen red dust of Mars, dust that has never known warmth, water, life, nor even the gentle caress of a spring breeze. "If you will never rise, then your death can only be the End. You will fall, shameful, lost."

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and although I didn't understand it, Felli was there. She was blind and deaf; she knew nothing of what was going on. But she Meant what I had said to her: "If you only had eyes to see."

"You mock me--mock us--for loving humanity" I said, feeling Felli drain away that hate and disgust I had for the other gods. "For loving the fact that the world exists. For loving existence, life. That is because you take it for granted." I looked to the Earth God. "You are spoiled creatures, given everything, free to take and give nothing back. But life is not guaranteed, it is not fair. So many people are happy to live their life and get to the end of it not having fallen. They are happy if their children don't have it worse, if their friends and neighbors and lost loves don't have it worse."

"Laugh, if you enjoy it, at people who might yet fall." I snarled. "Laugh at me, because I might yet fall. But I look upon you and all I see are people who do not have the Eyes to see the world as it is. That is shameful, and it is empty. Laugh. But I see you as children, as empty shadows that know nothing." And with a push, I felt the other gods--even Alanna--were sand sculptures knocked back by a stiff wind, and they fell over into a formless pile.

Then I was back in Manne's office, and I realized the ground was shaking, and the building swayed. I rushed outside to find that many people had done the same. A light poured out from Alanna's temple, but it was not a warm and guiding light. It was as though Lucile were inside, and her body poured out light like the sun, casting rays so bright that they could blind you from half a town away.

I wanted to run to her and make sure she was okay--I was still pretty sure the whole thing with the gods being sand was illusion and not reality--but my chest suddenly ached with a pressure that became pain, then sharp pain, then unbearably sharp pain. I thought that had to be the end--the destruction of my Key, the end of my life as a God.

But the mountain-Me was behind me, unseen to all, shaking his head no. And he smiled, and in his hand was a towering inferno of golden flame--a larger flame, I realized, than I had any way to contain, even if my Key was fully repaired.

And I passed into unconsciousness, because I needed every last scrap of power to keep that tide of gold flame--that worship, if that's what you call it, from the other gods--from destroying me from the inside out.