God of Eyes

My dreams that night were odd. I had the suspicion that my dreams the night before were odd too, but I was too tired to get to them. But this night, this night I caught a glimpse of it for the first time.

"It" was a place. It was strangely solid for a dream, and I was strangely lucid, but it also felt ethereal, like if I tried hard enough, I could put my hand through a stone wall without effort. I "awoke" into the dream laying on my real-world, current bed, a poorly stuffed straw mattress, but that mattress was in my hospital room from the old world, and the view out the window showed the beach at Olesport, wrecked ship and all. The sun was right on the horizon, as though just at dawn or dusk, but the sun didn't rise or set where it was in the dream--not this time of year at the very least. If anything, the position of the sun seemed dramatic, purposeful, like an artist had taken liberties in order to throw the wrecked ship into relief.

It felt like there ought to be people, but there was nobody. Looking out the window showed something that looked like Olesport, but with less than a tenth of the buildings that should have been there were. No lights were on, nobody was out and moving, and even the ocean water was still as glass, more still than I had ever seen it, or likely ever would. The hospital room itself was empty, and it wasn't an individual room; I had been the only patient when the random pastor had shown up to talk to me, but there were three other beds that occasionally had people in them during my stay. Since I was there for the long term, I had been moved to the window as soon as it had come free.

I soon discovered that the door, when it opened, left me outside of a squat building where Alanna's temple should have been. It was ugly stone, no bigger or prettier than the tiny stone-block room basement that I slept in. It was weird, in its own way. I knew looking at it that the tiny stone box "was" a temple, MY temple, but... the appearance had no meaning, not the one within, and not the one without. It was a temple, but it wasn't ready. That should have been okay, because I wasn't really a god, and I had no followers.

But no sooner did I think that, when I felt something behind me and spun around.

The dead woman stood there, holding her dead child in her hands. But this was no nightmare; the child was whole, and they were both looking at me, two sets of eyes set in two shadows that were directly between me and the setting (rising?) sun. I knew that they came looking for some kind of guidance... but all I felt was relief. I knew nothing about how to direct them, what afterlife meant in this world, nor anything of the sort.

But they had found each other. They were together.

I didn't have to SAY that; just thinking it seemed to have an effect. The two looked at each other, as though surprised to find that it was true. They were both there. The daughter didn't fight or scorn the mother. The mother wasn't burdened with guilt, wasn't traumatized or clinging to bones. They looked, frankly, like they might have looked if the mother had decided to carry her daughter on the way to the market. If they had been living, I suspect that they would have immediately started talking, exchanging some kind of pleasantries or confirming by accident and habit that they still loved each other.

But the dead didn't have that kind of enthusiasm or energy. They looked at each other, and both smiled. Then, they looked back at me, and the smile changed. Then, they vanished, leaving behind only two silvered flames.

When they left, I felt something else change, something that had only been there because they had come looking. But with them gone, I lost hold of it, and the whole dream slipped into shadows. I awoke soon after that, still in the middle of the night, rested and completely confused by the experience.

So I struck up a light and pulled out some books. I knew that the dream had to be a godly "thing", and I wanted to know more--but now was not the time to wake Alanna, and I hadn't seen any sign of the storm god since the night of the incident. The books I had on hand weren't written for gods, but some were written about them. Given that Alanna had insisted I read most of them eventually, I knew some truth had to be hidden there.

Close to dawn, I found a promising passage in an old tome about old gods:

"Xerana, the Goddess Herald who had descended (...) came to me in a dream, or I came to Her, I know not which. For I stood before a temple I had never seen, and it was Hers, and She was there. She spoke as though this place, this dream, was her home, and she swore my life should not be safe if I defiled it (...) and as She spoke to me, I felt I knew Her, and knew this place, but She said this place was Her, that as a Goddess, She may reveal Her Sacred Place to those who follow Her, if She deem them worthy (...) and when She opened the door to the temple, all I saw was Light, and I knew nothing more, for I had glimpsed the Truth of a Goddess, and awake or asleep, it was beyond me.

But She saw fit to speak to me again, on what should have been my dying day. And I knew that, by Her soul, I should be healed. She bade me in my own tongue to live (...) and when I awoke, Her priestess gave me the same bidding (...) I see now that the Xerana, the Goddess (...) saved my life so that I should meet and love Her priestess, and there can be no greater blessing (...) Never again did I meet that Goddess in Her home, but the wife she bade me to take shall be my fondest duty so long as I live (...)"

Setting aside that the writer had clearly met and married a goddess, the description of the dream as a meeting place for man and goddess was immediately familiar. It didn't answer any questions I had, but it did confirm that it really was a thing. Further passages in the book suggested other things:

"(...) and for my prayers, dark though my days had been, I was brought in my dreams at last to a place where I was to be heard (...) Xenma, God of Storms sat upon a granite throne built for kings, and at his feet I was but an ant, not only in strength but size (...) with a wave of His hand, night was day and storms cleared, and in that place it was not minutes or hours but mere moments (...) and when He decided I was worthy, gone was His throne and gone His giant form (...) He became to me a man, wizened and gray but jolly and stern (...) I know it to be a place of miracles, although my wife, the priestess, says it is a place of meetings and guidance (...) I have spoken to other priests in confidence, and they know of the place, but understand it only poorly; I wonder if my Goddess Xerana has given to my wife some wisdom, that she be Her Herald in the mortal world (...) once more I was taken in my sleep to the realm of the Gods, this time to answer for my sins, but Xerana, in Her cruel judgement, appeared to me in the guise of my own wife, and I could only weep, for Her words were wisdom itself (...) I cannot face my wife now, for in my heart there is now another woman, and although it is heresy to speak of it, it is She (...)"

I couldn't keep the wry smile off my face as I finished the man's account, wondering if Xerana had ever confessed the disguise... but she probably couldn't, especially not to the sort of man who would write this book. Or perhaps she had, and made sure to tear those pages out of any copy of the book that he wrote. In either case, the man's account of meeting with Xenma--could it be the same storm god? Could there be more than one? How did being god "of" something work, anyway?--suggested that changing that god's dreamworld was probably child's play. I kind of doubted that his home was a random giant stone throne, especially given that he could just up and change his size to that of a normal man on a whim. But then, the Storm God... err, the one I knew, he had shown up as a giant and smashed the ship, but had been the size of a normal human when I next met him in Alanna's office.

Still, it had to be a special place, one that only existed to connect a god and their worshippers. If it wasn't a real literal, physical place--and it didn't seem to be--it only made sense that the form of the place would change on the whim of the god in control of it. Mine was now a mess, because I was just getting started... but soon, I suspected, there would be more godly things to do in that place. Maybe it would only help me answer prayers and send souls to the afterlife, but there had to be more to it than that, right?

As I heard Nency ringing the bell to announce it was dawn (as she did on the days they didn't have a liturgy at dawn; apparently that was only a twice-weekly thing) I set the book down. I wasn't tired, but neither was I eager to go to work. I had learned things about this... what to call it? Gods-dream? Meeting ground? Little gods' room? But all I could do for now was wait. I still wasn't anything like a god, and I couldn't practice being one in the shadow of Alanna's temple, anyway.

Still, it wasn't a bad job, I knew, and it wasn't likely to be a bad day. Still, as so often happened on Earth, I just wished I didn't have to go. Somehow, I managed to convince myself it wouldn't be that bad, and started my day.

Boy, was I wrong.