you can kinda tell when a writer has spent a lot of time around kids bc they avoid most of the pitfalls that come with writing children. namely, not giving them a too cutesy or twee voice but making them sound more like extremely weird little adults. kids playing pretend will almost never cutely slot into some romantic scenario for the adults' benefit bc the adults are usually too busy cleaning up or wondering what the fuck is wrong with their child. kids also have surprisingly stringent hangups ranging from very petty grievances to downright chauvinist gender roles, more often than not the result of a tragic education but sometimes far surpassing what they were taught in intensity. what im saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with treating fictional kids as stock characters but it's always quite nice to see when they aren't
It's extremely common for very young children to suddenly say something extremely cogent and articulate, that's jarringly inconsistent with their normal speech. This is usually something that they heard an adult say recently. A kid will spend ten minutes telling you a story about how they fought a wolf yesterday using simple sentences of fifty cent words, then nibble a snack, wrinkle their nose and say something like "I feel like Mum was overenthusiastic with the salt today, and not for the first time either" before going back to their clumsy story. (They do understand what they're saying when they do this. Kids' communication is usually held back by their vocabulary and pronunciation, not their understanding.)
Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.
By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.
Teens will behave like adults who have little power (a teen is often at the mercy of their parents and the state and rarely taken seriously, which is extremely frustrating) and who are high stress and mid-crisis, because they're going through a transitory period where their bodies and moods are changing and are having to constantly learn and adjust; a fourteen year old in a stable situation will act pretty much like a thirty year old with an oppressive boss who's just left a tumultuous relationship.
#oh is *that* why i feel 14 again after my fiance broke things off with me and i had to move halfway across the continent back in with my ma?
Yeah that's just what humans feel and act like when they're unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing. Teenagers are pretty much constantly unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing, and react reasonably to those circumstances.
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Bad writing means you took the time to write something, you, a real human being. It means you created something! And you have the awareness to see that there's room for improvement, too!!!
Bad writing is wonderful!!! Bad writing is a platform from which you can build your masterpiece! Bad writing is the backbone of good writing!
Give yourself permission to write badly. No, actually- give yourself permission to write something TERRIBLE. Give yourself permission to write such drivel that you can barely read it.
Nothing comes out a masterpiece the first time!! You think Isaac Asimov never wrote a total stinker he had to rebuild from the ground up? You think Jules Verne never wrote utter slop for a first draft?
WRITE SOMETHING AWFUL!!! Write something so bad you cringe about it years later!!! And then when that's done, write some more!!!!!
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOU CAN CRAFT A COMPLETE SENTENCE! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOU USE THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF COMMAS! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOUR PROSE IS GOOD AND RIGHT! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS YOUR VISION!
some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
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Stop playing games, stop watching movies, stop following football matches, stop listening to music... Leave them alone, even if only for a minute. Sit with yourselves for a minute and think carefully: Do we deserve to die? Do we deserve to live this life? If the answer is no, then do something for us. Either donate, participate, or do anything that makes us feel that you are with us and not leaving us alone in front of the genocidal criminals.
I am a father from Gaza, a mobile app developer who only wanted to build a peaceful life for my wife and our four children. But war and displacement have taken everything from us. Now, all I wish for is to keep my family alive and safe — to give my children a chance to grow, to sleep without fear, and to eat without hunger. I should not watch my kids suffer because of this injustice. Please stand with us.
If you think my fundraising campaign is only for one family, please know that your help also supports others around us who have lost everything. You can donate here . My family and I need a lot just to survive. Being displaced again and again has already cost us thousands of dollars , just to stay alive.
we're watching twilight on your couch. your roommate is in in the kitchen, listening to a liveplay dnd podcast i recognize. you point to the screen while edward's hands remake the book cover. "took them 13 takes, which i find auspicious," you say, sprinkling popcorn into your mouth, "they used a string for it."
"i am a sucker for a practical effect, it must be said." on the screen, rob patts sort of awkwardly grimaces in cold lighting. i have all of my limbs tucked underneath myself.
you pass the popcorn bowl to me, i shuffle up a handful. for a second, turned away from the movie, my ears ring. you are alight and beautiful, grinning. you mouth the words of dialogue.
i don't know much more than how ya been loca? and of course spider monkey but i did like the books.
halloween decorations flock your walls. the room is warm. autumn is twisting against the window. i wish, violently, i knew how to knit. something to do with my hands.
"remember divergent?" you say. edmund is eating a bag of eggs. "that shit was violated-the-geneva-conventions terrible."
"first book wasn't so bad," i offer. "it's the rest of the series i cannot talk about. no, for real, i will get upset."
you laugh.
i have to break eye contact. i instead focus on kristen stewart, her rapturous stuttering. i actually think she did a great job with the source material, considering.
you point to me. "you know, naming him four was wild. because it's like, the number of fears he has, right?" you grab more popcorn. "i would have, like, invented new things for them to be afraid of."
what a good point. "actually, yeah? why were none of his fears getting his dick blown clear off? or like, getting eaten alive by ants?"
i had a dream, once. about what would happen if i just broke it open. sometimes you look at me and it's all live wire. like if i put my hand on it, it'll erupt. sometimes i think you want it just as badly. most of the time i think we are both too old and too hurt to be making choices unwisely.
you have the longest eyelashes i've ever seen.
"everybody afraid of being eaten alive by ants," you agree. you pick up a fleece blanket. "wait, what am i doing. come here, come get cuddly." you balance the bowl in one hand and wiggle over to me until our legs are touching, throw the blanket over both of us. "okay, so much better, right?" you squint. "you know, there really is something so mormon about the bible imagery in this."
i am practicing deep breathing. i turn back to the screen. i am very still in every part of my body. i am suddenly very aware that there's a kernel in my back tooth. "you lost me." my voice comes out kind of tight, thank god the soundtrack is playing.
"this specific one not so much; but there's a Christianity to the whole thing, right? and the cover; i mean. forbidden desire when it's done by straight people is always, like - come on, man."
your roommate takes their dinner and their podcast upstairs, and then it is just us; just the stupid movie and your body burning through my atmosphere. and of course the kernel, which my tongue can't find but i know is there.
i watch-without-seeing. i think about the pros and cons list i've made thirty times and counting. cons: she's your friend, you idiot. i think about how i only still-talk to like, two of my exes. cons: you would love her too loudly. i can't be wrong again. i can't choose the wrong person and go through the whole thing.
three months ago, when you were drunk, you peered up at me - okay but what if we kiss. just once. just to see.
i pick up more popcorn. "you ever hear the actor commentary on this thing?"
you cackle, and the laugh rings through both our bodies. "oh my god, the wire in the shirt, right? what did he call it - like, intentionally ruffled or something?" you manage a pretty good impression of him, honestly.
i try to picture next october, and what would happen if i didn't have this. like, if we ruined it and didn't talk and no longer had our little rituals. who would i even talk to about it? it's always you i come to, over and over again.
you nestle closer. the faint and sardonic curl of your lips. "honestly," you whisper, blinking those wide eyes up at me, "i was actually team jacob."
"[x story type] but what if-" short story. come on man you should know that if your story is easily blurbed down to "interesting thing happens" that is not going to sustain a reader for 400-600 pages. a book is where you write an actual narrative, not a cool idea that came to you in the shower last night.
there's nothing wrong with writing a short story! there are lots of good short stories that revolve around Interesting Ideas. What if I was my own mother. What if fish people were real and also (evil) living in massachusetts. What if you were your own worst enemy, literally. lots of good short stories there, all at just the right length for a cool idea. no one is going to go see the feature-length adaptation of William Wilson though, because that's it. unless you add in a tragic backstory and a love interest and so on and unfortunately there are a lot of novels and movies running around out there that clearly were meant to be a short story before someone took them and stretched them to a silly length.
your short story doesn't even have to be short! herman melville wrote over 100 pages of a guy who hated his job so much he died of being a hater the end. good show, herman. thank you
novellas exist. you can write one. please. it's necessary for the land to survive
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Growing up, one of my dad's favorite quotes he'd say whenever he found me writing came from a movie called As good as it gets. In it, Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women so well. He responds "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." My dad would later bastardize this quote to "I think of a man and then take away all logic."
rather than teaching me anything about writing, what this taught me was that my dad was never going to be able to understand a woman's point of view because he was proud he couldn't understand it. He thought of himself as "logical" and anything other as "illogical." I've met other people like my dad who won't read books with female main characters because it's "unrelatable." Growing up, most of the largest series in the world featured male characters with an occasional female side character. When an MC is a woman/nonbinary I hear "why do they have to be X?"
(and this is about ten times louder when a MC dares to not be a cis male or is a person of color)
At the heart of writing there is storytelling. And, at the end of the day, there will be people who don't want to understand that story. Not because it's not well-written or important but because it doesn't fit their world view. they don't want to hear about a main character that's female, nonbinary, black, disabled, fat, queer, etc.
Write those stories anyway. Bang on their doors and plaster those words everywhere they can see. Get comfortable telling your stories and get even more comfortable making those people who cover their ears uncomfortable.
There is community in what we do and in the stories we tell. Don't let those people who are proud that they don't understand diminish the great things you're going to contribute to that community.
(Edit for clarity: changed wording around cis male for specificity)
Summary: Abomination. The S-class Supervillain. Me, a C-class hero. I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Remind myself that I’m a hero.
------
Damn. I really wanted to live.
The jets roar overhead again, screaming familiar complaints after only a moment. It’s easy to see the scene – three military planes diving down towards the writhing, fleshy tentacles and then being forced to pull up as Abomination hurls another chunk of freeway at them. The sequence has been repeating for the last two hours as they desperately try to buy time until the big hitters arrive.
I hold my hand up towards what’s left of the ceiling. Abomination had peeled open the tin roof of the service station like an anchovy can. That was back when my team first arrived on scene. Back when they were on either side of me, winded but already looking back towards the fight. Back when the worst of it was just—
My hands are a mess. The road rash tearing across my palms is the worst of it, but my attention goes to my nails. Blood and soot and dirt (and worse) tear at my cuticles. My nails look like they made friends with a cheese grater. My sister once told me all things look better under the sun, but I bet she’s never seen a hand like mine held up against the peerless blue of a rare, sunny Portland day. Not that she’ll ever see it--
I imagine a joint between my fingers and pull it back to press against my lips. Puff, puff, pass. My ribs bark a protest when I laugh. I let my head fall back so I can watch imaginary swirls of smoke escape through Abomination’s handmade skylight. Carefully I bring my hand to rest on my chest. If I let my cracked bones ache instead of throb, it’s kind of like the good burn of smoke in my lungs.
I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Remind myself that I’m a hero.
I open my eyes and let them water from the sudden radiance of the noon sun shining down on me.
The lumps of spandex on the other side of the station are hardly noticeable when I look up like this. And listening to my own breath helps me ignore how I can’t hear theirs anymore.
My sister will never see my hand again. I have this insane urge to text her a picture of it – maybe my left one since it’s got less blood on it – but my phone is back at headquarters. She’ll get something soon enough, even if it’s not a text from me. They won’t wait long to send Hero Force agents to pack up my bunk. An hour. Maybe two. They’ll wrap up my effects in small, neat, brown-paper parcels that my sister can throw in her god-awful Croc bag that she usually reserves for farmer’s market veggies or thrift store finds.
A Mesolithic howl rips through the air. Machine guns bark and the air throbs with percussive force. Abomination laughs and it’s like lava escaping through an ocean vent. Subatomic and primal. Out of reach. Unstoppable.
I sniffle. Swallow blood. Gross. It’d probably only get grosser if I started crying, so I don’t. Hauling my aching corpse to its feet is a process that I savor. I won’t be doing it again, will I? I can’t get my spine to unfold which doesn’t feel worth savoring, if I’m honest. I crouch hunched against the broken station wall, shoulders rounded, and head tucked to my chest. The standard issue mask is gone, and my face is sticky with soot. My nails bite into the road rash cutting across my palms. I grind my teeth. There’s a whine that coming from the fight that could be the jets’ engines or could be someone screaming. “Come on. Come on. Come on.”
My back straightens with all the integrity of a pipe cleaner. Fuck, that hurts. Training kicks in. Rotate shoulders, swivel hips, shake out my arms. Diagnosis? Not combat ready.
My foot nudges something metal. I blink blearily and look down. My helmet. Soot-stained and devoid of its usual red frill along the crown. I pick it up with more effort than I’d like to admit. Put it on.
Right.
I launch myself through the ceiling, twisting to avoid the snarls of metal. Portland blooms below as my winds buffet me higher. Crawling roads and squat buildings built like sugar cubes that’ve gone soggy at the edges. Streetlights and swathes of green sneak between apartment buildings and fifty-year-old shops.
And over there where the highways twist together is Abomination.
He’s bigger than in the pictures. I think it might be the largest sighting ever recorded. His center mass has to be the size of a blimp and from it spring at least fifty appendages. Some have hooked talons on their ends. Others have whole hands. Some are covered in dozens of eyes that swivel and scowl at the planes shooting by overhead. How much has he eaten to grow so large? How much of it was biological? How much of it screamed?
My winds drop me at our original entry point. The bridge we parked the team van under (“Sorry, guys, I asked and Hero Force won’t let us paint it like the Mystery Van.” “What the FU—“) is gone. Rebar twists like broken fingers from the shattered edges. The van is half lodged in what remains of the underside and debris falls over it like a curtain. I have to move a slab of asphalt and concrete from the passenger side to crawl in.
It still smells like Tay’s gun oil and Crew’s hot Cheetos. It floors me for a minute. This will be the last time I get crumbs all over my fucking hands because Crew can’t eat clean. This will be the last time I’ll choke on the chemicals Tay insists she needs to keep her weapons lubed up. I could stay here. I could just sit in the middle of the van and tell Hero Force I was too hurt to try again. Maybe it’s even true. If I did that, I could probably see my sister again.
Ha.
It’s dark and cramped inside and I can tell a lot of it has been dented and crumpled. But the case behind the driver’s seat – my seat – is still there.
My backup bow is too long to pull out with my body in the way. I have to drag it out behind me, wiggling across the seats in a way my ribs really don’t like. I exit the van butt first and pull all 6 feet of solid yew out in one go. I set it aside and go back in for whatever arrows survived the initial attack. I can pry 6 out of the quiver pinned to the van door before I start feeling splinters along the shafts.
Six is probably all I have in me anyway.
When I crawl back out of the van, there’s a kid holding my bow.
He’s probably 15. Buzzed head, torn hoodie, pajama pants and house slippers. There are fresh tear tracks cutting through the soot staining his face. I check him head to toe. No blood.
“Thanks for holding that for me,” I say. I extend a hand. “Appreciate it.”
The kid’s knuckles go white along the body. The string trails along the ground. “…I wasn’t going to take it.”
He probably thought about it. Hero artifacts are worth a lot – especially after they’re dead. The van will be stripped by locals before Hero Force thinks to recover it. I don’t mind people taking the costumes or snacks or even the little hula bobblehead Tay insisted was our mascot. The weapons…
I remind myself to put one problem on my plate at a time.
“I know,” I say, dropping my hand. He’s not running, so he’s telling the truth. I put the arrows in the quiver strapped to my back, grateful that they slide in without much resistance. The kid might be able to tell me how bad Abomination’s last hit messed up my back, but I wasn’t about to subject him to more blood than he’d already seen. “I do need it back though.”
The kid stares. His eyes are bottomless pits, that’s how blown his pupils are. “You’re going out there again.”
Yeah, ‘cause I’m stupid. I nod. “Yep.”
The kid looks over his shoulder. There’s destruction down the street. I wonder which house is his. Or rather which pile of rubble is what’s left of his house. When he looks back at me, his chin is trembling. “How?”
I try to keep my voice even. His clothing is torn by glass. He got out through a window. “You leave someone behind?”
He blinks quickly. Goes to speak. Can’t. Nods and looks down at the bow in his hands.
“That’s okay,” I say. I’m supposed to get down on my knees during these conversations. Supposed to take off my helmet. My body won’t do it. I’m also supposed to sound a lot more comforting. I can’t do that either. “Getting yourself out is already more than enough. And I’m sure you tried. You did what you could.”
“You tried too,” he says. When he looks up, it’s a surprise to see he isn’t crying. His eyes are angry. “You’re going out there again. I can’t ask you —I should be able to—”
“Blame me,” I interrupt. I hold out my hands. Helpless. “Any other day, I’d be going there for you, you know? I’d try and save whoever it is. But I can’t today. I’m the only one l—” left “—here. I’m the only one that can. I have to go and that means I’m the one leaving your people behind. Not you.”
He wants to argue. I can hear a thousand other voices begging me to save them and I know he wants to be one of them. His brow knots and his knees shake. His lips purse. He wants to, I can see it, he wants to, but--
“But you’re trying to stop it,” he mumbles. “You’re trying to save everyone else.”
“I am,” I say. I’m two seconds from ripping my bow from his hands. He’s costing me time. I keep my voice soft. “But I’m not trying to save you. It’s okay to hate me for that.”
The kid is quiet for a beat. Another. His eyes drift back to my bow and I can see the veins in the back of his hands flex as he squeezes and unclenches in sync with his unsteady breathing.
I time it and snatch my bow from his hands when his grip is loose. He staggers in surprise. He yells – for me to stop? For me to wait?
I can’t hear him over my wind.
My winds fling me into the air and I hurtle towards Abomination. My chest stings and I think it’s partly from the broken ribs and partly from what I just did. I’m trying to save the day, I am. But I left that kid with two villains today.
At least I won’t have to live with the guilt for long.
The jets are fewer in number now. Abomination’s appendages are long and thick, more than strong enough to sling a plane into the city. Response teams are having to weigh the risk of getting close enough to give him another projectile. It’s good and bad news for me.
Good news, I don’t have to watch out for other air traffic.
Bad news, I’m alone as I crest above Abomination.
He sees me. I know he does. His many eyes roll in their ill-fitting sockets, watering and twitching under the uncompromising sun. It’s possible that I’m backlit and that’s why his eyes never fix on me. It’s possible that I’ve found a blind spot that I should be grateful for.
His eyes spin away from and all I feel is rage. He hits me, hits my team, hits my city and then dismisses me?
I hiss in a breath as I string my bow. I feel all one hundred and fifty pounds of draw as I pull an arrow fletching back to my cheek.
“One,” I whisper and let go.
The sun follows my arrow, catching and spinning along the arrowhead until it’s orange with heat. In normal, cloudy Portland, my secondary power isn’t very impressive. My arrows fly a little faster, maybe. I can get a better vantage point from up high, sure.
But in the sun?
Abomination screams as molten metal drives deep into the largest of his eyes. His appendages writhe, curling back into the main body like an octopus’ tentacles.
I laugh. “Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
“I’ll kill you!” Abomination’s many mouths screech. He roils and surges, appendages turning over until a new one is revealed. There’s a man at the end of this one, or the facsimile of one. His blonde hair hangs over his face in a curtain so thick I can only make out his teeth bared in a grimace. “You’re DEAD!”
I spin through the air as he lashes out. A hook swings past and curves towards the back of my legs. I whistle and the wind flips me into a backflip that helps me neatly evade the attack.
Tay’s voice whispers, Make it look easy.
I string another arrow. It’s not easy. My backup bow has a draw twenty pounds heavier than my main. I close my eyes, feeling the sun against my face. It reminds me of the last time I saw my sister. It’d been a sunny day like today. She’d brought along a picnic basket. Peanut butter and jelly like she used to pack me for lunch every day.
“Two,” I say and fire at the fake man Abomination created.
This time it’s not the sun that follows my arrow; it’s a cyclone. The roar of it matches Abomination’s when the appendage fails to dodge and lodges into his chest.
It destabilizes my wind. I get tossed in the air and dropped twenty feet before I can catch myself again. I pant as I reach for another arrow. Abomination’s stretching, his appendages reaching higher and higher. Trying to reach me.
“Three,” I gasp and release a sunbeam. The power of it sears me. I’m usually C-class at best. B-class on sunny days. The sun cuts through my dominant arm and clings to my arrow like lightning.
Abomination is too big to dodge now. He tries to hit the next shot out of the air. He can’t. The light cuts like a laser through his hooked arm and his howls shake the air as it crashes into the city below.
Don’t wait for them to get back up, Crew whispers. The crackle in my lungs sounds a little like how he cracked his knuckles. Hit them again.
Not very hero-like, Tay says.
“We weren’t always heroes,” I say and shoot. I don’t remember pulling the arrow. Don’t remember drawing the bow. “Four.”
I go blind. I think I draw the sun into the arrow again. I don’t know. Nausea churns my stomach. I fall, I think. For a second. Just a second. Then my wind catches me like a battering ram and I wheeze, flat on my back with the sun burning through the gaps in my helmet.
When I can blink the darkness from my eyes, I’m barely higher than the rooftops. Abomination is a hundred feet away from me.
He sees me at the same time I see him.
A large section of Abomination is charred. Burnt through. I can see the sun sparkling through the cracks in his charred flesh. The smell makes me gag.
I don’t see the tentacle ripping towards me until it’s too late.
I get my bow up a second before it hits. The thing is fleshy and warm. Alive. There’s something so different between getting hit by something alive than something dead. I hear snapping, like a branch in a storm. The air is chased from my lungs.
It’s not my first time getting thrown. It’s not even my first time today. But this time my wind isn’t fast enough to even slow my descent. I hit the ground at full force and I lose track of time for a while.
When I come to, the world is filled with smoke. It curls around the shattered remains of buildings and through the jagged cracks in the road beneath me. Sitting up is fucking heroic on its own. I spit to my side and force myself to look. Abomination is moving – away from me. The sluggish path he’s cut across the city isn’t over. He thinks he’s killed me.
I look down. My bow is split, like I feared. The two jagged halves are connected by the string and that’s all. I consider it for a second before realizing my quiver is still on my back. I pull my last two arrows and stare at their wicked points.
Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work.
If standing was hard before, it must be impossible now. There are sounds coming from me that shouldn’t come from a human. I tune them out. Abomination sounds like a sack full of slime when he moves. Wet and heavy. Half-blind, I stagger after the sound. I trip over valleys gouged into the road and shards of metal I can’t identify. In each hand, I have an arrow gripped about halfway up the shaft. My palms are raw and scream as I tighten my grip.
I thought I had six shots in me. It looks like five is all I’ll get. Pulling the sun takes negotiation. I can only coax a trickle in, but it’ll have to do.
I really wanted to live.
I raise both arms, cocking them back in preparation to throw—
Steel hands grab my arms on each side. Instinctively I try to rip away from the grip, legs buckling when I try to kick out. The same hands holding me back, hold me up.
I turn my head to find Strongwoman on my left.
Strongwoman’s dark eyes are kind. “Good job, Apollo. We’ll take it from here.”
On my other side, a woman I’ve never seen before nods agreement. She’s wearing a gold body suit and there’s a flame motif along her mask. Her dark hair is a riot down her back. “We are here.”
I try to speak and nothing comes out. My knees buckle and Strongwoman holds me up. The other woman smiles at me. “You’ve done your part. Now it’s ours.”
She walks towards Abomination.
I find my voice as she gets within a hundred feet from him. “W-wait. F-flame. He’s weak to heat. My arrows—“
“Don’t worry about Firebreather,” Strongwoman says. She hauls my arm over her shoulder and turns to start marching us back. “She’s got plenty of that. She’s just happy you held him back long enough for her to get to him.”
This time the roar that flood through the city isn’t from Abomination. It’s not from my winds.
It’s from the flames.
“We should help,” I say. I watch the shadows at my feet writhe as the fire behind us blooms. “We should—”
“Your team needs your help more,” Strongwoman interrupts. Her eyes are fixed ahead. In the distance, there’s the canopy of a white tent. “They’ve been asking for you.”
This time, even her help isn’t enough to keep me on my feet. I collapse so hard that I can feel the impact through my hips. “W-what?”
Strongwoman mutters a curse and swings me up into her arms. “I was trying to preserve your dignity, you know. The cameras haven’t left you since you first started solo fighting.”
My dignity is the least of my worries. I grab around her neck. “My team? My team is asking for me?”
“Yes? Of course they—” Strongwoman hisses in a breath. “You thought they were dead.”
I didn’t look. The spandex in the corners of the station—“They’re alive?”
“They’re alive,” Strongwoman confirms.
Finally, I start to cry.
-----
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Next week's story will be posted on my Patreon early by Sunday 8/17! It's a bit more lighthearted and is about one of my fave heroes The Shark (read first part here)
Summary: You are The Shark and your new hero team leader wants you to go to support group about it.
I often get asks about illegitimate children and what their lives would be like in a typical fantasy setting. In many cultures, to be born or to have a child out of the bounds of marriage, it is extremely taboo and can result in some social ostracism while in others, it isn't seen as a very big deal and illegitimate children could rise to places of power.
Double-Standards
All illegitimate children are born outside marriage but not all illegitimate children are made equally. Most of the time, illegitimate children born to the poor can experience worse treatment by their community. If they are born to an unwed mother or a mother who gave birth to them outside of marriage, their mother may be denied services in the community such as housing and employment and be shunned publicly. A royal or noblewoman would also face the same scrutiny and be shunned from all high society and may even be imprisoned or executed. They faced more dangerous circumstances if they were married, mainly because they have put the succession of their children into question which could be grounds to disinherit their other children which could lead to larger issues. However, the father of an illegitimate children would likely not face too much scrutiny. While frowned upon, especially if he has quite a few illegitimate children and/or doesn't support them. A nobleman or royal father could father children without too much scrutiny, again in moderation.
Child Support
Illegitimate Children were not equal to legitimate children in a good many Western Cultures. In most cultures of the west, illegitimate children were not entitled to anything their parents owned or could lay claim to and if on the off-chance they were to inherit, it is only when all illegitimate claimants are out of the picture. Illegitimate children of royals or nobles were not in line for titles, crowns and lands - in fact, they were only provided for when their father wanted to. When the father did, he could see that they were educated, treated almost the same as his legitimate children - a good many illegitimate royals could count themselves in for a Dukedom or Earldom, with a fine marriage in the future and a lot of wealth and position (especially if the mother is also aristocratic). A poorer father might offer the mother up-keep for herself and the child but again, this is his own choice and he may not offer support. However, in other cultures, an illegitimate child could receive the same if not better treatment than their legitimate siblings. In the Ottoman Empire, a Sultan was expected to father children with women of the harem, who he was not married to in order to sire the next generation of royal heirs. The daughters born of these unions were often married to high ranking advisors and court and granted education and luxury like that of royal princesses while sons were often granted fine educations and later in life, provinces to reign over. Under Ancient Hindu Laws, children could inherit from their mothers and depending on circumstances their fathers. In China and Japan, while children born to concubines with all the same honours as legitimate children they weren't ostracised and were often raised with many of the same luxuries and amenities.
Prospects
An illegitimate child may not be on the same equal footing as their legitimate counterparts but that doesn't mean they are blocked from every good thing about life. They could be educated, they could marry well, they could rise high in society but their birth status may still be used against them. They may be believed to carry some stigma, be seen as dishonest or more inclined to act a certain way - which is all bullshit but the village is going to judge regardless. Illegitimate children born into higher ranking families might gain high positions of power, receiving high military positions or advisory positions at court to support their siblings. They may even marry to improve their family's status, with illegitimate royals even marrying other royals or nobles.
Relationships
Illegitimate children may have close relationships with their parents but that depends on the relationship between their parents and whether they have any contact with them. Illegitimate children may be raised alongside their legitimate siblings in order to foster good relationships between the siblings. Illegitimate children might have good relations with their step-parents but this is up to the step-parent. Some step-parents refuse to have the illegitimate child. An aristocratic father might set up his illegitimate child on an estate with a household of their own. Depending on the circumstances of their birth, their extended families may accept them as relatives or reject them.
Legitimization
I often get hypothetical questions on what happens when a royal or noble illegitimate child gets legitimized. Legitimization is when the illegitimate child is made legitimate by decree. This is usually through four ways: the parents marry and the legitimization is retroactive (this isn't always accepted), the illegitimate child is legitimized by the crown, or by religious authority or the government passes a bill of legitimization. However, this doesn't mean the child has all the rights of a legitimate child. Some royal or noble children could inherit but usually only after their legitimate siblings, nieces and nephews. Sometimes they are entitled to use certain styles and titles, they may be allowed to call themselves Prince/Princess or the courtesy title of their parents. However, legitimization is usually only carried out when there is either a deficit of legit heirs or enough of a surplus that legitimizing an illegitimate child is almost no danger. Most royals and nobles don't opt to legitimize their offspring in order to ensure the succession is protected and the overall peace preserved.
There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.
When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.
Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?
With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.
They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.
Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.
I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.
The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.
Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?
Were they wrong to trust?
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.
A claw split the great glass cocoon.
The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.
In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.
It took its first breath.
The flames were the colour of cornflowers.
The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–
It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…
And it could finally open its wings.
Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.
The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.
The way necromancy works is this: Everything in your body — meat, bones, skin, blood — has something like a memory. They remember, in their own way, what it’s like to be alive. Skin remembers the sun. Bones remember what shape they’re supposed to be in. Muscle memory is more than just an idiom.
The way necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order it to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.
To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.
The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.
There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.
The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.
There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.
The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.
She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.
And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.
There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”
The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”
The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.
Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.
Two minds were fighting for control of the corpse; on one side was the mind of the caster, and on the other was the memories of bones, of flesh, of skin, trying to drive the caster out.
The weight of that mind was incredible.
Sweat poured off the necromancer’s brow; darkness whorled across her vision. Then slowly, every movement a bone-breaking agony, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, lungs straining.
The trick was that this mind knew how to obey.
The necromancer stood, wobbled, steadied herself and poured her willpower into the sea. She tried to make hers the full willpower the thing had obeyed in life, the will of the wind, of the sea, of the rigging and the wheel.
Because of course it had been alive. In a sense, they were all alive. Sailors talked of them like they were alive, gave them names, called them “she.”
Sailors knew they were alive.
It was the cessation of that life that interested her.
The necromancer reached out with her power, seized the mind in her hands and pulled, blood and foam flecking out the corners of her mouth as she ground her teeth together with the titanic effort and ordered it to obey.
The sea roiled, hundreds of tons of water moving fast as something deep below boiled to the surface.
A bowsprit sprouted from the water. Then a wood-rotted figurehead of a mermaid. Then inch by inch, yard by yard, the huge barnacle-encrusted bulk of silt-stained timber rose out of the deep, seawater streaming out of every gunport.
For a moment the warship hung in the air like a monstrous fish held by the gills of a colossal fisherman. It dropped into the sea with a sound like a depth charge; the little rowboat lurched in its wake.
The necromancer released the spell. Then she threw up, and passed out.
———
Later, once she had woken, gathered together the tackle box, the lantern, and the map and had scrabbled aboard, the necromancer inspected the undead ship.
There was a hole in the hull where a magazine charge had exploded. This was, admittedly, fine. Undead men could walk with a hole in their bellies; an undead ship could sail with one as well.
Really, she thought, despite the discomfort the spell had worked masterfully.
It was a perfect start.
She unfolded the map on the soggy floor of the quarterdeck, sucked the end of a pen, and next to the last marker wrote “Total success.” Then her finger began to trace down the page to the next.
And the undead ship — unbidden and obedient — shifted its sails and began to move south.
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You don’t know when you started eating your god. You’ve always been in the shelter of his arms, tucked under his chin, safe in the cradle of his hips. Now, his elbows are poking into the sides of your esophagus, his head nestled near your uvula, his shoulders crumbling under your molars.
There’s a moment where you’re acutely aware of how long it’s been since you last heard the thunder of his voice—the lightning crack of his screams—and your hands convulse around his ankles, stopping their forward push down your gullet.
This is not a holy act.
Your panic would stop your throat if he wasn’t already in it.
Tears swell as you gently pull at his legs, ensuring that they’re not bending the wrong way, that you don’t cause your god more damage than you’ve already wrought. Your teeth ease from his skin, unpleasant like unwelding taffy, and it’s like a dam bursting. Blood fills your mouth, hot and sweet, more than should be possible from his small form.
It washes the panic from your tongue on the way down, burning through you with divinity. You gag at last, your throat fluttering against his crown, and blood pushes around his still body and out of your lips, cascading down your chin, staining your front red.
Your gentle grip on his legs hardens as the blood keeps flowing; you’re going to choke. He’s not dropping from your mouth when you tug, so you start to yank. Long strings of red saliva dangle from your chin as yanking turns to twisting and twisting to clawing. Your nails cut so deeply into his legs that your grip is slicked red. Your hands slide from him and you—god help you—you feel the desire to swallow.
You collapse to all fours, chest heaving and and stomach lurching with the boiling liquid and overwhelming horror of it all. You heave around him.
You god doesn’t move.
———————————
Your father once told you that belief is a prison.
He insisted on the mundane school your siblings went to, the one that talked about physics and proper language that didn’t sound at all like the murmurings deep in the earth.
Your mother and your aunts are the ones who told you that belief could be power. They told you it could be love. They told you it could be companionship. They told you it could be everything.
Sitting alone in your room, unable to go outside with asthma constricting your lungs, watching your brothers and sisters playing on the lawn,well... even one of those things seemed like a blessing.
That’s when your search started, all the way back in your twelfth summer, alone and dizzy from lack of oxygen.
It was a bad start.
——————————————————————
It’s a bad start now, waking up on the floor of your apartment, something cold and tacky under your cheek. You gasp for breath, your arms and legs cramping, and gasp again as the muscles in your jaw lock before they stretch. It’s been years since you’ve passed out under the lack of air, but the feeling is the same. Like parts of you are dying, losing sensation, and then flaring back to life with a painful rush of blood.
What’s not the same is the knowledge already swimming to the surface.
I tried to eat my god. My god.
He’s not in your mouth, the only trace of him the smell of copper and the taste of iron. You open your eyes to confirm that the wetness under your cheek is blood and saliva. There are tiny footprints leading away from the pool, uneven and staggering. They’re headed for the kitchen and, as they go, they grow.
You nearly pass out again with the wave of relief. You were able to resist the urge to swallow, he’s alive. You’re not sure what killing him would have done, but you’re glad you don’t have to find out.
On the heels of that is dread. It sinks down into your stomach and almost sends you collapsing back to the ground. You pant as you force your legs to take your weight, standing like a newborn deer, arms trembling from the effort of pushing yourself upright.
He’s going to be so angry with you.
You wrap your shaking arms around your hollow stomach—hungry, still hungry—and stumble to the kitchen.
The man standing by the stove is...indescribable. You can say that he has hair the color of the flame. You can say that his eyes sparkle like pyrite. You can say that he towers over you, lithe muscle and porcelain skin. You can say all of these things but it feels like sacrilege every time.
Your god doesn’t like to be named.
“I,” he says, “am not angry.”
He is though. You can feel the weight of his anger pressing against your skin. Electricity in the air. His eyes are so soft on you though that you can’t say otherwise. You fall to your knees. “Thank you. Thank you.”
He sighs. “Rise. I am not angry, but we do have a problem.”
You don’t want to get up. You want to stay on your knees in front of him, the cold linoleum seeping to your bones. His anger is a heavy cloud above you, ready to choke the breath from your lungs. But he is your god and you believe his word is law.
You stand back up. You don’t meet his eyes, studying the way his bare toes press against the kitchen floor.
He reaches out and takes your chin in his hand. He can be warm if he wants to, humming with power, but he’s not now. He’s ice cold, the grace of him simmering somewhere deep, deep down. You wonder if your attack took power from him.
It must have. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so very angry.
“What was the one thing I asked of you, Honey?” He draws your chin up as he speaks until you’re forced to meet his eyes. “Tell me.”
You swallow when he lets go. You don’t struggle against the grip his gaze has on you, even when it feels like pincers digging into your brain. “You asked me to fast.”
He nods. “I asked you to prove your devotion to me. I asked that you show me that, even without my power, you would remain loyal. Steadfast. You failed, Honey.”
“Please.” The word bursts from your lips like a whimper. Uncontrolled. “Please, my god, I—it’s been so long. I couldn't—I needed— I need you.”
You’d agreed to this with your head in his lap, his grace buzzing against your lips. He’d asked you to empty yourself, to prove yourself, and you said yes. No food passed your lips, prayers fell like a litany and you held fast to your faith when he didn’t answer.
Weeks. Weeks of water and the hollow echo in your spirit where you’d made room for him. You’d tried. You’d tried.
But then he didn’t answer. And he didn’t answer. And he didn’t answer.
“I would not have asked you this,” he says, “if it was going to be easy.”
“I’m sorry,” you say. You reach for him, fingers trembling. “Please, I can be better. I will be better. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—I need you to be with me.”
Your god smites you carelessly. A bolt of lightning that strikes at your fingertips, singing them, and a wave of power that sends you back to your knees in front of him.
He doesn’t move, looking down at you with glittering eyes. “If you had had faith, you would have been rewarded. I planned to make you my priestess. Always by my side. Entwined.”
Companionship. You feel something leaving you and going to him. Hope, maybe, or desire. It lights his eyes and it’s easy to imagine him looking at you like that forever.Your hope reflected back at you. “Yes. Please. Please.”
He shakes his head. “You’ve ruined it, Honey. I needed the power of your devotion and you couldn’t do it. All of this effort I’ve gone to—wasted. You didn’t believe in me.”
“I do,” you gasp. “I do. Please, I-I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it however I have to.”
“Do you swear?” He asks. His crouches down in front of you and pulls aside the loose neck of his shirt. Clear on his neck are impressions of your teeth. “Do you swear that you can do it this time?”
You flinch at the marks you’ve left on him. Your god. You’re so weak to have done this to him. Unworthy. “Yes. I swear, I won’t let you down. I won’t do that again. Oh god.”
“We will see.” He stands swiftly and glides around you. “Don’t disappoint me again.”
He’s out the door before you can turn around.
————————————————————
You’re fifteen when you find your god in your locker. He’s emerging from the lump of clay you took from the art room, a forearm sticking out here, the crown of his head pushing up there.
All around him, the sigils you’d used to call him are smoldering, the thin notebook paper curling under the heat of magic. Embers drifts down onto the top of his head like snow and, when they touch, the strands of his hair go from the white of the clay to a fiery red.
You skip class to be with him. Your locker is out of the way, nearly in the shadow of the gym, and you hide there whenever you sense a hall monitor or teacher come near. You watch your god drag a body around himself in increments and hope that the magic you laid is strong enough to sustain him through this process.
Please, you pray. Please let what I’ve done be enough. Please let this work.
It’s the first and most powerful prayer he answers.
——————————————————-
Your second attempt at fasting is worse. This is the third week without food or prayer and you’ve lost almost too much weight. The only thing sustaining you is the burn of your own magic, searing you from the inside out.
Your body screams. What are you doing? What are you DOING to yourself?
I am proving my devotion, you tell your magic, the rumble of your stomach, the deaf ears of your god. I am strengthening my faith.
You go to work. One day your god will provide for you, will open doors for you, but right now it’s your job to keep yourself alive. You work at a call center. It’s barely enough to pay rent, but that’s okay.
You won’t have a grocery bill this month, so that’s a savings right there.
There are new faces in the boss’ office, all in profile as they listen attentively to whatever Mr. Dobson is saying. You can’t hear them through the glass, but you know the speech he’s giving. Stick to the script. Call a floor supervisor if there are any questions not on the script. Avoid giving out your name and talk people into staying on the list.
There are always new faces here. You came in three months ago and now you’re one of the longer term employees here. Turnover is quick when payment is slow.
You watch the people on the other side of the glass as a customer complains bitterly in your ear. There’s a man with an aura of power amongst this batch. His hair is long, to the middle of his back, and his jaw is strong. You can see black markings where his sleeves are pushed up and he looks strong and well fed, physically and spiritually.
It’s rare for you to see another of your kind. Rarer to see another of your kind with the scent of a god so heavy around them.
“I’ll definitely make a note in your file,” you promise the customer absently. You turn back to your computer with difficulty. It’s intoxicating, the power pouring off that man, but he’s not your business. Other gods and their worshippers are not your business. “Can you walk me through the problem again?”
The customer is more than happy to begin their rant all over again.
————————————————————————-
You are seventeen the first time your god tells you that you are not enough.
“Not all of your worship is directed at me,” he complains, laying flat out on your bed. He’s nearly the size of a child now, plumping up on the sweet wine you sacrifice to him. “I won’t ever be all I can be with what little you give me.”
You blink. You’re at your desk, writing prayers in your holy book instead of doing your math homework. You feel like you do nothing but think of your god. “I—I don’t worship anyone else.”
“You do,” he accuses. He sits up and points at you. “You break bread with non-believers. You fill yourself with sustenance made by a woman who doesn’t acknowledge me. Your weakness weakens me.”
You didn’t think of it like that. You thought of it as spending time with your family, something your father and mother made clear was expected of you even with your new god. Your mother’s god doesn’t have a physical form so Dad can’t ban her from the table, but yours does. Your father doesn’t want to eat with your god. “Oh.”
“If you want to be with me,” he says, “if you want me to do all I can for you, you can’t stay here.”
Your brow furrows. “I still have school. I need to be able to provide for you, so I need to go to—“
Your god grows. It takes magic from you, the power streaming from you to him, but it’s him that chooses the form. He sprouts up another foot. Two. Three. His face takes on definition, his hands grow strong, his eyes change from black to yellow.
You slide from your chair in front of your god and press your forehead to the ground in prayer.
“I am your god,” he says from above you. “I provide for you so long as you stay with me.” His power falls around you like the sun, warm and welcoming. “You will stay with me?”
“Always,” you swear. You look up into his grace and feel the urge to kiss his feet. You do. “Always.”
His smile is the first blessing he gives you.
———————————————————
“Hey, Amanda!” One of your coworkers calls from the break room. “Come meet the new guys!”
Amanda is the name your parents gave you. You don’t mind it, but it’s not the life you chose for yourself. Your god renamed you when you chose to follow him and now the only name you feel your spirit respond to is the one that comes from his lips.
You head into the break room. It’s half the size of the call floor, but that means it’s big enough for six large, round tables and about thirty chairs. Massive.
Tana is the one who called your name. She’s a beautiful college student with bright green hair and too many piercings for most of the straight-laced jobs in this county. She’s holding court, facing you, sitting in the middle of the three tables in use. The new employees are mixed with the old and they’re all having a fairly good time chatting and filling the newbies in on the tricks of this place.
The long-haired man—the one who smells of another god— is sitting to your right, twisted toward another employee. You head left, away from the tantalizing feel of his healthy aura.
“Guys this is Amanda,” Tana introduces you with the sweep of her hand. “You got any trouble finding the right form, she’s got your back. Great memorization.”
There’s a murmur of greeting from around the table. The long-haired man is one of the last to turn, a warm smile on his thin lips. His eyes widen as they land on you for the first time, blue power sparking deep in his dark irises.
Hello, you whisper to him, mind to mind.
He stands abruptly, takes two steps, and vomits before he makes it to the trash can.
————————————————————————-
You’re seventeen when you leave home. Your god demands it and even packs your things for you, making sure there’s plenty of room for his shrine in your single suitcase.
“Belief is not an easy path,” your mother says. Her god is twined around her aura like a cat, watching. It has not touched you once since your god emerged from his clay. “You knew that when you started.”
“That’s it?” Your father demands of her. “That’s all you’re going to say? She doesn’t have a job! Or a diploma! She’s seventeen, she’s not going anywhere.”
“That’s no longer our decision,” her mother says. She turns to go back inside. “She belongs to her god now.” Not once does she look at your god standing on the sidewalk behind you.
“No,” you father says. “No, Amanda, you’re my child and you’re not going anywhere with that thing.”
His words make this easier. Anger heats your blood and stills the fear-adrenaline in your hands. “My god is not a thing. Do not blaspheme him.”
Your father gapes. He recovers quickly. “Get back in the house. You don’t understand what you’re doing—“
“I do.”
“—the world isn’t easy, Amanda,” he says over you. “You don’t have a job, no way to sustain yourself, no place to go.”
“My god,” you say, lifting your chin, “will provide.”
“I’m your father,” your dad says. “I provide for you and I am telling you not to go.”
You can feel your god’s impatience like dust against the back of your neck. “I have to go.”
Your father starts forward and hits the barrier your god erects between the two of you. He stands there, stunned, for a moment, hand pressed to the thin air so hard his palm turns weight. Panic shoots through his eyes. “Amanda?”
You bite your lip to keep the I love you behind your teeth. You can’t love anyone but your god now. Your god holds out a hand to you.
“Amanda!” Fear. Panic. Desperation. “Amanda, don’t go with him! Come back!”
You let your god lead you down the street. Your father is screaming now, pounding on the magic that holds him back. You and your god have been planning this for days. Your father is a small talent—he can’t break a ward you’ve worked for days on. Not without your mother’s help.
The last glimpse of your father is of him, on his knees, shoulders heaving with his sobs, pleas trailing after you.
—————————————————————
“Shocking, right?” You get the first word in, not liking the way the new guy is waiting for you outside work. “Don’t know if you really needed to throw up about it, but, hey, maybe you’ve got a weak stomach.”
The new guy—Neil—isn’t vomiting now. He’s pale, a little ashy, and his aura is tucked carefully out of sight, but he’s not vomiting. “Your god is draining you.”
If he is, you think, it’s because I didn’t have enough to give. You roll your eyes to make him feel dumb. “I’m fasting. This is standard.”
“I’ve fasted,” Neil says. “It didn’t turn me into a walking black hole.”
You scoff. “Right.” You move to go around him. The last bus is coming soon.
He steps to the side to keep in front of you. “I’m serious, Amanda. I can feel your hunger. You’re doing a...superhuman job of keeping it contained, but it claws at me. You’re starving physically and spiritually. That’s not how a fast works.”
You bare your teeth at him. “You don’t know anything about my religion.”
“No,” he says quietly. Opposite his tone, he plants his feet more firmly, making it clear that you won’t be getting around him. “Fasting is about separating your physical needs from your spiritual needs. You’re supposed to feel closer to your god during it, not...not whatever turned you into this.”
That...that actually sounds nice. During the first fast, you’d felt okay when he was still spending the night at your place. Then he’d gone to travel, to find followers and believers, and things had gone downhill from there.
You imagine what it would be like, the hunger gnawing at your stomach, but your heart filled with him. His grace. His benevolence. You imagine what it would be like to have him with you, even if you can’t see him, and it’s good. It’s so good. It’d make you feel so strong. You could face anything, even starvation, with him in your life.
Neil can tell what you’re thinking. “See,” he says, the sound of his voice breaking the dream, “see how it should be?”
You jerk back. Horror descends. You’d let yourself entertain the idea of taking from your god again. You’d fantasized about going against his orders now.
And it’s all because of Neil.
“You can’t shake my faith,” you snarl at him. You’re trembling as you rush around him. “I have faith.” The last bus is nearly here, caught at a red light ahead.
“Faith only works if something’s actually there,” he calls after your back. His tone is not so quiet now. It’s harder and there’s magic ringing in it. “Think about that.”
The bus rolls up. You lunge for the doors when they open. You won’t let him shake your devotion.
You won’t fail your god again.
———————————————————————-
Your apartment is empty when you get back. Your eyes ache from holding back tears, not wanting anyone on the bus to see your fear. Your anxiety. Your panic.
“Please,” you pray, “please, I need you here. I don’t need you to do anything, I just need you here. Please.”
You feel even more alone as your prayer bounces back as cold, hollow words.
You rub your hands up and down your arms, trying to chafe warmth into them, and go to take a shower. The water scalds you, but it’s not enough. Only he can warm you now.
There’s too much room to think about Neil’s words without your god to distract you. Maybe if you weren’t so hungry, you could resist, but you are.
Or maybe you’re just weak.
You don’t know the point of the fast. You think you did at first, but now you can’t even imagine why you need to be without food and him. Was it something about power? Your hunger gives him power? But if that’s why, then why do you need to avoid the blanket of his grace? Why can’t you even pray to him, something you’ve always done, have written books about, have spent days doing?
You don’t understand.
——————————————————-
You nearly don’t wake up in time for work. Your entire body hurts and your eyes feel glued shut. You’re almost too weak to stand and it’s a terrifyingly long moment before your magic kicks in and feeds strength into your atrophying muscles.
Your power alone is not going to be enough to sustain you if the fast doesn’t break soon.
The bus is overwhelming. You don’t have enough energy for your normal shields and humanity’s emotions pour over you. The woman sitting at the front wants to claw off her own face, so tired of the way the man across from her is looking. So tired of all the men looking. The man across from her is bitter and hurting from scars echoing up from his past. The children in the back are anxious and alert, their mother exhausted.
You focus on the teenager across from you listening to music. He likes the song he’s listening to. You use his enjoyment to drown the rest out.
Getting off the bus is another trip. You sway when your feet hit the ground, off balance, and instinctively send a tendril of power down into the earth to steady you. Only you don’t have the strength to do it and you wind up on your knees, blinking at the weeds that are coming up through the sidewalk’s cracks. The bus hums behind you, pulling away from the curb and chugging down the street without noticing.
You can’t afford to be late to work. You swallow hard and focus on one thing at a time. First, you need to get one foot underneath you. Then the other. Then you need to use your hands to push up and stand.
It’s probably not a good sign when you don’t actually remember doing any of those things, but you’re halfway across the parking lot to the building before you realize it.
Please give me the strength to get through this, you find yourself praying. You know he won’t answer, but belief is in your blood. You pray. I can do the rest. I just need the strength.
You collapse just inside the double doors, the rough wallpaper painful against your skin and the tile hard against your ass. You pant, head reeling, trying to convince your body to try one more time. Just one more time.
“Right,” someone says. “Hold on a sec.”
You blearily watch dark shoes and jeans march away from you, further into the building. You hold your hands in front of your face. Have they always been so thin? So shaky? You press them against the ground, uncaring of the dirt that’s always piled into the corners of the office, and try to reach the healing strength of the earth again.
“That boat’s long passed,” the voice says again. They’re back and you squint up to see Neil standing over you. His hands are in his hoodie pockets. “You’ve had a god now. You can’t be an earth witch.”
That sounds right, but you don’t want it to be. You curl what little magic you have left back into your core, letting it go back to trying to warm your rattling bones.
“We’re having a sick day, you and I,” Neil says. He leans down, sliding his hands out of his pockets, and picks you up. He does it so smoothly and quickly that you hardly register it happening. “Please don’t die on the way home.”
You realize he means his home, not yours. “I can’t. It’s Wednesday.”
He pushes open the doors with his shoulders, taking care not to bang you against them. “Your holy day?”
You just manage to nod. The sun hurts your eyes. Neil is carrying you to a black car. You hope he doesn’t put you in the trunk.
“Good,” Neil says with satisfaction. He doesn’t put you in the trunk. He puts you in the passenger’s seat and buckles your seatbelt. His hands are so gentle it nearly makes you cry. “Your god should be looking for you then.”
You sleep. Or you pass out. You’ve done a lot of the latter, not so much the former in recent years.
——————————————
You wake up to something hot pressing against your lips.
“Drink.”
Warm liquid pours into your mouth and you swallow convulsively. Then the flavor registers, bursting across your tongue and filling your senses. Chicken broth. It’s good after your weeks of fasting and you open your mouth for more before you realize what you’re doing. It’s another two spoonfuls before your brain turns back on entirely.
I am breaking my fast without my god’s permission, you think. Then, when that doesn’t horrify you like you think it should, I am letting someone spoon feed me.
When the spoon presses against your lips for the fourth time, you don’t open your mouth. You open your eyes.
The woman looking down at you isn’t human. You don’t need the tatters of your strength to tell that. Her skin is a lovely red, softened by pink cheeks and eyes, and her hair is a swirl of pastel clouds. She has your head in her lap, one hand on your chin, and she looks very disappointed that you aren’t preparing yourself for the next bite.
“Come on,” she coaxes. Her voice is deep and rumbling. Like thunder. “One more bite.”
You roll off the couch faster than you think you will. The little bit of food has given your magic a boost. You hit soft carpet, bumping into a coffee table, and scramble to sit up. Your erratic movements knock the chicken broth on the table onto the ground, the warm liquid rushing over your hand.
The goddess on the couch looks at the bowl of soup on the ground mournfully. “Oh, it fell.”
“I have a god,” you tell her. The panic you should have felt upon awakening is seeping in. Your nails curl into the carpet and the memory of the soup pouring down your throat feels like a sin. “You’re not my god.”
“I should hope not,” she says.
“It was just soup,” Neil says from behind the couch. He’s wiping his hands on a dish towel, eyes even on yours. “It wasn’t a gift.”
Your lip curls. “Everything they do is a gift from a god. Don’t try to trick me.”
“Sometimes,” the goddess says, “soup is just soup.” She smiles and her teeth are tiny and pink. “I’m Luna.”
Her name rocks you, rattling your defenses. You gape at her. “You told me your name.”
Neil raises an eyebrow. “How else would she introduce herself?”
You look between Neil and Luna. She’s still smiling at you, eyes still kind, but you see what you’ve been missing. “He didn’t call you.” If he’d called her, Neil would know more about gods and the meanings behind their names. Luna. Moon. Power in the night.
“He did, in a way,” she says. She holds out a hand to Neil and draws him down on the couch beside her. He’s taller than her, but she doesn’t seem to mind the way he he has to look down to meet her eyes. “We both needed each other.”
Neil smiles at her and presses his lips into her hair. Her eyes shine with his quick prayer, like quicksilver, and then it’s gone. There’s the smell of cayenne pepper in the air.
“If no one called you here,” you ask, “then how did you get here?” Gods aren’t from earth—you have to bring them over. That’s what you’ve been taught. That’s what you know.
Luna smiles, close-mouthed. “It was a long, long time ago.”
Neil frowns. “You called your god?” His brow furrows, but his body language is still relaxed against the goddess. “People can still do that?”
“Very few,” Luna says. “Only those with the old books. The old power.” She watches you. “The old gods would have treated you better, child. These young ones don’t have any respect. They don’t know how very lucky they are.”
Your knees are going weak again. The soup’s already burned through your system. You sway, one hand going to your head, the other going against the wall. “I have to go.”
“It’s her holy day,” Neil tells his goddess.
Luna raises a pale blue eyebrow. “What prayers could you offer your god like this? What devotion? You’ve got nothing left inside. Stay here.”
Her words strike at you. You’re not enough.
Judging by the way Neil looks at you, you might have said that out loud.
“Child,” Luna says. There’s sorrow in her eyes. “Child, of course you are. With the right god, you are. Your spirit is emaciated, horribly so. This god doesn’t care for you the way he should. He’s not good for you.”
You think of your god dangling from your lips. You flinch, arms going around your fragile ribs. “No, I’m not—I’m not worthy of him. I—“ You clamp your lips around the urge to confess. You don’t know where it’s coming from. Confession is for your god’s ears and your god’s ears alone. “I have to go.”
“You can’t,” Luna says matter of factly. You knees give out on you, sending you to the ground as if to prove her point. She smiles thinly. “And it would be cruel of me to help you back to him.”
Neil jerks back, alarmed. “Luna, we can’t send her back to him. He’ll ki—“
She presses a finger to his lips. “Hush, dear one.” Her eyes are even on you. The array of emotions—the sorrow, the judgement, the horror—it’s all gone. She’s perfectly still as she watches you. The perfect judge. “Call him, child. Call your god to you.”
You’re already shaking your head. “No. He doesn’t like being called. I won’t do that to him.” You’d compelled him—summoned him—once before. You still bear the scars of the wounds he inflicted on your psyche to this day.
“Then pray,” Luna says. She stands, leaving Neil on the couch behind her. “Pray for him, child. If you don’t, I will.”
She swells over you, a terrifying cloud of red and thunder that you can feel in your bones. She’s serious and, you think, thinking about making you call him anyway.
You pray. There’s a goddess here. Please, my god, I’m sorry. I need you. Out loud you say, “He may not come. He has many other believers, better ones than me to see today.” He’d told you so, last time he came.
Luna laughs. It’s not a pleasing sound. “Has he convinced you so thoroughly that you mean nothing? You made him. He’ll come.”
The door flies open, a wave of cold and wind rushing through the room. Your god stands in the doorway, freezing, eyes like stones, hands clenched to his sides. “I’m her god. That’s why I came.”
If you could, you would crawl across the floor to his feet. “I’m sorry, my god, I didn’t know what to do—“
Neil is sitting rigid on the couch. “Luna, it’s him. He’s the one.” He brings a hand up over his eyes, blocking his sight. You can tell the action blocks more than just his vision. He’s covering his third eye like a child cowering in the dark. “He reeks.”
Your god’s eyes flash. “Rude. Very rude.” He looks at Luna and it’s like he can’t sense her like you can. Or maybe he’s just too strong to be afraid. “Control your follower before I do.”
This time, when Luna laughs, it makes you revise your thoughts on her previous laugh. That one—the one without humor, without affection—wasn’t unpleasant. This one is. Mean and sharp. Cruel. “Don’t get above yourself, young god. You may smell of power, but your flock is starving to give you that illusion. I am too old to fall for party tricks.”
“It’s not a trick,” your god snarls. He slams the door behind him and he swells, growing one foot. Two. You cry out as his reach sucks at the little bit of magic you regained and his eyes slide to you. His lip curls. “You broke your fast, Honey.”
“Honey,” Neil says. His eyes are wide. “You took her name?”
“I’m sorry,” you say. You fall onto your forearms, fighting against the black pulling at your mind. “I didn’t mean to, they—“ Blaming others is weakness. You swallow. “I didn’t mean to.”
Your god isn’t satisfied with that. He stretches his hand to you and twists it in mid-air. You brace for pain, for your magic to disappear, for the air from your lungs to vanish, but nothing happens. The air in front of you is shining pink. Like Luna.
“Ah,” Luna says. She’s only got eyes for your god now. “That’s how you’ve done it then. You told them to fast and, rather than filling them, you took. I thought it odd that I hadn’t heard of a god powerful enough to break a good witch’s barriers and take their magic. I didn’t hear of one because there isn’t one. Just a pathetic little immortal tricking humans into lowering their own shields. A regular vampire, aren’t you?”
Your god’s hands clench at his sides. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Neil asks. He’s shaking, but not with fear. There’s fiery rage in his eyes and his magic laps at you like lava. “There are three dead with the smell of your power inside of them. How many of your followers have ended up like Amanda? Worse? How many more names have you taken?”
“I’ve taken nothing more than the sacrifices owed to me.” Your god’s magic is like ice. Steam creeps from the corners of the room where his magic steals the heat. “I did what I had to with the lot I was given.”
Your head flies back at that. They just said that human lives have been lost. Like you. Worse. He’s not denying it. He’s not denying it. Your heart beats hard in your chest as you wrestle with that realization. Surely, it must have been righteous, these deaths? He’s your god, it had to have been righteous.
Luna snorts. “You had to steal human magic? You had to rip their essences from their souls to feed yourself? You’re not a god, young one, if you must take to live.”
“Do not,” your god snarls, “presume to label me.”
It occurs to you that your god may have other reasons besides vanity to shy away from scrutiny. It’s a blasphemous thought.
(Is it?)
“How many?” you ask Neil. You don’t realize that you’re turning away from your god, seeking Neil’s eyes for the truth. “How many have died?”
“Three,” Neil repeats. He lets you probe into his mind until you can feel the truth. The rage is almost too strong to get through. “Two more on their way. Not including you.”
Your god’s power wraps around your throat. You gasp, clawing at the band, and don’t fight as he uses his grip to turn you. His face is red, teeth flashing. “I wouldn’t have had to do it,” he hisses at, you, dragging you forward, “if not for you.”
“Me?” You choke when he steps forward, faster than you expected, cracking through Luna’s barrier to wrap a hand around your neck. He lifts you like that until you’re back on your feet. Then he lifts a little more until the only thing in the world is his flesh against yours and his nails digging towards your spine.
“If you had followed my word, no one would have died,” he says. His eyes slide from yours, not waiting for his words to hit home, to look at Luna and Neil. “Shall I tell them why you’re being punished?”
Your first thought is confusion. You’re being punished? That’s not right, you’re fasting, fasting isn’t supposed to be a punishment. Then you realize what he’s saying and your face flushes. Your hands go to his wrist, pleading. “Don’t.”
Your god throws you back to the ground. “None of my followers would have had to die if not for her. She got greedy, lazy on the power of my grace. She’s a god-eater.” His lip curls. “Or, rather, she tried to be.”
The word hangs in the air. Neil’s head swings to you, instinctive. You find that you can’t meet his eyes. You can barely draw in breath to breathe. You prop yourself up on your elbows and let the words crush you. God-eater. Betrayer.
Luna’s face gives nothing away. “When?”
Your god must see something in her that you’ve missed because there’s a smile of victory on his lips when he answers. You can feel his smugness echoing down the bond. “Less than a month into her first fast. I couldn’t hurt her to get away—she’s my first believer. You know how they’re special. But she betrayed my trust and if it weren’t for my other believers I would have died.”
The shame of it nearly kills you right then and there. Your heart stutters in your chest and you look down at your clenched fists. You want to tell them that you had no choice; you were so hungry, so very hungry. But, in your heart, you know that to eat your god is a sin and you tried. You tried.
Maybe laying on the floor between two beings who won’t even look at you is what you deserve. No, it’s more than you deserve. You killed three people with your sin. That’s more than you can ever atone for.
Luna nods slowly, her pink eyes very steady. She asks, “So you drained your believers of power—all of whom were fasting—to save your own life.”
He shrugs and there’s brutality in the motion. He’s still so very angry. “Yes.”
Luna hums. Her eyes drift to you, considering, before roaming back to him. “She called for you, didn’t she? Oh, not in the first week. Our believers are always so devout that first week without us. But then the second week comes and they break. Just a little. They call and what can we do? We’re gods.”
She takes a slow step forward.
Your god doesn’t notice. “We’re gods,” he repeats. The cold around him eases as he lets the words roll off his tongue. He likes them. “I visited her in the third week, but she wasn’t grateful for my presence. She tried to consume my flesh.”
“So you killed three of your followers to get back to full strength,” Luna says. She takes another of her steps, like a lion stalking through the grass. “Reasonable, right?”
There’s a rising tension in the room. Even as you are, you can feel it. Like a storm cloud about to break.
This time, your god takes a step backward when she steps forward. He seems a little less relaxed when he says, “Right.”
“Wrong,” Luna says. She stops moving, four feet away, but it feels close. Too close. “A god who can’t provide for their believers doesn’t deserve to have any.”
You should stop this. You can see the writing on the wall now. Luna is an Old God, a Powerful God. A Vengeful God. You can see the hunger around her mouth and around Neil’s. You can see it and you should stop it, but you can’t. Three lives. Three lives. You made your god. You failed to stop him. Those lives are on you.
You watch Luna get ready to strike.
Your god bristles, steam bursting in the air around him as his aura flexes. “How dare you—“
Luna lunges. She’s been pretending to be slow all this time with the easy nods and timid steps. She’s fast and your eyes can’t track her movement from in front of you to where she slams your god against the wall by his throat. She leans forward, her pastel hair crackling, and hisses, “A real god doesn’t ask for their believers to fast so that they can gain power without giving anything up. A real god would have seen his followers starving and given them his very blood to satiate the hunger. You’re a leech, a vampire, and your neglect has nearly ruined all who were fooled by your facade.”
“No,” your god gasps. His hands scramble for her wrist, much like yours did when he had you by the neck, and his skin where he touches her blackens. Deadens. She’s sucking the life from him. “You can’t do this! They were my believers to do with what I willed! I did nothing wrong!”
Luna laughs. Your god’s power is flowing into her, making her glow from within. Her hair is a mess of light. “But you did.” She leans in again and kisses your god on the forehead like a child. “You didn’t let her eat you.”
She drinks your god down like wine, his screams ripping through the air. He cries. He curses. He screams for you to help. You clap your hands over your ears, but you can’t find the strength to close your eyes. Your god, your god, your god, your GOD—
“AMANDA!” His voice is barely legible, but your name (your real name) rocks you to your core. He’s staring at you, eyes wild. He’s no longer man-sized. He’s looks like he did all those years ago on your bed, face plump from the sweet wine you sacrificed. “Amanda!”
You didn’t realize the power in those syllables, the strength, until your god gave them back to you. You’re Amanda, a witch, a woman, a person. You crafted your god from clay with your own two hands and he’s supposed to be different. He killed three people. You sit up, your name like iron in your spine, and meet his eyes. “Goodbye, Lorcan.”
He howls as the last of him is swallowed by light, eyes only leaving yours when he loses them both. His power streams into Luna’s open mouth, following the lines of her throat as she pulls apart your god atom by atom until all that’s left is energy.
Then she turns to you.
“Ah,” Neil says from where he’s kneeling. At some point he’d fallen to his knees, hands clasped in front of him. Supplicant. “From whence it came, it must return.” He turns to you with wonder in his eyes. “You called him. You really called him.”
“It’s time to finish what you started,” Luna says. Her voice is nothing like it was before—it’s as if a hundred people are speaking at once. The sound of it rings in your bones, in your head. Light spills from her mouth. “Open up.”
The shock of everything means that you don’t understand for a long moment. When you do, you nearly dry heave. She wants you to take your god back into yourself, eat of his essence like you tried to do weeks ago.“No, no I can’t. I’m not—I’m not a god-eater.”
“You summoned divinity, child,” Luna says in her hundred voices. She kneels in front of you, ignoring your attempts to get you weak arms to drag you away. “There is no running from that.”
“No,” you gasp. You turn your face away as she leans toward you, eyes shining with pyrite. “No, keep it, I won’t—“
Luna’s mouth seals over yours. It’s not a kiss. Your god’s essence—his soul— floods into you, scalding hot and icy cold all at once. You scream against the goddess’ lips, hands coming up to push at her face. Lorcan slips down your throat, immense, too much, and he burns. You can feel what he is —what he was—ripping at the well of your magic. Changing it. Embedding himself in it.
Your body flushes with new life. Your blood burns just as hot as the energy, pushing out the weeks of toxins that have built up in it. Your skin fills out, plumps up, flushes. Your vision clears so that you can see Luna hasn’t closed her eyes. She’s watching your transformation, pink eyes emptying of Lorcan’s color.
Everything human about you is consumed under the onslaught of power. Luna’s right—there’s no returning divinity once it’s been called up. There’s only reclaiming it, breaking it and transforming it until it’s something you can live with.
When she pulls away, you’re no longer screaming. Your crying and your tears are so cold that they steam against your warm and rosy cheeks. You’re mourning. For your father who might have seen this coming. For Lorcan who wasn’t the god he needed himself to be. For yourself for all the things you’ve lost, then and now.
“Welcome,” Neil says softly from over Luna’s shoulder. He looks different now, a pall of humanity hanging over his face and a magic-fire shining bright in his chest. “Welcome, young goddess.” He drops back to one knee, head bowed in supplication.
To you.
“Welcome, sister,” Luna says. She sits back on her heels and extends her hand to you. “Amanda.”
Your name rings with power, falling from her lips. You reach for her hand and pause, staring at your skin. There’s a glow coming from your bones. Divinity. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
Luna looks sad. “It’s what you needed. Rise, Amanda. Your old god left two believers behind. You must attend to them.”
The bonds flare to life when she mentions them, shimmering in the back of your mind. You can feel the believers now. Weak. Fading. Something surges in you, a will that you’ve never felt before, powerful and all-consuming. You need to get to your believers. “Take me.”
“They may be saved,” Luna tells Neil. She helps you rise and leads you to the door, your hand in hers. “She’s strong. There might be hope yet.”
“There is,” you say. You feel it like fact. Like truth. “There is.”
“Hallelujah,” Neil says and closes the door behind you.
