Written: 8/26/24 - 9/6/24
Word Count: 3,064

But the only thing I learned is life is a grave...and I dig it.

"Her name is Lufela," the insipid Goddess said, faux-casual, eyes on her bejeweled nails. "That nymphette who died."

"Who asked?" I mumbled, switching from the triangle-tipped coloring utensil to the circular one.

These oil sticks had been condensed so the color dye infused in them could create a lasting impression. In my previous life, or dream, or elfsbane bender, or whatever in the naga it had been, we had called these sticks "oilons." Here, they were just called "oil sticks."

Such poor, uncultured peasants these sun nymphs were.

"Nobody asked me. I just thought you would want to know." The Goddess plumed her incorporeal form, fluffing it up to epic proportions.

I stared. The tot beside me stared, drool escaping his gaping maw. It paired excellently with his bowl-style haircut.

After I had been born on this cursed femur, the foolish deity had learned to stop coming down to visit in a solid form, but only after thirty Hesperides from my village had gone blind first.

Now, traveling doctors and teachers for the visually-impaired made a ruckus on the jagged slopes of my home, crowing just like roosters every sunrise and braying like vengeful donkeys during every late-afternoon tea time. To end their days of spreading gospel and righteous teachings, the foreigners spent the night howling at the moon, just like an infestation of untrained house pups.

The tot sitting at the table beside me slurped half of the liquid pooling from his mouth back into his oral cavity, only to cough on the upsurge, spewing a coat of bubbling mucus and spittle across my masterpiece. The backs of my chubby, three-year-old fists were flecked with slime. I stilled, discarding my oilon on the oozing nymph's side of the table.

"Oh, yuck," the Goddess leaned in over my shoulder, ghostly image whispering across my ear. I felt no breath, but her chipper effervescence was awful enough. "Hey," she continued, blowing nonexistent air across the tufty bangs fringing my temples, "you're not ignoring me again, are you? I told you some very important information, and—"

"And why," I enunciated, the syllables leaving my mouth with utmost precision and patience, "does a dead nymphette have anything to do wiff me?"

The Goddess blinked, blinding visage blinking so bright she was blue. Or purple? Alternating blinks changed her color, and I sighed.

This deity was...really too much. I had long run out of names to call her. She now only existed in my mind as the Goddess. The insipid Goddess.

She'd done it. She'd worn me down.

The Goddess hovered around me several hours each day. This hovering sometimes took on the reproachful vibes of a parent: "Don't jump off that rock! Walk around it! Around!" At other times, her spiteful side had her rambling about her personal romantic pairings of the villagers we came in contact with...even if this "romantic vision" was between two tots: "Look at how that nymph holds his spoon! A sturdy grip, perfect for spear-hunting. He'll take care of our sweet Greta, no problem." At yet others, the insipid Goddess could only bemoan her forgotten glory: "Back in my day, I was the most radiant Goddess around, you know! All the other deities chose to create 'air' or 'flowers.' None of them were as creative as me, you know? A whole blazing world! Without me, none of this would be possible. You know? You see how important I am, right? How special?"

Mostly, I tried to ignore her, reaching out to rebuke her in this mental link that somehow connected the thoughts in my brain straight to the Goddess. I didn't want to be seen with her. Now that she'd learned to stop showing up and blinding her followers, the Goddess took to a corporeal form. Apparently, I was the only one lucky enough to see it. And lucky enough that others couldn't see us together.

But now it was just me and this tot in this open cave. Jaysun.

Our physical forms were technically the same age, but his birth hadn't been as big of a deal because of the Goddess showing up and searing her mark into my skin and blinding three priests and all that. This poor little thing's momma had been sent to one of the old birthing chambers to squeeze him out, the goats' blood still sticky on the ground. It may be for this reason that the nymph had been born with an utter distaste for any and all signs of blood. Or meat.

This was a small village. There were only four births in the year I popped out, and one was stillborn. The third, a lovely nymphette fawned over by all the adults, was sickly, and as such, only ventured away from her mama's arms once every a dozen days or so.

Alas, Jaysun was my sole, unfortunate companion. I wasn't allowed to have a name because of shit-clogged rituals for messengers and all that, but this drooly thing whose hair had burst from his scalp nearly immediately only to round out into a bowl on his unfortunate head, this nymph was allowed to be referred to as something other than, "Exalted One."

Would these injustices ever end?

Since it was just me and this tot in our little daycare room, our nymphancy teacher nowhere to be seen—as usual—I could speak freely.

Jaysun only stared, wide-eyed, spewing his snot and ruining his picture of a truly unfortunate butterfly.

The Goddess and I were used to it by now.

"You're still ignoring me," the Goddess said, popping up behind my shoulder like a vengeful sprite.

I sighed, not bothering to look back at that haunted visage. After three and some years, I still hadn't a clue what the Goddess looked like. Well...it's not like it mattered. If a different deity started bothering me at all hours of the day, then I would worry. How would I tell them apart if they kept changing their forms?

When I'd been born, she'd been some blonde-haired, dark-skinned creature, neither resembling an elf nor a nymph. Once, she showed up wearing a watery blue face that looked more see-through than glass. It was hard to have a conversation with someone so flimsy, especially when you could see what was happening right behind their head.

Today, the Goddess fancied herself some nature deity of all things. Rosaries and vines trailed awkwardly over her frame. Even her skin retained a faint green pigmentation peeking out through the brown. Things were growing in her long, gnarled hair. Things that made quite a racket. And, based on Jaysun's flinching—he could hear it, too.

I sighed, exchanging my red oilon for a blue one. In genuine artistic passion, my drawing today was a lake with selkies eating Goddesses. Most of the gossamer page was red, red enough to almost cover the various Goddess-shaped outlines and veering over onto the seal-like minions eating them. Maybe that was too much? Others should still be able to see the selkies. I guess it couldn't be all red.

A scuffle with loud chittering and ungodly screeching took place somewhere within all the vines and brambles of the deity's hair. Jaysun flinched in full-bodied surprise.

This wouldn't be the first time the Goddess left behind living creatures after a visit. Did she not care about ruining the ecosystems on her femur, or was that how everything on the island came to be in the first place?

Ignoring the Goddess for the entire duration of my drawing process didn't deter her. No. Now, she started on her favorite topic: match-making.

"I wonder how Gratiya is faring these days," the Goddess sighed, squeezing her giant frame onto the little rock bench across the table. For an instant, she flickered, and I shot a weighing glance toward Jaysun.

Had she blinded yet another of her devout followers?

Jaysun's drool reached his lap, spilling down his shorts and onto his pale pink knees. Hesperides were typically red, alright, but apparently, sometimes they turned pink. This one was only pink at his joints. The rest of his body was that same, deep cherry color as my body.

Before becoming one, I'd never met a Hesperide. They didn't live on the mainland, as far as I knew. Certainly not in the big cities I traveled.

I sighed despondently as the reminder of leaving my entire life behind formed a little piece of coal, cold and sharp, right under my ribcage.

"I saw what she was wearing at the bonfire two nights ago, and I couldn't believe my eyes! What kind of sicko has an ankle fetish? What's with all those bruises, you know?" She jostled a viney elbow across the table, asking the two three-year-olds about mating kinks.

I had gone from a teaching assistant moments away from turning in my final paper to a toddler wearing a diaper. Sure, okay. The change from a Wood Elf to a Hesperide—a nymph—was not that drastic. The folk are far more alike than they are different, no matter what any High Elves or Mermaids had to say about it. One could argue elves and nymphs were basically the same—their paltry magic just came from two different places.

"I know your age group is only, like, three, but little Didi will probably be paired off with Jaysun here, right? I've heard their parents talking. Poor Didi's parents keep trying to avoid the issue because, well, you see how he is..."

A simple life. Casual parties with friends at the end of a long school week. Visiting other university branches for conferences. Traveling the mainland. Did I miss the variety of the Goddess's Torso? Was this feeling a nostalgia of being far from home? Was nostalgia supposed to feel like battle ants fighting a long-term siege against the walls of my heart?

What would happen once they broke that lining? What would happen once they got in?

"We should talk about your crush on that priest," the Goddess continued spouting her yewing garbage, but at these words, I paused.

Could it be that I wasn't taking this life seriously at all? After all, how had I been killed in the last one? I'd only been in my twenties!

"A yewing bird," I blurted. Jaysun blinked at me, and from the focus in his gaze, I knew he hadn't been blinded by that sudden light from earlier. Huh. Maybe it was a miracle to be so simple-minded.

"What's that?" the Goddess asked, thrown off-kilter. Agitated, she tapped the table in a fast rhythm, tendrils of vines falling off and appearing seemingly out of thin air in front of Jaysun. Luckily, he was either so used to it by now that he didn't flinch or he just didn't notice. One could never tell with that wide-eyed gaze. "The priest is...not...a bird? What, wait. What bird are you talking about?"

"You killed me," I said slowly, remembering flashes of a white ball of feathers flying so fast it turned into mere streaks of color, "wiff a bird!"

The Goddess's head flew back, those vines smacking into her indistinct form at the suddenness. "Why would I do that? You died in an accident, an accident! How dare you blame me?"

"A bird drilling into someone's cran-i-um at over fiffy ridges per mountain is an accident?" I glared at the foolish Goddess.

Really, she was such a fool. Such a fool.

She'd killed me. For this. To stuff me in a tiny sausage body with tiny sausage legs and dozens of blinded villagers expecting me to guide their zealot lifestyles. What. What? What!?

The knot of emotion in my stomach didn't feel angry and turbulent, and that made me angry. How dare my stomach not be as pissed off as my head? Clearly, this was not my body.

"It could happen to anybody," she defended, crossing her arms over her chest. Without an anchor keeping her still against the table, she drifted into the air. Once again, Jaysun's eyes followed the movement, and in my anger, I still noticed.

Could he see her or not? I really couldn't tell.

"What do you even want wiff me?" I pouted. Memories of my birth came in patchy impressions, the feeling overall warm and bright. Had she ever told me why she did this to me?

Did it even matter? It's not like I was going to help her if she did have a purpose. She drilled a bird through my skull, took me away from my friends, my career, my aspirations. My home.

Why would I ever do anything for her?

This second life was a curse, and I thoroughly rejected it.

Instead of responding to my question and thereby lessening the anger clenching my throat, the Goddess of Light, Goddess of Life, Goddess of this Glorious Femur, said, "Are you...depressed?"

Silence was the better answer here. And staring. Plenty of staring. I willed every ounce of rejection and disgust into my eyes until they burned like fireball traps. Since I was some type of messenger, perhaps they were actually on fire. Either way, they were hot.

The Goddess's mouth twisted, and she looked away. I felt victory emerge inside of me as she muttered about irredeemable miscreants.

"You were from my Torso," she said at last, blowing out a breath that gusted firecrackers across the open air like the belch of a dragon. Jaysun's eyebrows singed completely off.

"So?" I said, morosely looking down at my ruined masterpiece. The horde of Goddesses were clearly still breathing. The selkies were covered under more of the red than those stupid blondes.

Curse these little sausage fingers!

"Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo," the Goddess droned without pause until, finally, I had no choice but to turn my cheek and glare at her.

"Stop that," I said slowly, brandishing a blue oilon in a threatening manner.

"You should go to the Burning tonight," the Goddess flipped, changing her tone to that of an overly bored lobster being annoyingly boiled to death. Her antsy self used the small table as a pillow, vines and chittering creatures spilling across the oilons and coloring sheets. Jaysun's space was invaded entirely, some gray-brown creature stalking down from the Goddess's neck.

Jaysun stared, wide-eyed—his only defensive maneuver. The thing stalked down those green vines, a hiss quivering at its small, rodent-like cheeks. Somewhat alarmed, I wondered if there was any way to save this pitiful nymph from the devastating disinterest of his deity.

The creature leaped, clamoring up Jaysun's head and wrapping itself around his neck, little front paws holding the crown of his head firmly. It had found its own little perch. One look at the rapid blinks of the tot, each one wetter than the last, and I knew implosion was imminent.

"You are such a pain," I hissed, untangling my hands from the mixture of thick green braids and vines trellised along them. If she was in spirit form, how could I be ensnared? How could she spill angry rodents from her scalp?

"Wa," the first sob was more surprised than scared, but I knew the next would soon follow. It always ended like this. The Goddess's haunting was mostly just annoying for me, but it was traumatic and lingering for the little sun nymph.

"Waaa..."

Ears suddenly ringing in the horrible memories of this tot's lung capacity, I poked helplessly at the stupid Goddess's head. "What do you want? Just spit it out. Come on."

The Goddess moaned, a rising accompaniment to the similarly-droning nymph. One was filled with tremors, unpleasant. The sound of a forgotten child's cries were too heavy to wear, so it prickled the skin. Meanwhile, the other moaned like they were some grazing animal out in a field. Baying out their boredom. The two sounds clashed, creating a wall.

"You don't want to help me," she mooed.

Jaysun's cries took a sharp upward pitch as the gray creature began nibbling on his pointy ears, their strawberry-pink tips too tantalizing to resist, apparently, and that was it. I had had enough.

"You're glaring at me, agaiinnn," the deity continued, crowing this time. "My own messenger hates meeee."

My eyes had hardened, settling deeper into my face; now they felt like immovable rocks. No moisture to be found. Certainly no blinking.

"What. Do. You. Want."

The Goddess peeked her head up. I got another flash of blinding brilliance, so I, once again, checked beside me, but Jaysun had been—surprise—spared his vision. His eyes turned to liquid pools, dripping even more than his nose. In his panic, they darted every which way as his chubby hands fluttered by his head, unsure how to remove the biting rodent. You could actually see the thoughts refusing to connect, leaving helpless despair in its wake.

Was it luck? Or divine stupidity? How could this tot still be able to see after spending so much time with this flashing Goddess?

"I'll go to the Burning," I said, at last, a whisper at the base of a fearsome tornado.

Just like that, the Goddess popped up, grinning almost as bright as her blinding radiance. She immediately began to disappear, her outline sinking into the air like she was dissipating into nothing. As she faded, she gave one final direction: "Make sure you give them my blessing, kay? Just make up something nice. And pay attention to Lufela's corpse."

"Wait, why—"

"Bye, cuties!" She waved, just the barest outline visible in the air. "Some of the other deities invited me to a heavenly spring. They have this delightful spa that uses huge mollusk shells instead of hot rocks, and—"

The Goddess disappeared, but I wasn't left in quietude and silence. Our neglectful nymphancy teacher rushed right in, running straight to the table, but instead of freaking out over the suspicious rodent wrapped around Jaysun's head, she chastised, "These oil sticks don't belong on the floor, now, do they?"

All I could do was silently fume. It felt as if I was the ember, the flint, the wood, and the smoke.

Doing a mental calculation of the past three years in this body, I cursed under my breath.

"What was that?" the nymphancy teacher said snidely, hands propped up on her hips.

I ignored her.

It was a crushing defeat. How could I let this go on?

The Goddess was destroying me 713 to 4.

Something had to be done.