She sizzled into sentience. The fizzing sound of burning cochineal beetles, the scent of their soft carapace-less flesh in the air was the first thing she noted with her newfound conscience. Her people, she recognized with the slow foggy awareness that came from a long deep sleep, as she struggled to pull herself into life. Their blood decorated her metalic golden surface, painting her carmine red with cursive glyph-like designs.
She was a talisman, she realized, a human-crafted golden statue, human in shape, but humans were not her people, she knew with striking clarity, they weren’t the ones sacrificed to her and she would not accept anything less than life-blood as tribute, as her due. She was constructed from a strange metal, golden, but not entirely gold. She could feel her own composition clearly, with an innate sort of knowledge. A strange pulsing, living mineral laced her body, a connection to something older, arcane and unknowable. A god-being, she rationalized, as reason became accessible to her, her thoughts growing with complexity the longer she was awake. Something immortal, eternal. A seed of godhood.
She was warming, she realized, her body heating up as a chant progressed over her body, her mouth becoming molten hot. A soft fleshy human hand reached into her open mouth, past her jade white teeth, making a delicate hooked gesture with blistering fingers, pulling something out from her. A spidersilk fine silken thread laced their digit, coming out from her tongue, the other end disappearing into their smoldering skin. A single dewy drop of golden luck slipped down the line from within her, sinking into their bubbling flesh, sinking in to bestow them with her grace. Luck, she gave them, unwittingly. Luck stolen from her body, from her godhood. How could a god of luck be so unlucky?
A sigh came from somewhere above her, a sound full of both pain and relief. The gossamer thread of luck was released, retracting back into her body. And then she was being wrapped, shrouded in a fragrant incense suffused burial cloth, a prayer of thanks being sung as she was wound-up in the fine bandages, like a spindle to thread. Don’t put me away, she thought, terrified of returning to the dark. Her mind blanked, fading to black as the last of the fabric covered her skin.
When she awoke the second time, it was much easier to pull herself out of the mental fog. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, or if this was just the next time she had been uncovered, but the hands holding her felt different, more calloused, as if they had gone through countless cycles of burns. She was being polished, the human humming as they worked, the baby-soft brush abrasive but pleasant on her metal skin. They paid special attention to her mouth, careful to polish the inside, beyond her teeth, filling it with sudsy fluid and running the soft bristle brush over top of her tongue. She could taste, kind of. A bitter flavor, unpleasant, she decided.
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The human set her on a small platform, something with carved symbols into the surface, sweet scented incense sticks smoking lazily around her, before bowing elaborately in front of her, demure, kneeling with their head bent piously. She could see more clearly now, her eyes no longer blurry, fuzzy around the edges. Various stone animal statues lining the room, their visages carved into giant columns holding up the roof of the temple. A frog, a gazelle, a monkey, a crow, all stacked one on top of the other in the column nearest her, with glittery glass goldstone eyes.
Opening a rough hewn wooden box packed with straw, the human took out and carefully placed a mortar and pestle in front of them, along with a bowl made out of a large shell and a gauze-like woven burial cloth. Lastly they took out a metal contraption, unfolding it to assemble into a small portable stove complete with a well-used copper pot. Filling the pot with water from the flask at their side, they lit the flame. They churned the mortar and pestle in front of them. From within their robes they pulled out a round jar, the delicate glass blown with rings of bright color, a cork stopper on the top. She could make out something moving within the glass, something writhing. It called to her. A chorus of tiny voices, singing out her name, invoking her, ‘Ketsuri! Ketsuri!’ they invoked, with their small-beakless insect mouths. They cried out to her, their soft, red bodies bouncing them off the glass as the human shook the container, eyeing the insects within. These were her people, the cochineal, she realized, the kin of the blood that had decorated her skin, before the human had polished it away.
The human removed the stopper, shaking the glass to tip the cochineal into the mortar, tapping the bottom of the jar lightly to displace every last insect. Placing the jar aside, they picked up the pestle, and as Ketsuri watched, in morbid fascination, they ground the cochineal, heavy thick twisting strokes to crush their bodies into a sticky paste. Ketsuri could still hear them, their supplications as they begged for salvation. She was unmoved, she decided. It was her divine right to receive their sacrifice. They were her people after all, and their fate should be in her hands.
The ground beetles were placed in the boiling waters, along with a white powder, mixed with a wooden spoon, round and round. Apparently satisfied, the human tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot, the wood stained red now with the blood of her devotees, setting it to their side on the floor before pouring the hot mixture through the gauze cloth into the shell. They packed up their space with quick steady hands, putting the equipment back into the wooden box, which Ketsuri could now see was carved with the same carved symbols as those beneath her base. Lastly, they picked up the shell with the cooling extract, setting it next to Ketsuri. A faint acidity prickled at her nose, just underneath the heavy scent of the incense still smoking around her.
Pulling out another, more fine-tipped brush, they began to reapply the cursive glyphs in the hot liquid, gracefully painting her surface with long smooth strokes. She reveled in the feeling of her peoples hot blood on her skin, their sacrifice recharging her soul. She was their god, and this was her due.