Nix opened her eyes.  The world swam before her and her consciousness was still at the edge of her thought.  It took only a second but then it hit her, the entire truth of the situation she was in.  She no longer had her divinity, and she was a slave of a murderer. To keep the tears back she squeezed her eyes back shut.

And her sisters had abandoned her...

Once it all came into her head she curled up, this feeling of desolation inside her threatened to break her will, make her some bumbling idiot for the rest of her life, unaware of her surroundings as she passed through life.

She was no longer a god, she was mortal now…

She had to work hard at it but she opened her eyes again, once again taking the world around her into view.  She was in a small appartment behind the store, it consisted of two rooms.  One was a bedroom that the five of them seemed to happily share, and the other was this room she was in, a combination kitchen living room with a folding hideaway bed that she had practically collapsed on, the stress of it all robbing her of her conscious thoughts.

This to was mortal.

It was not that gods didn't feel fatigue it was simply that it held less sway over them, should they choose they could continue existence without resting, in fact many gods and goddesses did this claiming that the fact they needed sleep was all just a misdirection of the mind, a weaker will, and that they as gods could defy will and needs, wants and hungers.

Nix really didn't care, she slept when she felt the need.  And after a day like yesterday she was surprised she didn't sleep for the next several years.  She looked at the little digital clock that was sitting on the night stand next to the hidabed,  its dull red glow casting enough light around the room to make out some features of it as its display flashed 10:32.

Standing up she looked at the walls, they were covered in photos, some new and some old.  Out of curiosity she started looking at them.  One of them caught her attention first, it was an old picture in it there was a young boy with red hair sitting on top of a grown man’s shoulders with the same coloration, and a woman stood besides them.  All three of them had large smiles and looked for all the world to see happy. They were standing outside the front of this shop.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Its funny,”  a voice said, and Nix jumped spinning around in a low stance.  But when she saw the speaker had no intent of attacking she lowered her stance.  It was that Asherah’s doppelganger, or daughter, she really didn't know. “When I first showed up here that was the first picture that drew me in aswell,”  she sighed looking at it, but not actually seeing it as she remembered the past, her emerald eyes glazed over.  Amani blinked and cleared the old memories out of her head.  “I think it is the general happiness of everyone, it is infectious, even though only a simple image, what it must have been like to be near them at that time...”

“What do you want.” Nix asked her cautiously.

“What do I want?” Amani asked. “I want you to try.”

“Try? Try what?”

“Try to make this work, it will be miserable for everyone otherwise.”

“Now you listen if you think I will be a slave to some mur-” Nix started, but a cold hand clamped around her throat and she found herself lifted off the floor by the woman named amani that had been so far away a mere blink ago. The same look was on her face, and Nix found herself reliving the moment of her downfall again.  With slow careful movements Amani lowered her to the floor.

“Do you know the full story?”  she asked.

“No need, I know the results.” Nix replied, in her line of work motivations mattered not, only the deed done.

Amani sighed,“you will listen, and you will listen well, to render judgment before knowing the full story is to render judgment without a complete picture and is unfair to both the victims and the victimizer.”  and so she started to talk, telling Nix the story of Richardson, starting from when she had arrived all the way through to his death.  It took well over an hour, and Nix knew that most of this was the quick version but she was starting to get a better picture, one that seemed to add up to Dan’s character.

He was still a murderer, but now he was a murderer with reasons, and if Nix was being honest most of those reasons were valid. But he still murdered, and no murder was ever righteous, no murder no matter the person it was done against could go unpunished.  But perhaps he was not as bad as she had once thought.

“You are stuck with us for now,” Amani said, her story over. “I don’t ask that you trust us right away, I simply ask that you try and have an open mind, letting what we do with our actions be what you judge us by.”

Nix sighed and nodded her head slightly, she had no way out of this situation not for now, it would not help her in any way shape or form to treat those that watched over her now with disdain.

“I have been gone over long,” Amani said. “I am going out to the sales floor, you are welcome to join us down there if you want.”  she said, and she turned around and walked out the door, her long hair practically brushing on the floor as she walked out of the room.

Nix sighed again, she had been doing a lot of that this past couple of hours, sighing. She nodded to herself, the faster she got used to this the faster it would be over.  She went to follow Amani but another picture caught her attention. It was just like the other one that she caught site of, a family outside the Shoppe all smiling and radiating happiness.

Only this one had a young man with red hair and beard and his four wives in it...