FAIRWEATHER FRIENDS

Briony dype goddess of the ocean, was pissed off and, in her tempestuous temper, was tossing Teyranic triremes to and fro at terrible tempo. She had been after the job of the god of rain for EONS; after all, with the ocean and all, it was right in her wheelhouse.

And then without so much as a by your leave what’s his name (why couldn’t she bloody remember, they’d been rivals since the big bang, and reacted to each other presence damn near as explosively. Yet here he was occupying a niggling little blank spot in her brain that somehow grew blanker by the day, and she didn’t like it one little bit.) So she shook seafarers, dashed dinghies, smashed schooners, junked junks, destroyed buoys, and allround made waves.

Frantic prayers from the priests couldn’t cool her temper, one smart-mouthed priest who was somewhat deficient in the survival instincts department even suggested it was the wrong time of the el nino. (He only said it once, of course, smiting tends to be a one-time punishment due to the whole, not surviving thing, unless Destiny is involved, then all bets are off because Destiny cheats, and for some reason seems to rather favour smug gits.) This came as rather a surprise to him and the other priests when they realised that the ones who had grassed him up were the priestesses, who did not appreciate that kind of humour; thank you very much.

Now to add insult to injury, there was talk of using a help wanted ad to find his replacement. “I’ve been applying for that job for years, me dammit”, she ranted as she carefully aimed a lightning bolt to hit a lighthouse. “What do they even mean temperament unsuitable for the job requirements? I have a great temperament.” (At that moment, every seafarer around the world may beg to differ, very quietly, of course, badmouthing gods tends to not be very healthy for you when you literally live on their aspect, so it wouldn’t do to be heard doing it, especially not given her tendency to throw around storms when annoyed.)

“I literally work with storms regularly; they want rain. I can make it; do they need water? I don’t think any God out there can deliver it faster. It never entered her head that maybe the storms, fast delivery, and tendency to favour saltwater may be a contributing factor in her rejected applications. Mortals tend to get a little snippy about tsunamis and flash floods or salt on their fields; in Briony’s opinion, that just showed they were picky bastards who were never pleased. Oh wah wah wah, my crops are dying, why is my house underwater? We were using that city the sea just swallowed up; honestly, they lose one city and never stop whingeing about it; it wasn’t like she made a habit out of it or anything, it was only one single, the insignificant great flood, and she’d even sent them a pretty rainbow to say sorry, what more did the whiny sods want from her?

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Well, there was one great advantage of job applications, if nobody else applied, then the job was hers by default. If they were too scared to apply, then the job was hers, and if anybody was unwise enough to apply, well, what was the old expression? Dead gods attend no interviews; that was easy peasy. (Union rules didn’t really include not offing other gods unless they scabbed, of course, after all, gods killing other gods was a time-honoured deific pastime, and it wasn’t like killing the competition off even worked in the long term. Gods had a tendency not to stay dead for long. One coffin in a river, loin explosion, a couple of lumps of two by four, or any one of a bazillion quirky circumstances, and they were back, usually with a vengeance. Specifically on those who rendered them dead gods, in the first place. To gods, this never-ending conflict was the equivalent to a local sports match, with an infinite number of rematches; after all, something has to pass the time or eternity feels like well.... forever.)

Now all she had to do was start work scoping out the competition.

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Desmond Pot (or Des if any of his friends survived using it to refer to him, spoiler alert, they didn’t.) Was the current reigning king of Teyranis, and he was not happy, to say the least, (of course, given that not happy was his default setting, and he tended to spread the unhappiness around even at his default you can understand why nobody used any more than the least to describe his state. They were attached to their limbs and made a hobby of breathing. They really did not want to quit.)

Tyrone, his son, had vanished en route. It was bad enough that he had taken a fancy to the daughter of that weakling Ethelred, but to not even succeed in the voyage? To make matters worse, every time he sent a search party out to look for his son, the current storms sank them, ran them aground, or threw them off course. It had to be a plot, he just knew it, and he was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing everybody else did (if they disappointing him it would be. He would make damned sure of it, and everybody around him knew it.) Well, if he didn’t get answers fast enough, he could always invade. Ethelred was never prepared for war. It was all that good land making him soft. He probably couldn’t even stew a good squirrel. Desmond reached behind his throne and pulled out a tiny bell, a single ring so quiet it was barely audible, and a dozen black-clad guards appeared.

“you raaang?” asked the first guard; the others kept their mouths shut. (Side effect of not wishing to lose the ability to stick their tongue out at somebody.)

“Find my son, bring him back alive if you can’t send the signal, and then don’t bother coming back. If my son is not returned, the alliance ends, and we go to war.