The next morning found me in the back row of a church, of all things. It wasn't obvious to me exactly why this was the plan. I guess I might have burned a bridge or two by responding badly when the old god approached me. So now I was going to casually request an audience with someone who, unbeknownst to most, was actually a goddess working quietly in her own temple.

The temple itself was beautiful, and part of a beautiful town. The temple was white granite blocks with big frosted glass windows that gave a constant impression of being a place of beauty and purity--perfect for Alanna, goddess of light and knowledge, who was a mostly-regional deity who protected this country, and to a lesser extent, also the two nations it was at war with.

Light and knowledge didn't have to mean peace and wisdom, I guess.

The town was a west-facing seaport too small to call even a small city, but larger than just a fishing spot. Apparently, it was a good spot for traders to pick up food and water when going south and east to trade with this nation's enemies. Too small a town to turn down the coin, too large a town to be easily taken by pirates, and too serene and beautiful to turn into a trap for enemy traders--it seemed to just be left alone. If anything, the most excitement came floating up or down the river: goods and people from up in the mountains took the long route down the river by wooden barge, and the barges were left behind while the traders walked back up with their money and trade goods in well-guarded caravans.

There was a single shipwright and dry-dock, which I'd quietly surveyed when I arrived the day before, mostly because I felt conspicuous walking anywhere but the beach. The shipwright was a small place; the trading schooner in dock took up just a bit more space than the dock could actually afford to give it, so it was slightly cocked, but the workers swarming over the ship, clearing barnacles and replacing a section of damaged hull, worked hard and late. They might have been the only shop in town, but they weren't resting on their laurels.

The storm god had recommended, what with me not actually having any money, that I sleep in the wilderness outside of town. I was prepared to take that advice, but in the end, I fell asleep on a sandy stretch of beach listening to the waves, and nobody disturbed me until morning. I am sure that it made me all the grosser, uglier, and more unkempt, but I wasn't in any position to do better. So finally, just before the crack of dawn, I made my way to the goddess' abode and hoped I wouldn't be turned away.

As it turned out, there was nobody in a position to do so. The doors stood open, and while there was an older woman at the podium, she didn't leave or even move as people filed in from around the town, simply casting her eyes back and forth. I didn't want to impose, so I took the backest, most cornerest seat I possibly could, and sat there doing my honest best not to draw attention.

On no account was I hidden; I could tell that a number in the crowd felt disgusted by my presence, and there seemed to be a certain ugly energy that flowed from them to me. It was an upsetting thing to experience; I almost felt like I was absorbing their hate and carrying it with me, when that was the last thing that I wanted. But, as a filthy hobo hiding in the back of the church to beg the goddess for a favor, I suppose I deserved it.

As dawn finally rose in the east, some kind of lens and mirror system in the church steeple directed the first rays of dawn's light around the interior, making the whole place suddenly much brighter. I could sense... something... as a wave of emotion rolled over the people gathered in the church; apparently they liked to think of the effect as the arrival of the goddess of light, or perhaps they just enjoyed the spectacle. In either case, there was definitely a much greater, gentler wave of energy released by the light show.

A glyph I hadn't even noticed, one somehow engraved with magic power into the wall at the front of the hall, captured all of the worship and funneled it someplace else.

After that was a sublimely short half-hour session of more formal worship. It wasn't the same as Christian mass, as I'd experienced when I was younger; where that worship was insistent that everything was their lord's work and that all were indebted to him, this was a simple session of praise, one that seemed to involve things that the goddess had actually done, like delivering a sermon about properly educating children at the seashore just last year (perhaps not far from where I had fallen asleep like a wandering garbage-hobo), and turning away an army somewhere to the east by shining the sun in their eyes when it should have been overhead.

All in all, it was refreshing that not a single example was from two thousand years ago. The concept of an actual, living, active god of good acts and kindness, not merely one who might have done something ages ago, was enough to give me a swell of joy in my heart. And that energy, I soon realized, left me and collected in the symbol, along with the rest of the worship. I wasn't sure, but I thought that my own energy just might have been shining gold.

At the end of the speeches and a little bit of begging for coin, the townspeople filed out, while I stayed put. When eventually, it was just myself and the old woman still behind the podium, I rose and approached, feeling more than a bit self-conscious, but her open face betrayed no sign of judgement.

"I would like to talk to her," was all I could think to say, adding after a pause, "if that is alright."

The woman gave me a strange look, and with a gesture of her hand the church doors behind me slammed shut, and the candles that had lit the place before the sunrise all snuffed out in an instant. After another moment, with a sound of sliding wood, the light filtering in through the steeple also cut out, leaving only ambient light pouring in through the windows. Where a moment ago it had been open, airy, and light, now it was stifling and moody.

"What exactly is your business here?" The woman's voice was cold, one very different in tone and texture from the welcoming and neutral voice she had projected through the entirety of her sermons. In her eyes I could only find a fierce loyalty, a blind willingness to divide the world into those who were with, and against, her goddess.

So I held up my hands, backing away meekly. "I come asking for guidance," I said quietly. "I mean your lady no harm."

"How exactly do you know that She is here?" The priestess made another hand gesture, and although I heard nothing, when I turned around the pews and candles had stood themselves up on their ends and surrounded me, so that any further attempt to back away would only place me within her clutches.

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"I..." The fear that ran through my heart suddenly caused an enormous pain to shoot through me, and I grabbed at my chest. In that moment I knew that my body was truly in terrible shape, and that whatever divinity meant, it did not mean that I was immune to silly things like a weak heart or even a heart attack. At the very least... it didn't mean that, yet. "I was told!" I gasped, trying to focus in spite of being probably very ill. "By an old god... shadows... said he was the god of storms."

The next few minutes weren't particularly clear to me, since I was mostly trying not to die of a heart attack, but at the end of it, a beautiful woman, seemingly in her twenties, with golden hair in tight curls and a smock of golden-white cloth was kneeling in front of me. A touch of her hand eased the pain and I felt energy flowing through me, clearing filth from my veins and giving my heart muscles a gentle rub. It was enough of a combo to knock me completely on my ass, even with me being too shocked to notice the ironic subtext--because boy, that woman went straight to my heart in a flash.

Then she had a white-steel dagger leveled at my guts, and her eyes flashed at me. "If my father sent you, he would have told you his True Name. What is it?"

True name? I could hear the capital letters, but it was the first I'd heard of such a thing. "Lady," I breathed, "I don't think he told me his normal name, let alone a magic special name for gods or whatever. He was doing me a favor, but..."

Alanna--because the woman before me could be no other--leaned back and let her dagger drop to the floor. "Yeah," she said after a moment, "that sounds like him." She looked over her shoulder and gestured to the severe old woman behind the podium--who I noticed still had not moved from the spot. "Nency, you can put things back. I'll be alright."

So Nency gestured, and the pews and candles returned to their old positions. To my surprise, one other thing happened: a crude wheelchair slid out of a closet until it was right behind the older woman, and she plopped backwards into it, finally explaining her immobile status.

Nency rolled her chair around the pulpit and up to me with a thought, requiring no obvious gesture, and gave me a stern look that told me in no uncertain terms that she was nowhere near trusting me, even if her goddess did. Although my first instinct was to puff up my chest and declare myself innocent, that thought deflated quickly. Alanna was a beautiful woman, and if men here were like they were on Earth, she had seen her fair share of suitors, some of whom would manipulate and posture to get what was not earned. The warm stinging blush in my chest said she was a very easy woman to fall for.

Alanna, though, just stood, sheathing her dagger at her belt, and brought me down into the basement of the church, a quiet place of very cleanly cut stone lit by shining magic crystals. Although I thought at first that the magic crystals must have had something to do with her status as a goddess of light, my intuition told me otherwise; they didn't seem connected to her, and were simply "magic".

Her office, as it turns out, was deceptively small, because I could clearly sense a hidden room behind a false wall, a room that reeked of what I had come to assume was godly energy. Although my eyes were drawn to that wall, I managed to resist the urge to stare, and instead tried to comport myself with some amount of grace before the beautiful goddess who had saved my life. She, in turn, sat in a simple chair behind a simple desk and let her head rest on one hand, as she appraised me. "Yes?" she finally said. "So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

It was at that moment that I wished I were merely a character in a book and could skip over the next page of so of painfully embarrasing admissions of weakness, ignorance, and blind trust in someone I knew nothing about. But, nothing would happen unless I actually made those admissions.

"You can probably tell," I said meekly, "but I am a newly forged... ah... god, I guess, of nothing. I am not..."

"Wait, wait, stop." Alanna buried her head in both hands, now. "My father sent you to me, and you are a new god. Brand new, without a wisp of flame in you. Which means that... insensitive... callous..." She pounded the desk with both hands. "He passed you off to me, didn't he? So he didn't have to explain anything."

Relieved, I nodded enthusiastically, deciding on the spur of the moment that the best thing to do was to eagerly lay all the fault for this at the old man's feet, which honestly was probably the truth of it anyway. "Yes!" I said, with what was probably obviously fake cheer. "That's it exactly."

Alanna let out a long, loud growl of annoyance, one that managed to be incredibly endearing given her youthful, innocent face. She stood and paced for a long moment, then gave me a long, intense look. "And you're okay with this?" she snapped, probably upset by my cheer and eagerness.

"Lady... my lady," I corrected quickly, "I have no idea what's going on. I assure you, this is a much better outcome than the alternative. I suppose I could have survived in the place he dropped me out in the wilderness... but..."

Alanna let out a very unladylike exclamation or two, and finished it off by making the VERY unladylike gesture of taking her steel dagger and snapping it in half with her bare hands, more as a nervous habit than a deliberate action. THAT particular demonstration sucked away much of my good cheer and made my balls shrivel up in fear. Still, every time she looked in my direction, even her grousing, angry looks were adorable.

"Fine," she said after a long moment. "Look... if you want any help from me at all, the ground rules are these. This is my church and these are my people. Whatever godly things you may end up doing or not doing, you do not do them here. You do not confuse my people about whose temple this is and you do not reveal to them that I am their goddess, nor that ANY god or goddess, including you, just walks idly around the world like they do. It's not a complete secret, but I don't want people thinking my job is to be out there... somewhere." Alanna gestured in an arbitrary, upwards-ish direction, wiggling her hand as if to say 'whatever'. "I do my duties, but image and appearance are important. Love or hate from your people affects your appearance, and I work hard to make my people love me." She paused, and looked me over, and a small, perverse smile crossed her face. "You've probably... noticed that. Heh."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Second rule: you can stay at the temple, but you do work for the temple, and you answer to me. If you don't like it, get a job. Everyone saw you as the homeless man in the corner, so it's not a surprise if we employ you doing odd jobs. You might end up getting a job in town anyway. If you get the chance, I suggest you do it. Until you are actually set up as an actual god somewhere, you WILL have to work for a living. From what dad says--and he gets around more than I do--that's just a thing with gods. They're not all wandering, meddling, insensitive, unappreciative--ahem--hobos like he is."

Right, well. Actually, I didn't mind that at all, so I agreed easily, nodding my head eagerly.

"Third: you don't touch me. E~e~ever." She brought one hand up to her mouth and looked me up and down as though appraising me. "Don't get the wrong idea. I am not the blushing virgin I know I look like. I've pulled filth-ridden hobos out of the gutter before, and you know the looks of my father. This isn't about sex, and it's not me telling you that you aren't good enough to have me." The half-flirtatious attention in her face faded, and she seemed very far away. "You don't... understand being a god. You will make some pretty screwed up miracles happen without meaning to. I did, when I was younger. I'm the reason why Nency can't walk." She shook her head. "Now... she has the magic to get herself around, but it isn't the same. She forgives me, loves me, cares... but gods can do damage in moments that years cannot heal."

I swallowed and just nodded. "I will... not disappoint you, I promise."

Apparently very used to men making promises, Alanna just rolled her eyes and waggled her hand at me, as if to say, 'whatever'.