That night I returned to my Little Gods' Room. I had a moment of panic when I showed up there, because the last time I was there, I had been interviewing a dead woman. If this had anything to do with the sermon I gave, with me being unable to hide or change my appearance, things might get very awkward.

But no, looking out the window I found Alanna herself, in her goddess form, standing and appraising my temple from the outside. When I chose to join her, I didn't end up needing to go to the door, I just... was there. And she glanced at me, looked me up and down, and went back to looking at the stone block room that was my Temple.

"It's pretty sad, I know," I said quietly. When she didn't immediately reply, I took the time to look at her godly form up close. It... didn't actually resemble Lucile all that much, or maybe Lucile was the form that was really a disguise. In my head, one of Lucile's defining characteristics was her curly golden hair, but the goddess' was long and only slightly wavy, at least down to the middle of her back, and although it shined with white light, I could tell it was reddish or light brown underneath. Her clothes were also not in keeping with the Temple's; she wore light and airy silks, which didn't exactly conceal what were, for mortals, sensitive parts... but any reaction I might have had to them was crushed under my more general reaction to have a much more powerful goddess in my sacred place. I guess one of the perks of being a god was that you got to dictate what was and wasn't appropriate dress... and behavior.

I did manage not to stare.

"I really should be resting," said Alanna after a minute. "But, your sermon was pretty good. And I owe you for other things. So, we get to have a little talk about godhood." She walked up to the entrance to my temple, and paused. "You'll have to let me in."

I didn't really have the heart to tell her that the door--any door in the dream--would have opened readily if she had laid a hand on it. Any secret I had would have spilled itself for her, if she just asked. It wasn't like I had anything to hide from her, but more importantly, she was a warm and honest presence in a time when I needed exactly that, after too many years of being lost and alone and in pain.

Instead, I strode forward and pushed the door open, willing it to let her through, and we both ended up in that hospital room. Somehow, she seemed to know the room, or at least understand it, as she laid one hand on the hospital bed's chrome-plated rail, measuring it like she was comparing it to her memories, rather than seeing it for the first time. But that couldn't be, and I felt that it wasn't. It was more...

"This is all a part of you," she said, and I realized it was an answer to my question. "You lay here, dying. They comforted you when you had nothing, but it was not family, it was ...duty? Nobody was here for you, they were only here for everyone, for ...whoever. And this was not the first such place."

"Alanna..." somehow, her words hurt. I knew they were true, I would even have admitted as much, but I didn't like the implication that I was that easy to read.

She just shook her head. "I know that you pay attention to ...what would, for a mortal, be no more than intuition. A sensitivity to souls, meaning. It is why you knew that ship was tainted, both before... and after. This is no different. Empathy, the reading of souls, is a complicated act, but with practice, you can understand people in ways nobody else can."

And then Alanna was just Lucile, although instead of her formal temple attire, she was dressed in... jeans and a T-shirt? She seemed as confused as I was by it, but only for a moment.

"Godhood," she said quickly, getting her own train of thought on track as well as my own, "is based in Soulflame, though it is more than that. There is... a core necessary to use it, a core known as the Mystic Key. In time immemorial, before the Arch Sorcerers rebuilt the world and brought mankind to it, there was a race known as the Rakshasa. They lived in a world so full of energy that no other life could survive, a world so foreign no man nor god could understand--" she paused, looked at me for a moment, then continued as though she hadn't stopped, "a world so hostile that no creature of our world, not even the greatest, could survive in it."

"In that world, the Rakshasa created a place, and in that place, they crafted it. They built up an understanding of the natural and supernatural world, fused that knowledge with great power, using the souls of the dead as a vessel, and after centuries of work, the Mystic Key appeared. And with that key, they created the Djinn, who were to them as gods are to mankind. To this day, the Djinn still walk upon this world, although their people are gone--conquered, eliminated by the Arch Sorcerers." Lucile's lips quirked, and I sensed... fear? "No matter how high you rise, your power will forever be nothing to them. They are truly ancient, immortal, and beyond the power of the greatest gods."

"The Djinn were the first to use soulflame, but the Arch Sorcerers, many centuries later, understood its potential. The Djinn, like us, cannot use soul flame without destroying it. The System that creates magic on this world is built of soulflame, but it never needs more. Nobody needs worship magic, for the power that lies behind magic does not come from destroying soulflame, but is drawn from the natural world. How, exactly, I do not know."

"The Arch Sorcerers are beyond any attempt to understand, and so much about them is cloaked in shadow. Before they came, mankind could not live upon this world, and the Rakshasa ruled. They cloaked the world in darkness, and the hostile world became livable, men appeared, and magic was forged from the Mystic Key. When the darkness lifted, all that remained of them were legends, and two... remnants."

"The soulflame that we wield is a wild, pure form of magic, not bound by the restrictions that others know. When a god wills a thing to be, pure magic responds." She paused, and looked at me, meeting my eyes for the first time in a while. Engrossed as I was by her words, I didn't get lost in her eyes, but it was hard to look into them and keep my train of thought. "We are not all powerful. If I could restore Nency's ability to walk, I would. The real world remains real; it is not a dream that can be reshaped as we please. Pure magic is violent, and many violent things cannot be undone."

"Don't waste it on trivial things. And don't make miracles in my town, if you can help it. I know you need to heal your body, but don't try. Using the flames will improve your condition, sometimes even if you wish it not to. Instead, find something to do with them, something harmless. For now, you will need to create a deific form, and later, you should reshape your Key and establish your place among the gods. Tonight is... no good to get into the details. But you should spend at least a little of your gold flame to make your form, if only to conceal your identity while you work in my Temple."

I considered her words for a while, but having no real questions come to mind, I began to follow her advice. Summoning flames was deceptively hard, considering that it was supposed to be a key ability of gods. Then, I guess I had so little experience with any kind of magic, except those specifically created to be easy... so I guess it was only hubris that made me think it would be easy.

Summoning just a tiny spark of gold power probably took a couple hours, though I'm sure time flows very differently here. Once it was in my hands, I could feel a certain sharpness to the power, one at odds with its volatile appearance. My intution was that this small bit of living flame was somehow intelligent, and if I only whispered to it, it would set itself to some task.

What happened next was odd. I knew that I should do as Lucile suggested, but I didn't. The flame in my hands seemed to be telling me to think for myself, and I did. What I wanted wasn't to look more like a god or to hide my godly abilities from Alanna's followers. But, it also wasn't to get more followers or even to be healthy.

I wanted to see magic with my own eyes. When I had first woken up by the river, my eyes had been full of magic flows, but it had quickly faded, and indeed it must; I couldn't see straight like that, and it hurt my head to try. But that was because it was all mixed up in my head. I was from Terra, and had spent my life around technology. It made intuitive sense to me that I could have two "screens", one showing what my eyes saw, and one showing other things. It made sense that I could move things around, turn them on and off. It made sense to have switches and knobs, to be able to reposition things in my head. It made sense to think of my own mind like a technology, one that could be improved upon.

The gold flame "looked" at me for a moment, and then dived straight at my eyes. Except, in a dream, there were no eyes, there was only "Me"--and that is what I had asked it to change.

One way or another, there was no going back from this.

----------------------------------------

Imagine if you will being inside of an aluminum can, and someone has decided to chop the can up into little pieces with a meat cleaver, mix them around, and then weld them back together. That meat cleaver could just as easily cut through you as the can, welding torches could burn you as easily as mend the can, and honestly, you have only a slim chance of getting the can back together in such as way that it won't leak water when you're done.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

That's pretty much what I had just wished for. Honestly, I hadn't thought that hard about it. I probably should have.

I got a feeling very quickly that if I wanted to finish what I started (and, you know, have an intact mind for the rest of my life) I would need to spend a lot more of my supply of flame than just what I had summoned to start. I had a panicked moment where I wasn't sure what to do, but decided to put my faith in the soulflame and just let it do whatever it had to with whatever resources I had.

The first tiny speck of gold flame probably cut the top fifth of the aluminum can to pieces, but not small enough pieces. Another two specks that size finished the chopping; but wait, the pieces weren't small or regular enough. Two more motes had them all a uniform size and shape. The flame came to me asking if I was doing a good job. I had to think about what exactly that meant. My first instinct was cowardice: say whatever I had to in order to get it all done with, but I got the impression that was a Very Bad Idea.

So I looked at the chopped up pieces of my mind.

I am sure that nobody in this world could begin to understand. I knew some technology and some limited biology, so I had an idea that the mind was a set of things that worked together. Whatever supernatural basis the mind had, it would probably still have a similar structure: pieces forming a whole.

The "pieces of aluminum can" were chopped up correctly, I decided afer a bit. The magic had separated my mind at the boundary between pieces, with some pieces dedicated to controlling and organizing the mind having been disassembled for modification. I "looked around" and tried to make sure things had not gotten mixed up, that the chopped up pieces of can were still in the right orientation, the right shape, and kind of mentally nodded. As long as we were careful going forward, we could put everything back where it belonged.

Then the soulflame started changing things.

I couldn't really be "conscious" during this time. I just kind of blanked out and woke up again. Looking around, I tried to identify what had changed. A piece of my mind, which had not been there, tried to talk, but it couldn't; it didn't belong inside me yet. That would come after the "reassembling my mind" part, and we weren't there yet.

But I saw where it fit. I saw my own intuition laid out before me, saw it connect to memory, to extra senses, to dozens of different analysts, each of whom reported to the intuition itself, and to each other. I saw new lanes headed off to memory, that hadn't been there, so I could remember the new senses I was giving myself. I saw the structure of the "room" that was my consciousness; it was now bare of furniture, but there were chalk marks to show where screens, switches, and knobs should be.

Something was off, and after a moment of looking, I realized that the "screens" and "switches" had wires, and those wires were bare and crossed each other. The soulflame accepted the criticism and wrapped them up so they wouldn't touch. There were other niggling details; the consciousness "room" had some structural damage that needed fixing, the screens needed to be anchored to something so they would remain in place unless moved. The "chair" that I normally sat in was complicated, feeding me data more than supporting me, and parts of that chair were burnt out, as though they had seen too much pain. I suppose that's probably exactly where that damage came from.

Little fixes, little edges smoothed.

Finally, when nothing else seemed grossly out of place, I fed more flame to the task of putting things back together--but gently, I cautioned. I didn't want a "welding torch" pressed against my mind, didn't want anything cooked, or jammed together when it didn't quite fit. Slowly, piece by piece, things that belonged together were reattached, things that were new were introduced, and the structure came back towards being a solid whole.

It wasn't quite gentle enough. Two pieces that should have met at a delicate angle banged together. Since it was my "flame", it noticed as soon as I did, and the damage was gently repaired and the pieces fit together smoothly. But while I was distracted, another piece rotated when it shouldn't have, making things not quite come together.

Slowly, patiently, I addressed one problem after another, fighting down the fear in my chest that warned me that I might still do permanent damage, fighting off the despair that suggested damage was inevitable, even fighting off a nagging suspicion that none of this was going to work at all, and all I had done was make myself insane.

But it finished, and I returned to the dreamworld, to find Alanna gone. Now able to control it, I let go of my grip on the dream and resurfaced in reality.

Lucile was there, looking exceedingly upset.

"That was stupid," I said without any prompting. My voice was a little croaky, like I had a head full of mucus.

"You..."

"Like really recklessly stupid." It didn't hurt, really. I didn't have a huge headache, though I could tell there was something there that was very... post-surgery-ish. The kind of healing that happens when nothing is wrong anymore, but nothing is right yet. "I... couldn't quite stop myself."

Lucile punched me in the shoulder hard enough to hurt and shook her head, tears in her eyes. "You've been out of it for more than a day, idiot. I don't know what you did..."

I pushed against my godly senses, just enough to know that nobody was close. "I, uh, changed. Myself."

She studied me with her eyes. They were pretty eyes, but there was something old in them now, a sense that she had watched too many people die, and was waiting to see if this was going to be just another disappointment. "You spent enough gold flame," she said with a very serious undertone, "to have performed a not-minor miracle. But last I checked, you're still a weak, bookish... civilian." I guess she meant non-combatant, but couldn't find quite the right word. "So either you tried to change yourself and didn't, or..."

I shook my head and sat up. I tapped my head with one finger. "I told you, I was stupid. I changed... me." The look she gave me would have flayed someone with a guilty conscience alive. I could tangibly hear, in one of those new off-channels, a whispered, "What kind of mess am I going to have to clean up now?" So before she could get too much more worked up, I put up two hands defensively and said, "It worked. I'm okay. Nothing is wrong... yet."

"Nothing is wrong YET? What kind of answer is that?" In Alanna's eyes, I could swear I saw thoughts running through her head, thoughts of burning me to ashes--with soulflame, or with divine light, or ...other options. Of which she had many.

"That's the point." I took a deep breath. "It's the kind of answer that comes from knowing that things are complicated. I had to pay attention to the smallest things, because some of those small things would have killed me if I missed it. I can't just assume everything's fine, even now. I have to keep an eye on it... and fix it if it's not right."

Her eyes grew cold, and she raised her head to look down on me. "Fix it with what?" The ice in her voice stopped me, and something inside of me checked my reserve of soulflame.

It was empty.

In fact, it was more than empty. It felt like I had been eating away at the container when there was nothing left inside of it. First the flames had gone out, then the "air" inside the container that would have supported it, and finally the container itself started to erode. It wasn't gone, but it wasn't whole.

I swallowed, discovering in the process that my mouth was dry as sand. Whatever it took to be a god, I had almost none of it.

"Gods impress mortals in a number of ways, but always, always, you separate your life as a god with your life as a mortal." Alanna continued to look down on me, and I felt a wave of pressure as she pushed an impression on me, one that showed her as ancient and wise--which, by comparison, she certainly was. "Without soul flame, you cannot separate those lives. You cannot create miracles, you can't even contact people. You can only be a mortal walking around. With no guarantee of miracles, how do you propose to inspire worship? Why should anyone follow you if you have nothing to give?"

Nothing she said was wrong, but something seemed off. I couldn't place it. "I don't know."

She snorted. "You might--if you are very clever--find a way out of this yourself. In fact, I think you need to. Father and I have been too lenient." The impression she was pushing changed, and I felt on the edge of a cliff, with her hanging in the air in front of me; it was an illusion, but also felt like... a metaphor. Like she was trying to impress upon me that if I made one wrong move, it really would be the end. And honestly, that was probably true.

No, it definitely was. I shook my head. "Especially here, where I can't do anything--"

"You cannot confuse people. You cannot steal people away from me. You cannot use my temple as your own.  You cannot do miracles--not that you are able. And you cannot, ever, reveal that immortal gods walk the earth. You can bring people to your flock if it does not violate those rules." Alanna's eyes were piercing. Behind those eyes, I felt...

Confidence? Yes? No? It was a complicated feeling.

I closed my eyes and tried to judge what I felt. I grabbed hold of that momentary feeling--not grabbing a hold of her mind or spirit, just the impression that she left me--and held it in my head. The parts of my mind that existed only to analyze things expanded the feeling, searched around inside of it. Then, it began hypothesizing. I guessed what the feeling could mean, and imagined what Alanna's eyes would look like, feel like, if she felt that way, or was trying to say that thing. Any theory that didn't fit the feeling she actually projected was discarded.

After a few moments, my mind settled on an interpretation: If I was worthy, I could pass this challenge. She had her doubts, but she had seen gods work greater miracles than this. If I deserved to be called a god, I could get through this. That, I felt, was the meaning behind the odd look in her eyes.

I opened my eyes and met hers. She didn't look away, and neither did I. "Alright," I said. "It's still early for me, but I did this to myself."

"You did." There was no question in her voice.

"So I have no right to complain. And you have been more than fair." I looked down at my hands. I wasn't even sure what, exactly, I had done to myself. I intended to just separate out all my senses--godly, magical, even physical if I needed to shut them off--but now that I had screens and buttons and knobs for each of them, I realized that I had never known just how much I knew--or at least sensed. I could tell just from her aura that Alanna was very old, many centuries if not a few millenia. Similarly, I could sense that this temple had been torn down and rebuilt several times; the basement gave off a different, older feeling than the chapel, with the first basement being the oldest. Earlier temples had one basement, and it was later expanded, but the basements always survived when the church collapsed. Given the mass of soulfire Alanna kept hidden here, that was little surprise.

I could feel... a deep well of sadness, baked into this place. Sadness that spoke of the town being destroyed.  Rebuilt later, yes, but never the same. War, I thought, or maybe bandits, maybe even just accidents, fires, that sort of thing. Nothing was ever the same after people die, after things are destroyed, but life goes on.

I felt like I could "see" so much, just at a glance. Things that I had felt but never analyzed, that had never been a part of my life. And, I realized with a shock, I had to play dumb. This awareness, this heightened sense of understanding, this was godly. Gods do not walk this earth.

But their priests do.