She mulled what Sym had told her as she walked back to her godcorpse home. So she had given up her life to Veridia as her last sacrifice for the city, to prove her devotion to them in the way that they needed rather than her own interpretation, as she had done to Sym. Had she felt ashamed after her actions with Sym, had she been trying to right her misstep, somehow? She wondered what the six legged wolf god would have made of her choice, if he had known what decision his story had led her to make. He had chosen never to take devotees again, feeling himself to be undeserving of being a god to any people, but she had chosen instead to dedicate her body to them. Would he have approved? Did she want the approval of such a god?
She wondered what had happened to Iseult’s father. Was he a god now, the vision had been so short she wasn’t sure what had happened next. From her memories, she and Sym had pieced together that it took godseed and kin sacrifice to make a god, something that had caused Sym to look at her hard. She had explained her visions of her bird childhood but Sym had only been slightly mollified, the disgust still somewhat residuary on her face. And Alene couldn’t blame her, the process for becoming a god was sadistic and brutal. She wondered if her mother had gone through something similar. Was it somehow different if she didn’t do it intentionally? As a human it was an unthinkable evil, but as an animal, as a bird? As far as she knew humans’ didn’t hold animals to the same standards as those beings with higher levels of consciousness and cognizance.
Sym had speculated that Veridia’s lack of godhood spoke to her unwillingness to sacrifice Hiru, that despite her actions she still held some things sacred. Remembering the feeling of being torn apart by her shadows, Alene found it hard to agree that the woman had any softness inside her. Sym seemed to have a lingering respect for the woman, despite the increasing likelihood of her being directly responsible for a god-apocalypse.
They still hadn’t determined how the city had been ruined, where the people had gone, how her body had ended up spread across the metropolis, though Sym and Alene both agreed that Veridia’s experimentations with godseed must be at the crux of it. How useless her sacrifice had ended up being, Alene thought, ruefully. And now she was dead. A wandering ghost, tethered to a city that hadn’t needed her in life. What should she do now? Did she have to solve the entirety of the mystery of her death in order to move on? If she didn't, would she be stuck as a ghost forever, until the city decomposed around her and only she was left to remember them? Sym would remember too, she comforted herself, trying to ease her morose musings, slightly ashamed at just how comforting the thought was. Sym cared about her now, had said as much to her.
Stolen novel; please report.
She still felt guilty for what she had done to Sym, but the guilt now had another dimension, one she couldn’t share with Sym at risk of endangering their newfound friendship. She was secretly, selfishly glad she had changed Sym, had saved her from the apocalypse, however appalling her methods had been. She couldn’t imagine how her existence would have played out without someone to talk to after Ceit left. After she had known what it was to truly be alone.
As she entered the skull, her broken corpse from when she was Una, ascending its beak to enter through one of its eyes, climbing over the sclerotic rings she saw her cat waiting for her, a dark shadow against the white of the bone. ‘Where have you been?!’ she exclaimed, crouching down to pet him. He pushed his head up into her ghostly hand, purring happily in greeting.
He dropped something at her feet, nosing it towards her. ‘What is this? Did you bring me a gift?’ He hadn’t done that before, though Alene was fairly certain it was within a cat’s normal behavior. Alene picked up the object, a small opalized crab with a blue sheen, its claws cracking in miniature menace at her. The crab’s tiny mouth moved, ‘don’t eat me!’ it squeaked out, voice bubbly. Alene dropped it in surprise, the crab landing on the floor of the skull with a clack. The crab’s shell cracked open, a small human emerging, growing in size to become a young child. The young boy stood before her, periwinkle blue haired with luminous eyes and fragile near transparent fins along his neck, gills fluttering in agitation, perch orange, in contrast with his hair. ‘Please don’t eat me, I don’t want to die!’ Bubbles erupted from his mouth as he spoke, popping softly over his head. A single tear slid down his baby round cheek, taking the form of a watery flying fish and fluttering away. He was possibly the cutest thing Alene had ever seen.
‘Where did you come from?’ Alene asked him, startled by the appearance of what was apparently yet another god, this one significantly younger than either her mother or the wolf in her memories. She crouched down to meet his eyes, her hand on his shoulder comfortingly. ‘I was kidnapped,’ the little boy pointed his finger at her cat who was licking his paw without a care in the world to Alene’s world being rocked once again,‘by Novem godeater!’