Chapter 2

After I fled from Melinoe, I found out why she had looked so terrified: it was not just my eye that caught her attention; I did not even look like myself. Gods could always change their appearances but, like anything else, we have a natural form. And when I changed into what I remembered to be myself, it looked completely different. The smooth wavy tresses of auburn hair were now a silken slope of pearly silver hair that fell in straight strands around a face much more feminine but not entirely so. What surprised me was how my right eye, which l assumed to be the culprit and catalyst to everything that was going wrong right now, seemed perfectly at home within the new aesthetic.

My left eye, the sparkling golden orb I was familiar with, now looked to be the one out of place. Still, my appearance was not the only thing that had changed: my very presence was different now as well. A god’s presence is more like a scent than anything; capable of being masked or intensified depending on what one desires. While humans were not particularly keen on discerning divine presence, even to the gods and angels searching for me, it was as if I was an entirely new god. Or goddess, if my reflection could be believed.

Because of this, when I sought refuge at one of my shrines, the acolytes almost attacked me as an intruder. It was not until the priestess, whom I may have blessed in more ways than one, held them back and vouched for me, saying she could never forget the eyes of Fate. She scolded her disciples about how Fate was always changing and how they were blessed to meet their god in any form. I forgave them and followed her through my temple to talk alone. The priestess was a rare exception to my rather rich disdain for mortals. Even when I was free to trounce with lovers and companions, seldom had any human women graced my bed. While she was far older than when we had first met, the woman was still haltingly beautiful; even by divine standards. Though, I cannot say that was what attracted me to her. As she led me through corridors, we had both seen mapped and built, I reminisced about just how strange a human she was.

~We first met when my divine duties brought my hand against her father’s house and everything he had built. She caught my attention as she bore what I assumed to be a brave smile even as everything burned and everyone died around her. Mere meters away, her mother had pleaded to every god and goddess she could think of even as the flesh melted from her bones. Through all this, the girl placidly waited to receive her fate.

I decided to spare her; to save her from the destruction I brought with me. I prepared myself to endure her groveling, but while her gratitude was evident, she simply bowed without asking me for anything else. As much as it intrigued me, I nodded and left her right where she was. As pleasantly surprising as she might have been, she was still just a human to me.

Over the next few years, we would cross paths often though I would learn later it was not by coincidence. The more we would run into each other, the sooner we would see each other again. Every time, she would just meet my gaze from afar and smile. She never approached, never spoke, and like I had grown accustomed to her doing, she never prayed.

One day, I found her waiting outside a Luciferian Church that I was summoned to. She was grinning wider than I had ever seen her smile; so wide that it caught enough of my attention that I did not simply turn back to the task at hand. Instead, I looked at her more closely. The same girl, but I supposed she was not really a girl anymore. Though the smile was the same, she had grown taller; to a height nearly as tall as the disguise I was most comfortable wearing was. Her clothes were worn and disheveled like she spent every second of the time since I last saw her on the roads and boats between there and here. Though ragged and uncouth she might have been, she still held a regal beauty that shone above the uncomely attire.

After a while of taking her in, I approached her. And we talked for the first time since the fires that burned her old life away. I asked her name and she told me Kassandra. She told me of the prophecy she received as a little girl, telling her that she was chosen by Fate. She told me how she thought the day of the fire was going to be the first day of a life by my side; and how she felt rejected when I did not claim her as my own. She described how she struggled to understand why she was left behind and to forge a new life until she saw the first miracle and knew it to be mine.

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I listened to how she began to follow the works of my hands; how each time she had found me, she had waited to be accepted just like the first time we met. Yet each time she found herself once more rejected and once more abandoned.

I listened with a budding feeling of embarrassment and admiration as she resolved to follow more closely and find me more quickly; all in the hope that she could fulfill the purpose she held sacred for almost her whole life. As her connection to me grew, she saw me more and more clearly and she became able to see my hand before I stretched it forth.

After she spoke, I simply nodded and held out my hand. she took it and allowed me to lead her into the church. I spent 4 years in the mortal world and every day of it with Kassandra. She would come to be known as the girl who walked with Fate and established a large following in the decades after I moved on. Though she would claim none of my miracles to be spurred by our communion, many of them I did simply because someone had asked her to ask me to do so. Still, she claimed only to be able to see what I see and sometimes hear my voice. ~

As we sat in the quiet halls of the temple built upon the ruins of that same church, she looked at me with the same silent anticipation as she had when she was a girl looking for my attention. I expected her gaze to waver; to roam over my new visage, perhaps to find something familiar. Yet it held as firm as her faith had always been; her vibrant grey eyes now rimmed with the furrows of a face touched by time. It saddened me to think she would one day join the rest of her kind; the same way it saddened me before. It had been why I left.

Gods and mortals should not walk too close together. And, while I had kept my distance these past decades (I honestly did not know how many), I desperately needed her help.

“What’s happened?” She asked finally, her attention flashing down the corridor to be sure we were clear of eavesdropping. I smiled weakly at her, knowing I would be unable to hide the tension, fear, and anguish that had overwhelmed me; assuming she had not already seen it.

“Too much to tell you right now," I admitted.

"...I’m going to go away for a while: silent and still at the very least. I...am going to need you to keep my faith.” I told her, not wanting to waste any time with pretenses. She looked confused and concerned in her usual manner of looking at me until I could see the shock of realization light upon her features. Her eyes widened and she seemed about as stunned as I expected her to be, if only for a moment. With a short shake of her head, she shifted closer to me on the stone bench and met my gaze determinedly.

“Anything my Lord needs,” she replied after a brief silence. It was then that she studied my face; but not as one looking for a lost lover, which I suppose is pretty much what I would be to her. She searched my new features like she was reading a map to a place she had heard of but never visited. The resolve in her eyes began to glow almost visibly as she saw what I could only assume were the schemes I had planned. She grinned the same coyly innocent smile that I recognized as satisfaction. She would always wear it when she felt like she could be of use to me.

"This is more than you've ever asked of me,” she said quietly. I nodded silently. Even with everything else going on it was easy to fall back into old habits like taking her hand to listen as she spoke; feeling her buzz with an energy so well hidden.

“I know, and as I’ve always said, you are afforded questions of your own,” I assured her, more out of habit than anything else, but her smile fell away and her gaze fell. For the first time in all the years I had known her, she looked ashamed.

“…I do…have one request.” She said in a tone that hardly qualified as a whisper. It was not until I felt a familiar tug at my being that I realized she had not spoken at all. With her eyes glued to her lap, Kassandra was praying to me. She was asking for something. I saw her request before she managed to finally look up and speak. Her eyes brimmed with tears as a hollow remorseful plea settled on her features.

“The gift of a gift...” She actually spoke this time. Her voice was stifled with a pain I could not feel but could empathize with. It was true that, as a god, I bore a pain she could never know in her short life; but the same could be said for me and what would be eons of existence. What she was asking for invited danger beyond what anyone should be capable of knowingly consenting to yet I knew that she had seen all of it and decided it was worth it.

“If it were anyone else, I’d strike them down for the mere suggestion,” I told her gently, brushing the silver strands that now seemed most comfortable obstructing my eyes to the side and tucking them behind my ears.

“But you’ve already seen it haven’t you?” I asked, watching her fidget beneath a gaze she could not meet. As a girl, she had always faced me head-on, expectantly. And as a woman, she did the same but long-fully. Yet when Kassandra nodded slowly and finally looked back up at me, there was an apology. As if by asking this of me she would be the cause of everything to come. She cried. She continued to cry; even as I answered her prayer.