Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

Look this way, and she's a crow. Look that way, and she's an empress. Close one eye, and she is clad in armor, holding a shield and a spear, attended by a murder of black-feathered crows. Close the other, and she's your mother. She is all of these things, and she is none of them, though all favor one foot; the other is made of glass.

She is speaking: "This isn't how I wanted my empire to end."

The one who answers is known to you. You've seen him behind the counter of fast food joints, and up on electrical poles. He is the black-masked protestor holding a burning bottle. He is a guildmaster, presiding over apprentices. He is your inspiration; he is your fellow. He, too, is speaking: "It's the end your empire got, my love. The question is, what do we do now?"

A wasp says: "Must we do anything?"

A woman with black-feathered wings, your friend when you have none, sighs and hangs her head. "You of all people don't get to say that, you old codger. Does that girl even know what you did to her?"

And the wasp says: "What she makes of her gift is her choice. That is the way of gifts."

There is a great sighing from all assembled. A new voice; you know her too, dressed in neutral colors, blending in, watching, waiting. A young thing, still, stripling; she sits behind a judge's bench, and stands beside it, in a police uniform. She dresses in an attorney's suit. She is breaking into your house, even now. There is so much glass in her. And she says: "I'd like to do something. Before I go."

The others are silent. She is dying, they know. If she acts, she will finish dying, or something like it. It can be hard to tell, with gods. Can't it?

The crow says: "I won't make the same mistake twice. No champions or law-givers or warlords, not again. Not after...not again. But what if we can help them help themselves?"

And the man who is a cashier who is an anarchist who is a guildmaster answers: "Whatever power we give can make a king. Whatever power, my love."

"...Not whatever power," answers your friend the reaper. "Not if it's everyone's power. The world is so brimming with dreaming, it's almost like the sea outside, right now. We could write a new law."

The wasp muses: "A new law...in what sense?"

Death, who loves you, says: "We'll reach in together. Just a touch from all of us. New rites, given to their oneiromancers. Something to help break the curses of perception laid down on the innocent. People are dying before they can return to themselves and coming to me in confusion, terror, and pain. Let's give them a way out. When they start using it, it'll cement itself. As if it were always part of the world."

The woman who is detective and killer winces as she rubs a glass jaw with fraying steel fingers. "...I could see it. It could be done."

"I have conditions," death warns. "I want out. Free reign. When I tell people I'm not what they say I am, you all back me up. I'm not helping unless you agree."

And the mother of empires sighs, and hangs her head. "...Fine. You always were..."

"If you say pissy I'll kick your ass in front of Peepaw."

"Is it such a bad thing, to be a god?" the electrician asks, his voice soft, and pained.

"I don't care if it's good or bad," death answers, plainly. "I care that it's not what I am. And that all of you except the wasp want to fucking argue with me about it. So. That's done. I am who I say I am. But if it helps, I think...think...I can save Hanna's life while I'm at it."

The lawyer and her client lift her head, and blink owlishly. "How?"

And death shrugs. "You were mortal once. You could be mortal again. I think I know the way...and the wasp's new friend could be...helpful, there. Maybe you never become a god again. Maybe you do. Maybe you change so much that I'll have to mourn my friend forever. But it's an exit that's not the door out of my dominion. If you want it."

The gods of an empire, and a reaper, and a wasp, look at one another. One by one, they nod. Death is the first to leave, to make her preparations, but soon enough there is only a crow, and an old zookeeper, on pension from the guild.

They are both so very tired.

"...I wanted them to stop on their own," the empress complains in a small voice. "To learn to be better than...than I...made them. Where'd it all go so wrong..."

A servant's hand, on her shoulder. "My darling...there's work to be done."

"I suppose there is. They love us, still. We can't just abandon them."

Maybe it's the being torn that does it. It takes you a solid few fuckin' seconds, trying to figure out if you need to walk off or walk forward, and when 'walk forward' wins Holbrook is already halfway to her feet and vaguely lashing out at no one and everyone, swinging her newly muscular arms. Merciful Mara seems to have decided that Holbrook's male body hits the fucking gym, by the gods.

Well. By one god at least.

"Back off!" Holbrook hisses. "Don't touch me!"

You hold your hands up in the universal 'look at all this not touching you' gesture. "I ain't here to start more shit or ta crow, ma'am -"

Oh that was the wrong move. "Sir," Holbrook growls, standing up slowly to his (evidently) feet. "The goddess has decreed that I -" He looks over at someone else and that has gotta be Mister Holbrook, he's wearing one of those like, matching heart pendants, and he's rushing over, helping to steady his spouse. "- James..."

"Are you hurt?" James asks, gently. He's not quite what you'd mentally been expecting, has a whole mien about him that screams 'middle management', but he's in a hi-vis vest and smells like the ethanol of the forklifts. Guess the gods just make some people to look like weedy little bastards no matter what they're really like; the world truly is beautiful. "Honey, did she hurt you?"

"I ain't done a thing!" you protest.

"Mara, Ms. Hatter," James clarifies, almost apologetically. "...I'd like time with my wife. Please."

Holbrook starts to say 'husband', and then he breaks down into an ugly sob. So you turn, and you start to scatter the crowd, loudly ordering everyone back to their posts or their entertainments or their anywhere but here. The sigil can be cleaned up later, when y'all do...something...with this wheat. You're not sure what the right thing to do is with divine wheat. Bread? Maybe? You know what, let's just push that off your plate and if people wanna throw hands about it they can just throw hands, that is an existential crisis you don't need.

You pass Orchid on your way back to getting ready for your garden shift, and just kinda clap it on the shoulder, and then keep walking on your glass feet.

* * * *

Okay. Gardens. Water the plants, 'fertilize' them (y'all need to be able to make more glass soon...), harvest some of today's crops. It's the harvest that's the weirdest part. Plants are not supposed to grow this fast. Y'all are getting potatoes on a three-day rotation, that shit is fucking unreal. You are drowning in potatoes. You don't mess with some of the more recreational plants, that is not your business; the smokers can handle the smoker shit, the doctors can handle the weed and the medicinal herbs and what have you. Nice easy crops, you say, as if the farm you grew up on grew more than hay, which it didn't. Your grandpa always said cash crops were a fucking disease. Guess he was right.

And you, you're...

Thinking. Usually this is when you do a lot of talking, a lot of chatting, but mainly you're thinking. Partly you just don't wanna talk about what happened earlier, and by the gods, people seem to get the message. But you're thinking.

Alas, you are not to be thinking for long.

Lose 1
[ ] Your chill
[ ] Your ability to compartmentalize some romantic feelings
[ ] Your dignity