Late Night Meeting

There are six of them gathered together. The spirit of a church, one coffee shops, two restaurants, a taxation office and a homeless shelter meeting at a crossroads. The god of the coffee shop approaches me, bows. “It is hard for us to meet, without a god-eater to allow us to leave our places of power.”

I nod. “I’ve never liked the term. God-eater or place of power: they tend to limit ideas too much. A god-eater does more to police gods than eating and destroying gods who try and break rules. And it is far too easy for a god to think of their home as a prison.”

The coffee shop god is young. A new hire at the ship, or a regular customer: whatever the god wishes to be, in order to help it survive. It’s a dangerous road to walk, but there is nothing safe in being a god. He hesitates, then says: “You know why I was asked to speak with you?”

I glance at the other gods. Both restaurant gods work as prep cooks or bus boys, the church one appears to be a regular helpful church lady, the tax-office god is in a dull suit and tie. The one at the shelter is a volunteer there, I imagine, but has offered no words despite being the strongest among them. “Aeon.”

“The goddess of a coffee shop, expanding into a chain. There are stories.”

The god hesitates. He is afraid of me, but I don’t hold that against him: I’m afraid of me when I have any sense at all. “She tried to get more power than a god should, to become – heh. Even I don’t know what she was trying to do, but it was my mistake that let it happen. She’s part of the Order now, that finds and trains god-eaters. It’s how you join it, or at least one way. I imagine you’re not here about that?”

“No, we – may I call you Charlie?”

“It’s my name. So please?”

A couple of the other gods laugh nervously. The coffee shop god runs a hand through his pale hair, gulps. “Gods can devour other gods. Cannibalize them, if they are strong enough. Survive longer than other gods do. We fade, are reborn, are the spirits of places.”

I nod. “The term god isn’t really right for gods, I think. Maybe it was once.”

“Every storm god becoming Zeus. yes. We’ve wondered. It has been tried, but it never lasts. We can mesh, but it is never – it leaves us to wonder things. Are we ants, or are we giants? It is better for us to be small, or to come together? Who do we help more, those who made us or our own desire for survival?”

“I don’t know. Attention can only be divided so far, though. The more power you have, the more you have to keep. The more you are, the more you’re scared to be. I think that’s true in a lot of cases. Power is nebulous in the realms we walk in: the more you’d hold to it, the less likely you’d grow.”

“We would not get a storm god, but one of rain, another of lightning, another of the thunder,” the god of the homeless shelter says in a quiet, ruined voice.

I nod. “Maybe there are more egos now than there were then. Or the lack of god-eaters means a lack of training both my kind and gods themselves. I don’t know. I do think it’s a poor question. Even ants and giants are too large. Consider how many bacteria are in people, how much of what we are is determined by so many outside and alien forces. I wonder if the same is true of gods, if you’ve been conditioned to want to grow as a way to limit you?”

The god in the suit nods. “That could be true. The Order that trained the god-eaters disbanded. No one knows why.”

“I was told it was because people weren’t making enough gods anymore, but that’s pretty much a lie.
I shrug. “I do need to head back to to the hotel, but: talk. With each other, other gods. Some Outsiders might have ideas too, or even a magician or two. I think that, at some point, something went badly wrong.”

“And rather than try and fix it, the Order disbanded?” the coffee shop god asks.

I nod. “Or that was their way of fixing whatever they broke. I have no idea, but I am pretty sure that desiring power in order to have power won’t benefit you at all.

The gods consider it, offer up nods. I walk away. I don’t know if they believed me. I have no idea if I helped them. I just know that there is no real difference between the ant and giant, and the conviction that there is strikes me as a terribly dangerous lie to force into being truth.