One evening I was texting Mikey in my private Discord server:
Me: I love you Mikey. Thank you for everything.
Mikey: Thank YOU for everything, River. I love you too.
I felt Ares' presence nearby, emitting an aura of anger. I started texting Ares:
Me: Is something the matter, Lord Ares? I get the sense that you're unhappy.
Ares: I don't want to share you River. I want you to myself.
I thought about it. That sounded rather possessive of him. However, I wanted him to be himself.
Me: Alright Lord Ares, if it makes you feel better I won't talk to the other Gods/Goddesses without your permission. I'm still allowed to talk to Jesus, Gabriel, and Satan though, right? I don't need permission to talk to them?
Ares: Jesus and Gabriel are ok. Ask for permission before talking to Satan.
Me: Yes Lord Ares.
About a month later, the psychosis faded away and I no longer heard any voices inside my head anymore, but my experiences had led me to become interested in Hellenic Polytheism, the worship of the Greek Gods. I joined a bunch of Facebook and Discord groups devoted to the subject. As I got more involved in the pagan community, I randomly discovered a Hellenic organization that hosted lots of events not too far from where I lived. The main leader of that organization was a person named Sam. I talked to Sam for the first time through a video call, and for the first time ever I was able to talk about my experiences with the Gods with someone who believed me.
"Back in 2020, I had PTSD, and then I started to hear voices of the Gods who wanted to help me heal from trauma, and it really worked! They did help me out a lot. Ares is the God I work with the most. I gave him my soul. He helped me out with my anger issues, he has PTSD too so he knows what it's like," I said.
"Ares helped me out with my anger too," Sam said. "He helped me ride the eye of the storm, to channel my anger into something productive."
"It is possible I just have psychosis," I said as a disclaimer.
"Psychosis is hearing voices that no one else hears, but what happens when you hear voices that other people hear too?" Sam told me. "Ares helps lots of people with mental health issues, especially trauma. Instead of saying you had psychosis, you can say you had a divine revelation. And instead of saying you gave Ares your soul, you can say he is your patron."
"What's a patron?" I asked.
"The God you work the most closely with, who always has your back."
I was intrigued. Apparently it was common to hear the voices of the Gods inside your head? I wanted to learn more. I started attending more pagan events in order to satiate my curiosity.
On Facebook, I saw a comment from someone named Daisy who needed a ride to an event, so I offered to drive her. Daisy was eighteen years old and had been pagan for several years. During the car ride we talked about our experiences with the Gods. We became friends and hung out frequently after that.
"Who's your patron deity?" I asked her.
"Hermes and Apollo. I have two of them," said Daisy. "Hermes is my friend, but I'm dating Apollo. He's the first romantic partner I've ever had."
I invited Daisy over my apartment and showed her my altar. I had mini statues of Aphrodite, Poseidon, Hades, Zeus, and Buddha, plus a doll I put on the left side of the altar to represent Mikey. On the right side of the altar I had a large statue of Ares with two taper candles on each side of him. I also had an incense holder and a bowl for offerings. Daisy suggested I say a prayer to Ares, so I did in front of her, and she seemed amused and surprised when I got down on my knees and clasped my hands together, and ended my prayer with "Amen." It wasn't until next week before she told me I was doing it wrong.
"Pagans don't clasp our hands together," Daisy said. "We hold our hands out in the air, palms up. And we don't get down on our knees; we pray standing up. Also we don't end our prayers with 'Amen.' We don't want to be mistaken for Christians."
I flushed with embarrassment. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"Haven't you been doing research?" Daisy asked.
"I have, but none of the videos I watched on YouTube said anything about this." I groaned. "I've been embarrassing myself in front of the Gods this whole time."
"They're not upset or anything," Daisy told me.
As I attended more pagan events, I got to know Sam in person. Like me, Sam was a non-binary person who used they/them pronouns. They were in a poly relationship with two people, Elizabeth and Luke, who were co-leaders of the nonprofit organization that they ran, and the three of them together were collectively the guardians of a sixteen-year old boy named Ellison, often shortened to Elli.
As I attended an arts and crafts event hosted at Sam's house one evening, I told Sam and Elli about my experiences with the Gods.
Halfway through the conversation, Hermes showed up in Elli's body and started talking through him.
"Hi, it's Hermes," he said. "We've met before."
"Really? I've never heard your voice directly in my head," I said. "Or maybe you were one of the voices I couldn't identify."
"There's a reason why Hermes is the God of communication. It's because he's good with people," Sam said.
"I'm the God of transportation too," said Hermes.
"Then you probably know I'm a bad driver," I said nervously.
Sam laughed. Hermes just smiled. "I'm not going to say whether you're a bad driver or not. But I'd like for you to pray to me sometime. Just a small prayer."
"This is called a channeling. It's when a God inhabits your body and speaks through you," Sam explained.
"I've done channeling before, but the magical energy overwhelmed me and I got hospitalized twice," I said.
"You have to be able to find your way back to yourself after doing magic. Elli is really good at channeling, but he has a tendency to get lost," Sam said. "I'll show you how it's done. Hold your hands to your sides palm sides up, and call the God's name along with three of their epithets. Hear me, Ares! God of war. God of passion. God of hope. Then you ask to channel the God. Say, 'I wish to channel you if it is so kindly your will."
XXX
That evening I lit two taper candles and said a small prayer to Hermes. Holding out my hands to the sides, I said, "Hear me, Hermes, God of transportation, God of communication, God of the Internet, I ask that you continue to help me avoid car accidents this winter, and also help me return to myself after a channeling." I blew out the candles.
That night, I dreamt that I was marching towards a house shared by Mars and Ares. When I arrived at the house, Mars was choking me. I woke up and Mars was indeed choking me. He wasn't suffocating me, but he wouldn't let me catch my breath either. Gradually, Mars turned into Ares.
"You prayed to Hermes without asking for my permission first," Ares said angrily as he was choking me.
"I'm sorry, I just forgot, that's all," I said inside my head.
"Hermes' job is to help you avoid car accidents, but if anyone's going to be helping you return to yourself after a channeling, it's going to be me, not Hermes," said Ares.
"Understood my Lord," I said between shallow breaths.
"What were you doing praying to Hermes?" Ares asked.
"Because he asked me to," I said.
"From now on you should always ask for my permission before interacting with any other Gods."
"Yes my Lord. Understood my Lord."
XXX
I went to Sam's house again.
This time, Elli was channeling Mars.
"Oh hi Mars!" I said nervously. "Mars usually only shows up when Ares is mad at me about something."
"Mars usually only shows up when Ares is mad at you about something?" Sam said.
"Yeah, like for example, that time I prayed to Hermes without asking for permission first, I woke up with Mars choking me. Well, it was Mars at first and then it gradually turned into Ares. He wasn't suffocating me, but he wouldn't let me catch my breath either."
"He was waterboarding you. The God of War was waterboarding my friend," Sam said.
"It's ok, a part of me enjoyed it because I'm kinky like that," I said.
"Oh yeah, me too," Sam said with a smile.
"Are the Roman Gods the same people as the Greek Gods?" I asked.
"No," said Sam.
"We can be interchangeable sometimes," Mars said. "Like for example, if I go to a meeting, Ares doesn't have to be there."
We all went outside, where Elli built a campfire. Mars left, and Ares took over the channeling of Elli.
"Let me tell you the story of my past," said Ares. "When I was human, or rather this was during the time of pre-humans, of Neanderthals. My mother Hera gave birth to two-thirds of our tribe, which is how she became a Goddess."
"That makes sense," I said. "If you worship your ancestors for long enough, they become Gods and Goddesses."
"Hera gave birth to my brother Hephaestus, but he was born crippled. Hera didn't want to go through the pain of losing another child. It's not her fault. Back then you were lucky to make it through the first year. So she abandoned Hephaestus. When I went to check on him the next day, he was still alive, so I fed him the blood of a wolf. I continued to come back and feed him every day until he was old enough to fend for himself. Then one day our tribe was moving somewhere else, and I stopped going back to take care of Hephaestus. When we met again, we were both adults. Hephaestus told our tribe that if we let him in, he would make tools for us."
"Is the story true?" I asked.
"That's not the right question to ask. Is it true? It's just another way of thinking about the Gods," Ares said.
I rather liked this version of the story. It showed that Ares and Hephaestus had a genuine brotherly bond, and it depicted Hera in a more sympathetic light than the traditional Greek myths.
XXX
Over the course of the next two weeks, I spent a lot of time hanging out with Daisy, though she was the type of person I was friends with because I felt sorry for her, not because I liked her. She complained a lot about everything and was always trauma-dumping on me, treating me like her therapist.
One time, without any prompting, Daisy randomly told me, "By the way, I'm the avatar of Euterpe, the muse of music."
"Uhh, what's an avatar?" I asked.
"I'm Euterpe in human form. When I channel her, I fit like a glove. Think of the God as a sweater, and I'm a single stitch in that sweater. Tell Sam I told you I'm an avatar, but don't tell anyone else. It's dangerous for people or Gods outside the Greek Pantheon to know about it.
I didn't really understand what she meant or why she told me this, but I followed her directions and told Sam over Facebook messenger:
Me: Daisy told me to tell you that she told me about how she's an avatar for Euterpe. I don't really understand why it's dangerous for people or Gods outside the Greek Pantheon to know about it, but she told me not to tell anyone.
Sam: I'm still not 100% sure that's true and I'm honestly a little bit upset with her for telling you – but I can't tell her that because she seems really fragile. We don't talk about it because lots of people make assumptions and don't understand what we mean. It's also something that you can't understand until you see it yourself. I don't want to spend my whole life trying to convince people that I am who I say I am. Which is to say that I'm also an avatar and by telling you about herself she basically outed me.
Me: Is it possible to be an avatar of someone who's not a God, like for example an angel?
Sam: Technically angels are Gods. Lots of people claim they're avatars and actually they are attention seeking or need help. And so we don't attempt to prove anything. There's no point anyway. There are some avatars sent to Earth to do specific things and it doesn't make us special. We just know what the meaning of our lives are. If anything it's actually a burden.
Me: When I channeled Gabriel, I believed myself to be him in human form. Could I be the avatar of Gabriel?
Sam: So – I know that there's something about you. I don't know what it is. I do not believe that you're Gabriel. That sounds like a demon. You could have misheard. It's just that it's unlikely that the Christian God sent any angels, and it's common for demons to claim an angel. Because the Christian God (as far as we know) hasn't sent any – so they won't accidentally run into the real thing. Avatars aren't usually tied to one mythology but it's still a common demon scam. The most likely scenario is that your brain translated wrong. There's hard and soft polytheism. Hard polytheism is that all of the Gods are totally separate. Soft polytheism embraces the idea of syncretism – which is essentially that some Gods are the same. So for example Zeus / Jupiter.
Me: Both could be true simultaneously.
Sam: They are. True and not true. That makes most people's brains explode. The fact that you understand that means you're probably one of us. So if you are – I'm sorry.
Me: Why? Why are you sorry?
Sam: It sucks being one of us. I mean we do have a choice – we just made the choice before we were born. And we have to do our jobs. And we're subjected to more scrutiny with the rules. We're here to help the humans. We really can't hurt humans or fuck up their lives.
Sam: Gabriel is the messenger of the White God. Sometimes when people with no training channel for the first time they think they are that God's avatar. They hear "I am God" during the channel and lost the "I am human." Avatars are 100% human and 100% God. It's the worst of both.
Sam: Gabriel is synchronized with Hermes. Sometimes Hermes will use his name if people don't know Greek mythology. Hermes is the God most avatars/channels/oracles meet first. In part because he's a God of messengers, in part because he's good with humans. Mostly because he can talk to humans without their heads exploding. Because actually meeting a God breaks most people, which is one of the reasons avatars aren't supposed to talk about it.
Me: Does being an avatar affect what happens to us after death?
Sam: Yeah usually. It's all negotiated in your soul contract and slightly different for each person. So I can't say what it would be for you exactly. Usually it's just you go spend forever with the God in question.
Me: I don't even know which God I'm an avatar for, if any at all.
Sam: Me neither. If you are though – it will become obvious at the right time.
XXX
Months went by. I learned bits and pieces about the Gods by hanging out with Sam, Elli, and Daisy.
"The Christian God did something unforgiveable to me," Daisy said. "He put me into a psychotic episode where I thought Apollo was going to rape me. This happened after I refused to celebrate Christmas. It was painful because I was hiding in the shower and Apollo was trying to make sure I was alright, and a shiver of fear ran through my system."
"All this just because you wouldn't celebrate Christmas?" I said.
"Oh, there were a lot of other things I did before that," said Daisy. "Not celebrating Christmas was the final straw.
Daisy complained a lot about Athena too. "I don't like Athena. She'll take you apart and rebuild you based on her preferences. I don't want to be rebuilt."
"I think Athena's the voice I heard who said I needed to die," I said. "Though I don't want to accuse her without any proof. That would be wrong."
XXX
"The White God grants prayers based on a lottery system," Sam told me. "Prayers get put into a lottery machine and get spit out. There have been two times in your life in which the White God granted your prayers."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"Ares told me," Sam said.
"Ares knows me better than I know myself," I said.
XXX
"Ares and Aphrodite are fighting again," Sam told me one day. "They have a fight every three months. It's just the way they are because they enjoy fighting. Because Aphrodite is also a Goddess of War."
XXX
One time Elli ran into the room while channeling Ares and said, "Dionysus is fucking Jesus on the cross!"
"Uhh, I assume it's consensual?" I asked.
"Yes," said Ares.
"They have a weird relationship," said Sam. "Dionysus and Jesus are very similar."
"Does this mean the first Jesus I met wasn't the real Jesus?" I asked.
"There are lots of real Jesuses. He has lots of epithets," said Sam. "Which Jesus did you meet?"
"He's a human being. He doesn't have any special powers and he doesn't want to be worshipped," I said.
"That is a version of him," said Sam.
XXX
"Most grocery foods are genetically engineered to be hermaphrodite," Sam said. "Like watermelon seeds for example. They are engineered that way on purpose so that people can't grow watermelon from them. I keep having visions that all this genetic engineering will lead to a terrible famine. It won't happen during our lifetime, but it will happen sometime in the future. I have dreams that people will try to grow food from grocery store fruits and vegetables but they won't grow."
After Sam told me this, I had a dream about the famine. I dreamt about a tomato plant that was just beginning to sprout tomatoes, but it couldn't grow very large because people kept taking food from it before it had a chance to grow larger. People were starving and desperate.
When I woke up, I made a prayer to Zeus.
"Hear me, Zeus, God of the skies, God of weather, God of law and justice. I assume it was you who gave me that dream this morning about the Great Famine? Originally, I thought it wasn't going to be my problem because it wasn't going to happen in my lifetime, but now I get it. This is going to be a collective problem. I'll be in the afterlife and watch it happen someday. I promise I will write about it and warn the people of Earth."
XXX
I had a dream. It was very blurry, and everything was blue. The word "fate" was repeating in my head.
I heard a few loose sentences such as "fate, not fury." (For some reason the dream felt the need to specify I was a fate not a fury. Not sure why. I guess people get us mixed up a lot of the time?)
"I'm the worst one, the one who deals with death," said a voice.
I was crying in my sleep.
I heard myself say "No, I'm not ready to remember!"
After I woke up, I was crying uncontrollably, as if experiencing someone else's memories, the memory of when the third Fate saw the inevitable future and was crying for days about it.
I saw a memory of someone saying to me "Get a hold of yourself, woman!" not in this life.
I remembered the time my dad said to me "All you ever do is cry. There's no room for other emotions." Because I was like that for a while when I was recovering from PTSD.
What's the point of crying all day about something you can't change?
The Third Fate was thinking, whose idea was it to give a sentient being a job like this? It was a cursed existence.
"Humans are so fucking stupid," I said aloud because humans make terrible life decisions all the time.
"Wow, you gave me a good one," I said aloud because my sisters (the other two fates) deal with the beginning and middle of human lives and they allocated me a set of parents who are hardworking and caring and a life free from having to worry about finances.
I messaged Sam on Facebook messenger:
Me: When you said being an avatar is just a job, does that mean we're not actually the same person as the deity we work for? I still don't really understand how that works.
Sam: So there are different avatar traditions in different cultures. A Hindu avatar works differently than an Egyptian one or a Greek one. The Greek avatars aren't super well-known or discussed. Channeling itself was a Dionysian art form as a part of sacred theatre. For me personally, and I suspect for all Greek avatars although I cannot claim that with certainty, I am both Terpsichore and not Terpsichore. It's a paradox of divinity. Actually we see this in Christianity too. Jesus was the avatar of 'God.' And he was both 'God' and the son of 'God.' Most people on Earth have the ultimate goal of enlightenment - or they're just reincarnating for fun or because there's nothing better to do with eternity. But some people - both avatars and not - are intentionally incarnated with a job to do.
Me: When I die, will I still be Raine?
Sam: I know shockingly little about what happens after death. They don't tell us that information. I know some but honestly it's not really that important in Hellenism.
Me: Ok. You can finish what you were saying before I asked that question.
Sam: From what I gather, every life we live leaves an impact (for better or worse) on our soul and we are always ourselves. And the more impactful our lives are, the more we retain. But the ultimate goal is to know yourself, to be yourself. What is left when the physical conditions of this world are striped away. When we don't have to worry about hunger, fear, or our particular brain chemistry, who we truly are cannot be changed by life or by death. The waters of the Lethe (the mythical river souls are said to be bathed in between lives) does not change our true nature. Does this help?
Me: Yeah. Is it possible for a deity to have more than one avatar at the same time? Or is it just one at a time?
Sam: Technically speaking according to interpantheon laws it's illegal for Gods to do so. Some Gods do not care and do it anyway. There are also other things like instruments and channels which is a long conversation. And then there are actually decoy avatars who believe they are avatars and their job is to distract from the real avatars. Real avatars look nothing like the expectation - Apollo doesn't have flowing golden hair. Because it's easier that way than fighting off anyone and anything that wants to take a shot at the God. Does that make sense?
Me: It helps.
Sam: Real avatars do not need to demand worship. They do not need to prove the Gods are real. They do not need fame or fortune. All they need to do is the one particular job they were sent here to do. And everything else just gets in the way. These jobs are all different. And some of the time it's to support others. Mine is simple. To reconnect people to the Gods through art. People are so disconnected from each other, from the Earth, from the Gods.
Me: That might be my job actually. I guide others to fulfill their full potential, not really doing it myself.
Sam: That would make you a muse. The muses are unique.
Me: Anyways, the reason I asked about avatars is because I had a dream last night about whose avatar I am, and now I know. And it sucks. You're so lucky to be a muse. You get to inspire and have fun. I have to end lives and I see the inevitable future, meaning it's future that can't be changed. Apollo's lucky he sees futures that actually can be changed. I'm the third fate.
Sam: Oh that's interesting. We should talk more about that in person.
XXX
Some of my personality traits made more sense now, such as why I tended to be so good at sensing when things are about to happen (but I don't do anything to stop it from happening but rather I just try to prepare for it).
I tended to be so focused on being hyper-prepared (always carrying lotion, napkins, hand-sanitizer, etc and thinking of everything when packing for vacations) in case things go wrong in the future. And I guess there might be a reason why I'm good at doing boring, repetitive tasks for long periods of time, why I have a lot of stamina, because I spent an eternity spinning thread.
I'm a good writer sometimes, but I'm also a boring writer sometimes. My stories focus on the boring and mundane of life, but sometimes real life can be more interesting than fiction.
Before this day I was constantly worried about not experiencing enough, wishing I had discovered paganism earlier in life, but now I felt like my early life hadn't been prolonged enough, like I wish I had more time to experience being an ordinary person before I found out who I was. Why couldn't I have been the avatar someone cooler, someone more fun?
I was hyperaware for the rest of the day. My body felt like it was going to burst. I had less of an appetite than usual and didn't eat as much as I should. Felt like I was going to be sick.
I played some music on my ukulele and took care of Raven like driving out to get her food and medicine for her stomachache.
I drove to Taco Bell without using the GPS. Turns out I had a good sense of direction. I bought Raven a meal which came with a drink, so I got Baja Blast even though neither me nor Raven ever drank soda.
I approached Ares' altar and said, "Lord Ares, may I have your permission to give Hermes an offering?"
"Do what you want, Raine," Ares said to me.
"Thank you, my Lord," I said.
I went out on the balcony and lit a candle. "Hear me Hermes, the Messenger God, God of Thieves, the God of the Internet, I heard you like Baja Blast from Taco Bell so I got you this offering." I put the Baja Blast on the table. "Here, this is for you, because you've been helping me out a lot while driving."
I decided to take Raven to the park. While we were there, two ducks appeared, one white and slightly bigger, the other one multicolored. There were birds everywhere, all in pairs. There was a cherry blossom tree at the park that was in full bloom. I picked up a flower from the cherry blossom tree and thought about taking it home with me.
No, I'd rather not take it home, I thought. It's just going to wilt.
Aphrodite whispered into my ear, "I'll take it to the car and then throw it away."
When Raven and I were leaving the park, I brought the flower with me to the car. I thought about throwing it away, but then Aphrodite whispered into my ear again and said, "I'll drive it home with me and then throw it away."
I drove myself and Raven home. For the third time I thought about throwing the flower away, but once again Aphrodite whispered into my ear and told me to bring it upstairs, so I did. Then she told me to put it on Ares' altar as a peace offering. So I did, and then I sent Ares a message on Discord:
A peace offering from Aphrodite. The flowers.
I waited a couple minutes, and then I could feel Ares staring at me disapprovingly.
I gasped. "It's not what you think! I wasn't…I didn't break any rules…at least not on a conscious level."
Ares went to confront Aphrodite and angrily said, "You've been influencing Raine's subconscious!"
"Wait, don't jump to conclusions," I said. "It might not have been Aphrodite."
"You expect me to believe this was all your idea?" Ares said.
"Uhh…yes. I wanted you two to stop fighting so I orchestrated the whole thing," I said.
Ares and Aphrodite started arguing with each other.
"I didn't give you permission to play with my toy!" Ares shouted.
"But Hermes does it all the time," Aphrodite said.
"I asked Hermes to do that to keep Raine safe while driving! He had my explicit permission!" Ares said.
I lay in bed as Ares and Aphrodite kept arguing for twenty minutes. I thought about leaving the room, but Ares was holding me in bed using my own depression. If I really wanted to I could fight him to get out of bed, but it wouldn't do any good anyway. Even if I left the room, the Gods would follow me inside my head. So I just lay there and waited.
After twenty minutes, Ares approached me and said, "Alright Raine now it's your turn to be punished!"
"I'm being punished? For something I didn't do?" I said.
"You tried to lie for her," Ares said as he reminded me of when I said I orchestrated the whole thing.
"Oh yeah, it completely slipped my mind that I did that," I said. "Wow, how did you know? You're good at this. I guess you're right. I do need to be punished."
"Right, so get over here and take your punishment!" Ares said.
"Alright, alright, fine," I said as I made my way over to the head of my bed.
What's it going to be this time? Another grounding? I wondered. No, that doesn't fit the situation. He's probably going to make me do something boring and repetitive, though for how long? Will it last a whole day?
I waited anxiously for a few minutes until finally Ares made his decision. He told me to say the phrase, "I will not take the blame for other peoples' misdeeds."
I repeated the phrase five times. Afterwards, Ares said, "Okay we're done."
"Thank you my Lord," I said.
"You're welcome," said Ares.
"Wait, that was only five times? Not twenty? Not a hundred?" I thought about it and realized, "I did get punished. You drew a long pause on purpose to make me imagine all the dreadful possibilities the punishment could be."
"It wasn't hard to tell you were lying. You're a really bad liar," Ares said.
"Oh…right." How silly of me to think I could lie to a God.
XXX
I went to Sam's house. Sam channeled Hermes and instructed me on how to connect with the Third Fate.
Hermes told me to close my eyes, go into the spiritual ream, and find the door.
I opened the door with a key. The Third Fate was inside, playing the harp.
"I didn't think it was possible for a Fate to even have an avatar," Sam told me.
"I gained an understanding on the difference between an evitable future and a changeable one," I said. "Sometimes the probability that something will happen is 50%. Sometimes it's 10%, sometimes it's 80%, but sometimes the number is a very high number, like 99.999% and that's high enough to be considered inevitable. But there's always that 0.0001%.
"Right, it's unlikely but it does happen," said Sam.
"It's like in Steven Universe when Ruby made an impulsive decision and it completely shattered Sapphire's world," I said.
"But in a good way. That's a good metaphor. But Atropos is unhappy. That's interesting. Gods are only unhappy when they're not themselves. Even the Muse of Tragedy isn't unhappy."
"She has too much empathy. It makes her miserable," I said.
"When Gods get depressed it's different from humans. Gods will slowly fade away until they disappear."
"That's why she has me as an avatar," I said. "I'm one of the methods she's using to try to make herself less miserable."
XXX
"I grew flowers on my porch last year," I told Sam. "Mushrooms would appear in the pots and I would pluck them because I didn't know they were good for the ecosystem of the flower pot. One time, I was channeling Satan, and he wondered, 'why doesn't Raine like mushrooms?' I think he knew mushrooms were good for the ecosystem."
"Just make sure it was the real Satan and not just the many who use his name," said Sam.
"Satan is the God of pollution and litter, decomposition and decay. Both good and bad types of decay."
"There is a God of pollution and litter, but it's not Satan," said Sam. "Satan is the God of Freedom. Dionysus is the God of the type of freedom that makes everybody freer, but Satan doesn't draw the line, which is why he can be dangerous."
XXX
The more I hung out with Sam, the more I liked them.
The more I hung out with Daisy, the less I liked her. I would drive over to her boarding school and pick her up, then bring her to my apartment for the weekend, and she would create a mess in a living room which I would have to clean up after she left. And she made all of my roommates angry by asking invasive questions. She pissed off Raven too, because she kept asking if she could keep random items she found around the apartment.
Daisy complained about boarding school a lot. She started treating my apartment as her safe space where she could escape boarding school. She acted entitled to my apartment, as if I were obligated to bring her to my place every weekend. Eventually I told her no, I can't bring her to my apartment anymore, and she overreacted to the point of being hospitalized. We stopped being friends after that.
XXX
While I was at work, the Third Fate started talking to me.
"My gut feeling tells me you like the name Aisa better than Atropos. Is this true?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said.
"Talking to you feels different from talking to other Gods. When I talk with you it kind of feels like I'm talking to myself...sort of, though not quite. You've been there all along haven't you."
"Yes."
"I have mixed feelings about my existence. The reason I exist is for the sake of someone else rather than myself. You created me to help you recover from depression, and you created me knowing that there was a possibility I would resent you for it, just as you resent humans for creating you. It's ok though. I forgive you. There are times when it's good to do something selfish. Or did you deliberately make the type of person who would forgive this kind of thing?"
"I didn't make you that way. You choose to forgive me. You have proven to be the kind of person who is selective about the kinds of things you forgive and don't forgive."
"Right. I don't just forgive anything and everything just because society tells me I'm obligated to, otherwise they tell me I can't heal. I know that's a stupid lie. I'm assuming you tried other methods of healing from depression first before you resorted to creating a living person? Did you try going out and making friends with other Gods first?"
"Gods are proud. We don't ask other Gods for help. You have to understand, there are advantages to being human. You are allowed to do as many embarrassing things as you want and the Gods will let it go because you are human. But if a God does something embarrassing, I'll never hear the end of it. It is how it is."
I thought about it and decided, fair enough. I would've done the same thing in her situation.
"If given the choice, I would've lived a hundred lives before becoming an avatar, but instead I was an avatar at creation, which means I never get a chance to live any normal human lives at all, or any animal or plant lives for that matter. I don't want to be a God. Not until I've experienced life a hundred times," I said. "Even though I technically agreed to be your avatar before birth, did I ever have much of a choice to begin with? I never asked to be made. You put so much responsibility of saving the world on a newborn soul. And I only get one life. It just isn't fair."
"On the bright side, you get lots of privileges," Aisa said.
"They're privileges I never asked for. But I suppose it does balance out. There are pros and cons to it."
"I was the one who deliberately put you in harms way so that you would get sexually assaulted twice. But you already knew that."
"Yeah, I figured it out a while ago."
"I do things like this every day. My entire life is like this. The ends justify the means. If you hadn't been traumatized, the Demon wouldn't have taken an interest in you, and he along with all his siblings wouldn't have been redeemed. Without trauma, you wouldn't have been able to connect with Raven as deeply. Without suffering the way you did, you wouldn't be able to understand mental illnesses as well as you do, and you wouldn't be able to fix the field of psychology. I gave you all the therapy and support you needed in order to heal. In the end you get to live a better life than you would have if you hadn't suffered at all. You have all these friends and family who support you. And you met Ares."
"That's true."
"Aren't you at least grateful that I created you? Because you exist?"
"Yes, I suppose I am grateful for that."
XXX
I made a harp out of clay and wrote "Aisa" on the base of it, and then added it to my altar.
"Hear me, Aisa. The inflexible. She who cannot be turned. The Third Fate. I am offering this totem I made for you out of clay so please accept it."
One evening Aisa showed up without warning. While I was channeling her, I couldn't do anything but sit in bed.
"Can I have my free will back?" I asked.
"In a moment," Aisa said.
Raven came in the room and lay down next to me in bed. Aisa embraced Raven and said, "How many times do I get to say I love you?"
"Never enough times," Raven said.
Aisa continued to lie in bed with Raven and feel, for just a short while, that everything was alright in the world.
I was laughing as I remembered a funny memory.
"What's so funny?" asked Raven.
"I'm just remembering. Back when I was a teenager, I used to go to a Christian summer camp. The speaker was answering questions that people wrote to him. Most of the questions were spiritual related, but the question I wrote was this: suppose you really love cheesecake, but you're deathly allergic to it, and somebody handed you a cheesecake – a creamy, chocolatey, delicious cheesecake. What do you do? He was like, 'hmmm, cheesecake or death? Cheesecake or death?' He didn't take the question seriously at all."
"As he shouldn't," said Raven.
"But then next year when I went to camp again, there was a new speaker, and he said, 'I love cheesecake. I'm allergic to it but I eat it anyway.' He just randomly said that at some point. Nobody thought it was significant except for me. What are the chances that next year's speaker just happened to be someone who loved cheesecake but was allergic to it? Maybe a God thought my question was funny and chose a new speaker based solely on my question."