AuthorPalt

A Gamer's Guide 352

Added 2025-06-04 12:25:54 +0000 UTC

I chance a knock at the door. Who knows? Today might be different.

Knock knock knock.

There’s no answer. At this point, I don’t even bother to bring the tray. “Lett?” I call out. “Please, it’s been over almost a month. Let’s talk about it. I don’t want to give my apology from beyond a closed door.” With little else to do, I rest my forehead against the door. It’s still the same. He’s in his bed, reading. I’m out here. If I’d still been barbarous, I would have gone inside no matter what he wanted. But I can’t do that anymore. Saddled with these thoughts and feelings, I have no choice but to respect his sudden, fully explainable disdain. Since there is once again no hint of him changing his mind and letting me in, I allow myself to sigh, loud enough for him to hear. “I’ll be back tonight. Until you let me in, I won’t give up.”

On the way back downstairs, I encounter Glyph, tray in hands. She gives me an expression of worry, which I accept gratefully. It’s tinged with a silent question, though, so before I leave, I ensure to answer it, shaking my head as I pass her by.

At my side, the windows flit by, each one showing the gloomy world outside. Gray skies. Same as always.

I exit into the cold November afternoon. The grass is crispy beneath my bare feet, unable to quite let go of the morning frost. As I step around the front yard, a pair of kids rush by me, both bundled up in numerous layers of coats and shirts. Noticing me, they briefly pause to ask me if there’ll be spooky stories tonight. Same as yesterday, I tell them with great sorrow that there’s bad weather approaching, so it’d be too difficult to light a fire. They sigh and aww; but before leaving, one of them stands up on her tippy-toes to hand me a smooth, water-polished rock. I accept it gratefully. Then, waving and smiling, they leave me.

I let my fingers caress the surface of the rock. Cold, yes, but soft. I sure hope she didn’t fish it out of the river, that could be dangerous. We’ve already got three kids sick with the flu, so another one would be bad for morale.

Putting the stone into my inventory, I trudge around the house and over to the garden.

It’s really started to shape up, if you’ll permit me to brag. Before the leaves all went away, I had time to fix up a number of the hedges in play, shaping them into fun animals, many of which are unknown to the kids. Telling them about monkeys and birds has been a great past-time of mine, with the obvious payment being that they’ve told me various factoids about Purgatory fauna as well. I’m not sure I can trust everything they’ve told me—I highly doubt baby tarantulas are born with wings—but it’s certainly been entertaining enough to justify it.

Since the goddess of children was very adamant that I should plant flowers for springtime, I took the time to set up a few flowerbeds here and there. She had to guide me on how to do it though, since I’d never seen one in real life. Or, well, I must have, but not closely enough to really scrutinize the inner workings of it.

The flowerbeds are pretty neat. There are plenty of bulbs and seeds planted here, with a few starting to bud already. Some are set to bloom now in the winter, while others are simply nestling, getting ready for springtime. Once spring comes around, I’ll also be planting a few more which are unable to stand the cold of winter. When she first gave them to me, I was surprised that there were any flowers that could not only survive in the winter, but even bloom in it.

I hunch down next to the flowerbeds. I’ve planted them right beside the house, so the kids won’t accidentally run on them. Frey once stepped on them by accident, and it frankly scared me how upset I was about it. If she hadn’t been even more upset, I’m not sure I could’ve kept myself from scolding her very, very harshly.

The unfortunate thing about these flowerbeds—filled to the brim with soft, loamy earth—is that it isn’t only my flowers that like to stay here. As is my daily duty, I must do away with the pests and weeds that attempt to prey upon my wards.

First, I check my insect-trap. It’s really just an upside-down blueroot that I cut in half, but it does a good enough job. Let’s see here… Flipping it over, I inspect the bundle of various insects that cling to its underside.

Mostly wrigglers, with a few less wanted interlopers mixed in. Making sure not to hurt the useful wrigglers, I pick out the rest, stuffing them into my mouth. Mm. Crunchy.

Putting the blueroot back down, I move on to the weeds.

It’s mostly just little things here and there. There’s a new thing sprouting up here that I don’t recognize, but if I check the floral encyclopedia that the goddess of children lended me, I know that they’re the yellow ballgown dulbands I planted a few days ago. They’re very quick to emerge. The pictures in the book make them look like exceedingly pretty bursts of petals. I’m excited to see them in person. Though…

In all of the flowerbeds, only a single flower has bloomed. They’re very pretty, spread haphazardly across all of the beds, sprouting here and there in little clusters of redspotted black. I let my fingers brush against the underside of the nearest one. The petals are smooth, and as I touch them, it gives a small bow, all courteous.

“You let them bloom in the end,” a voice behind me says.

There’s no need to look up at her. I know exactly who it is. “I did.”

Matching my own pose, she squats down next to me, her hands on her knees. Since she’s on my right, I can only see her with my right eye. Through the lens of Simon, she doesn’t look like a goddess at all. As a matter of fact, had I not known—had I been unable to smell the floral divinity scattered about her—I might have mistaken her for one of the orphans that lives here. Clad in her simple, tattered clothes, with her innocent, unassuming face. “It’s a nasty habit to only save them because they’re so pretty.”

“I know,” I say. The flower bobs and nods, briefly stirred by a stray wind.

Smiling, the goddess reaches out, letting her small hand caress one of the flowers. “Husband-killer is a bit of a harsh name, I’ll admit. And it is a beautiful flower.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” I mutter. “I really ought to…” My claw hovers over the stalk of the flower. One little snip, and…

“You should,” she says. “They take up space and resources that the others need more. If you don’t, soon, you’ll have nothing but husband-killers.” She plucks one of them, holding it up to her nose. A deep sniff, and then she hands it to me. Without really thinking about it, I accept it from her, sniffing it as well. It smells fine. Not strong, not weak, not bad, not good… Just fine. “Maybe that’s why they’re called husband-killers?” she muses. “Because they kill off almost everything else?”

“That might be it,” I say.

As I roll the stem back and forth between my fingers, she leans in closer to me. “Why are you hesitating?” Although I could very easily take the question as an accusation, I can’t bring myself to. Her face is too simple to pull something like that.

With simplicity equal to hers, I answer, “I don’t know. Maybe it really is just because they’re pretty.”

“They weren’t pretty a week ago, when they were nothing but buds.” I can feel her gaze trailing down to the book next to my feet. “Did you want to see what they were like? Foul weeds are seldom pretty, but this is an exception. Or were you hoping that it might not be as bad as it sounded? That you could tame it, even though it was a weed?”

“Sure,” I say, without mirth.

Leaning over, she plucks the flower from my finger. Among all the gods and goddesses I’ve met, she’s the most confusing. It might be because she’s the youngest, too. The rest seem to mainly enjoy staying up in their clouds, away from all the trivialities of mortal life. But she’s right down here with them, telling them stories in the morning and ensuring that any child who’s made without home or parents finds both in one of her churches. I suppose that might be what separates her from the rest—how much she cares about each and every individual.

I watch her take a bite of the flower, swallowing it in one fell swoop.

…Or maybe she’s just the weirdest.

“When are you going to talk to Lett?”

I freeze in place. “That’s…”

“You’re the only one who can get through to him. He won’t listen to me, or anyone else. It’s just you.”

“I’m also the one that hurt him,” I say.

“Yes, that’s true. That’s also why you need to talk to him. If he thinks that even the one person he loves would be liable to betray him, how do you think he’ll view the rest of the world?”

“I’m sure he’ll find someone else to trust,” I mutter.

“Are you?”

…I can’t answer that one.

Not waiting for me to so much as think of a possible answer, she quickly continues, saying, “Today.”

“Today?”

She nods broadly. “Today, you’ll pull out all the husband-killers. And then, you’ll go talk some sense into Lett.”

I press my fingers into the dirt. It’s cold and stiff. “He won’t let me in.”

“So?”

I swing my head to face her. “So? I can’t just—”

“You have to,” she says firmly. Now that I’m looking right at her, I can see the other form, too. The motherly, stern one. “It is your duty to disrespect his wishes, because his wishes are wrong and stupid.” And then, with two overlapping faces, she grins, as one.

I chuckle weakly. “You’re asking a lot of someone who ran away from home.”

“Am I?”

I turn away from her. My hands are a bit dirty. Nothing beyond the norm. “No,” I say, “I guess not.”

Her smile, even in the dreary, gray November afternoon, is radiant. Although I can’t hope to match it, I try to smile back. The effort makes her chuckle. “You’ll make a good god, Kitty.”

Her question deflates me a bit. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m not sure I agree with it. This whole god business… It doesn’t feel real. I’m still me. So far, I guess I’ve been lucky, considering that no one aside from the other gods are aware of it. I’m not sure how I’d handle it if people started worshipping me. That’d suck.”

She hums thoughtfully. “I felt about the same, I suppose. There weren’t supposed to be a hundred gods, you know.”

“No?”

“Nope! Ninety-nine was a perfectly adequate amount. That way, the councils would never have to deal with the possibility of us being split fifty-fifty, like you had Us. Before I ascended, there had been ninety-nine gods for several thousand years. People had even forgotten that god was something you ascended into. But then, I came around. It had been in discussion since the extermination, but until Me, they hadn’t gone through with it. I was lucky They were vocal about the whole thing, if They hadn’t been, I’m sure I would’ve been denounced as another false god. And now… We have you!”

The look on my face urges her to laugh again. “That sounds like a huge bother.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” she says, in a way that only makes me worry more. “It’d be foolish of Us to mishandle you at this point.”

“Thanks,” I mumble. My eyes fall on all of the husband-killers. “Do you think they’d look good as a bouquet?”

“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

“You’re right,” I tell her. “You really are.”