Page 40 of We Were Eternal Once

“Yes,” you say, and I am shocked at the clear answer. You love to weave through their questions, picking out bits to answer, leaving others at your feet to decay. You feed us enough to hang on your word, but too little to sate our thirst.

“So you alone hold the tales of our origin?” Bastianos asks. “Regale us, then.”

“You want to know how we were created, I assume?” you say. “Who is the oldest, and how did they come to be? Hmm?”

You’ve captured their attention, like you have every meeting. They lean toward you, drawn to the promise of your words. But will you answer such a direct call? Or will you dance around this, too?

“No Elder knows what the First did to create our kind,” you say, and now I lean toward you, too. “Perhaps she⁠—”

“She?” Menodotus interrupts. He shrinks away when you turn your red gaze on him, pinning him to his seat. The others glare at him as well. How dare he interrupt you? They begged for your audience, for your answers—and this is how they reward you?

“She,” you continue after a long pause, “was the First. She created the Elders, plucking humans she found worthy as she moved across the world. Not every change took, she had to learn as she went. At first, it was in awe of what she’d become. So she named herself Creator and sowed her seed.

“She made many mistakes, as all new things do. She first wielded the change like a weapon, then like a prize. But it was all wrong, and she’d often destroy her own creations.”

Quiet gasps nearly interrupt you, but you continue on. You are not in this room anymore, are you? Are you next to the First, your Creator, watching her make more like you? Or are you watching from above, a narrator more than a character?

“At last, she found the course she liked best—creation for companionship. She no longer sought out the smartest and strongest, but looked for other traits. Beauty, mostly, for she was a vain thing.” Your lip curls again, this time in affection. You are no omniscient narrator, you were there. You knew this First.

I am jealous of her. She knew you before you were made, she saw parts of you I never will. Did she mold you, or have you been away from her long enough to become your own? I hate that I will never know that version of you.

“The Elders are the creations she let live. They were her companions, her lovers, her confidants.” You stop suddenly, blinking rapidly. You are back in this room, a realization that destroys you.

“Which were you?” Dione asks. Her voice is quiet, yet it rings through the room.

“Which was I?” you ask.

“Companion, lover, or confidant?”

I hate how badly I want to know the answer. What will I do if you say lover? Surely there were others before me, but you do not speak of them, so they do not exist. I am your only living creation, you said as much when we nearly fled Alexandria.

A flame burns in my chest, heating my insides. I need you to answer, I need to know.

“I was her justice,” you say.

She was infamous.

“Is that how you came by your name?” Dione asks. Dione is made bold by the fact she so rarely speaks, that when she does everyone listens. She expects that to extend to you. But you’ve made it clear you don’t wish for them to use that name, and here she invokes the origin of it.

How dare she? I am about to protest when you speak—soft, quiet. Reverent.

“It is,” you say. “I was tasked with carrying out her justice. There were rules.”

“Rules?” Essemteu asks.

“We were the only of our kind. If the humans knew about us, they would hunt and kill us. One—never reveal your true nature to a human. Two—dispose of all bodies in a way they will never be found. Three—you need permission to make another. As time went on, we added others. Four—you may never record evidence of our kind. Five—you must never make a family member or a child.” You lift a finger with each rule, your long fingers splayed wide at the end.

“Those are the rules?” Ardashir asks.

“Were,” Theon corrects. “We’ve no use for rules.”

“Don’t we?” Zahra muses. “We all live by our own codes and laws. We understand secrecy is paramount, and that we cannot go around turning every human. Then there’d be no food,” she adds, the barb aimed at Theon.

You settle back on the bench, your body slumped as if the truth exhausted you. I catalogue every word you said in my mind so I can put it to written word later. You were like the goddess Nemesis, executor of divine retribution.

What happened? I want to ask.

(“Time, and much more.”)