Page 43 of We Were Eternal Once

He’d never understand what it meant to be a temple mouse. He knew only what it was to stand on the altar and lead.

Essemteu is horrified by Theon’s sacrilege, both against you and his gods and goddesses. “The gods grow with us, Theon. They always are and always will be.”

“Is that true?” Theon asks, his sharp gaze on you. “Have the gods always existed, just changed as we do?”

“No,” Shimon interjects just as your mouth opens to answer. “My god is not yours, they have no commonality.” Shimon was always quick to point out his monotheism. To him, we were created by his god, because that is how things are.

“Fine, then who follows the oldest gods?” Theon asks.

“I don’t know,” you answer, but it is a lie. I follow the oldest god—you.

“Hmph,” Theon says.

“The world is much bigger than you can understand,” you say. Your stuttering truths are a thing of the past. Since the revelation of the First you’ve spoken more, commanded more of the group. Occasionally you lead discussion, just as you did the first night in the garden with Essemteu.

“There are maps,” Theon says.

“Incomplete,” you say with a wave of your hand.

“How would you know?”

“Guesses by humans,” you say dismissively. “Mountains where there are none, deserts where it was once fertile, water where it was once ice. Maps are a frozen moment in time. If I had come to Alexandria four hundred years ago, what would I have seen?”

“A large city in its infancy,” Essemteu marvels.

“And four hundred years before that?”

“Nothing,” Essemteu replies. He leans forward in an attempt to get closer to your words.

“A moment in time,” you repeat. “If I first came to Alexandria eight hundred years ago, I would call it a settlement. If I never returned, my map would mark it as small and insignificant.”

Dione hums her agreement as Theon glowers.

“Then we may never know the first god as we know the First of our kind,” Essemteu muses. “If we ask different humans, we get different answers about the origin of religion. Yet, when it comes to our beginnings, we have the source.”

You. He means you.

I should have seen what he was doing. I wonder sometimes if you knew and encouraged it. I didn’t need encouragement to fall into the shift of the guild. I hated those that hated you, and I tolerated those that loved you. At last others saw what I did: a goddess worth worshiping.

Then someone moved the benches.

It was still circular, but the bench we sat at was elevated. Several blocks rested beneath its legs, elevating it like a throne above the group.

“What is this?” Theon rages.

“Natural progression,” Essemteu says with a shrug. “It is time we accepted it.”

“Accepted what?” Theon asks.

“An Elder as our leader,” he says.

I stood by as the rift became a chasm.

Theon, who once asked me what it was like to be so close to a god, spits on the floor near your feet. “She is not a goddess! She is flesh! She bleeds and feeds just as we do!”

“Well, not as you do. She takes from humans, not beasts,” Zahra says.

“Lower the bench,” Bastianos says between clenched teeth.