Divine Providence

“What did you do?”

He bursts into the room, breathless as a man beset upon by demons, though she is certain she has not unleashed any.

She does not turn to greet him, does not afford him any acknowledgement at all, save an absent hum.

“What. Did. You. DO?”

A hand collapses onto her shoulder. She exhales and lets herself grow heavy with it, roots herself to the floor. He makes to shake her arm, tug her around, but she will not be moved.

This is purely for her own amusement. A power play of sorts. She has no intention of dragging this out, and besides, she does not regret her actions, and none will ever make her.

She lets a current dance across her skin, and the hand jerks back, sparked. In her own time, she turns to face him, letting the legs of her chair drag across the stone, delighting in the sound, in the unease twitching across his face.

“Yes?” she asks, as if she is completely unaware of the information he seeks, as if he has not already twice demanded it of her. He trembles with his whole self, fists clenching as if urged to shake her again, but he has come to her, here, and it seems the folly of that action is slowly dawning on him. She has never sought a particularly large domain, but she has traded her reach for control, and there are none with so absolute a command of their dominion as her. He has no power here. He is nothing.

She stills his body with a simple motion, drawing her fingers together as if conducting a mortal choir.

“No. No, you don’t get to- you can’t. You know why I am here.” His voice quivers. If she were not still toying with him, she might ask him why he turns to rage before sorrow.

“Perhaps I do.” He waits for her to continue, and she waits too, reveling in the silence.

“You, you took her. You took her, and destroyed her, into that, that thing. That monster made of stone.”

“Then it appears that your question is answered. You know what I did. You are free to leave.” 

He exhales, loudly, an ugly, shuddering thing.

“I want, to know, why.”

No, she thinks. You only think that you do.

She says, instead, “What does it matter? She was nothing, a mortal. Fleeting.”

“What does it matter? I loved her. I, I would have asked, I -”

He’s sobbing now, and it thickens his voice, his words coming broken and incoherent. She lets the tears fall.

“I would have asked her to be with me, eternal -”

And what would you have done when she refused you, she thinks. You, who are so quick to anger and quick to cool. I wonder, do you mourn the person you lost or the possession?

“She was not eternal, and neither your ardour nor longing would change that. As a gargoyle, she might live forever. Think it a favour, if you would prefer. Preemptive action, to prevent greater, inevitable heartache. ”

“But that was not your decision to make. It was not your favour to give.”

What if I told you the truth? That it was not my decision, but hers. That your beloved called to me, despite having your so-called favour, and begged me to save her.

In her time of need, she called on me and I came. Can you say the same?

Her face is still blank, and aloud all she says is “You are boring me.” His inane babblings are cut short as she steals the words from his mouth and the breath from his lungs. For perhaps the first time in his life, he follows prudence, and takes his cue and his leave.

And still she wonders whether she shouldn’t send the words after him. If it might not be worth his sputtering, angered disbelief, to see that self-imposed denial as he staunchly ignores the words she has not let herself say.

What if I told you that, even as her body hardened around her and her mind ceased its panic and terror and self, her last thoughts were tinged with relief.

What if I told you the last words to die on her lips were, ‘Thank you’.

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They call her a trickster. She lets them. Her counterparts are stagnant, stuck in their old ways. She envies them sometimes, that inability to be bored. Year in, year out, they stay in their spheres and do not stray, indifferent to the big picture. Everyone has a place, be it home or health or hearth. Someone to help fertility and another to help farmers, and she who helps no one, and so they call her Trickster.

It isn’t wholly accurate. Tricksters are creatures of chaos. They revel in deceit, in pain, in proving themselves better than their marks.

She is a god, eternal. Ex infinite, ad infinitum. What need has she, to test her wits against mortals who could never compete. What joy can she possibly gain, from besting those innately inferior. She is not so insecure as to need their benedictions.

And an eternity of existence allows you to experience everything once. Chaos, she has found, is far more beautiful in concept.

Because, if she is to be called a trickster, then here is a secret: true chaos, is the antithesis of trickery. When the world is in flux, deception is impossible, because there is nothing left that the target trusts. It is impossible, because the deceiver has a goal, and objectives cannot be achieved in a world that has succumbed to entropy.

Ordered chaos, now, that is where she thrives.

Her counterparts believe she helps no one, and perhaps for some definitions of the word that is true. 

And yet people call on her. People who feel they have nowhere else to turn. People lacking solutions, or morals, or anything that might endear them to other gods. People who know that, while they may not find guidance and will not find compassion, they will at least not face judgement.

It’s a form of chaos, you see. Confined within the rigid system of order that compels people towards her to begin with. She cannot find pleasure in meticulously engineering scenarios for a few flawed favourites, but endless entertainment can be found within situations you merely catalyse. When you have no stake in the ending, you are content to simply watch something play out, and even now she can still find some small novelty in each of her sparing interventions.

A woman called upon her once. She was married to a man of some means, and though he was not unpleasant in any way, it had become apparent to her that his considerable power and status were his and his alone. And he was content, to simply sit on that stature and let the world move around him.

His wealth would go to her upon his death, and his status with it, and she felt that there it would be utilised to its full potential.

And so she called her name, praying for some solution, and offering nothing in return. Not an honest attempt, perhaps; likely some part of her mind wanted her to fail.

But a goddess can hear all, if she so chooses to.

Yes, the woman never expected that particular plan to come to fruition. The easy outcome, it would have been, and only a fool would expect such things to come easy. It was an exercise in futility, nothing more, while she thought on plans more concrete. Perhaps she could wrest power more subtly, perhaps she could lie low and avoid all suspicion, perhaps her husband could stay alive... Perhaps there was some future where she did not wake to her marriage bed saturated in blood.

Certainly, she didn’t expect one half-hearted plea to be fulfilled.

Such a shame for her when she found out that it was.

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There is a culture in mythologies, to tell tales cautioning people against wish-granters. They are simple fables, moral preachings to teach people that the easy option is seldom right, and if a thing feels too good to be true, it most likely is.

Like all stories, though, there is a ring of truth.

Wish granters cannot be trusted. There is a troubling tendency in people to act solely to benefit themselves, and for the most part to ignore that fact is harmless. Mothers who throw themselves into the paths of danger for their children are merely staving off their own heartbreak, and lovers exchanging tokens of admiration enjoy in return the gratification of seeing their other halves proclaim their own importance to the world in their acceptance. These actions are none the less admirable, none the less selfless, for these motivations. But it is sometimes important to consider.

Why would someone grant you a wish? For none would truly do it for free. Perhaps they think that your wants are in line with their own, and so they let them come to pass. Far and wide are the histories of Jinn told, beings proud and bound, corrupting the desires they granted under duress.

Deities in particular are fickle beings. They care little of consequence, and care for things of little consequence. Oaths and offerings, fidelity and reverence, to make a god feel needed is to tempt them into turning the world for you, with no thought towards who those actions may hurt.

It pains her to admit, but she supposes in some ways she is no different, though she cares not for offerings of the traditional sense. She does not need the passing loyalty of mortals. What she craves is amusement, novelty, the unpredictability of minds unburdened with immortality.

The stories warn of playing with the double edged sword of fate, that nothing is without a catch, that no gift is freely given. But in her experience, she has always found that true cruelty lies in giving someone exactly what they ask for.

Take the classic tale of the pauper who dreams of being a prince. He finds a Jinn and asks for help, and the Jinn answers that to be a prince is to have a title and power, and he can only be granted one.

It ought to be funny, to observe the bastardisation of this request. But of course it is not. For the pauper would choose wealth, more often than not, and live as a man, without title perhaps, but one with enough money to live out in comfort the rest of his days. And if, unasked, the Jinn merely granted him a Name, then at least he will be no worse off than he was before.

Imagine, though, that this wish is granted. Exactly as he asks, he becomes a prince, with all the trappings therein. None think it strange - none save him remember before.

And so he is a prince and heir to a throne, rich beyond his comprehension, and surrounded by his ministers and his musicians and his most beautiful wife.

It is a fool who would seek more than mere wealth. Titles are nice when earned or inherited, but of little value when simply assumed. His court do not recall a time when the pauper was not the prince, but so it happens that they cannot recall any of his non-existent princely deeds from that time. So they dismiss him as useless and usurpable, and slowly work to wrest his power from him, and the prince himself will not notice that he is being snubbed, because he is living the life he would expect. The pauper does not grow concerned as his life passes easier and easier, because he would not expect the life of a prince to be hard.

In truth he is right. It is easy to be a prince. Harder though, to remain one.

In this world, power comes from having money, or status, or manipulating someone in possession of either. His status is being sapped, and while his wealth will take longer to dry out, his wife, knowing that she is to be no more than her husband’s prize, is more than happy to claim and squander it for her own.

Perhaps it takes years, perhaps decades. There is no king, but no one questions it. Nominally, the prince rules over his kingdom, until one day, when he doesn’t. People smarter than he, content to hide in the shadows, have been biding their time, weaving their tangled webs, until one emerges, to take their rightful seat of charge. No one cares for the prince, so no one fights for him, and he has no defence of his own, for he had not the tools to see this coming.

And the prince is discarded, thrown into a squalid cell awaiting his death, a pauper once more.

Even knowing this tragic ending, who is to say whether the pauper would not have made these same choices. Certainly he had far greater chances for happiness, and for a significant time was he content.

The goddess does not concern herself with these thoughts. She is apathetic, towards mortals and their happiness. The pauper-turned-prince is merely incidental to the story - a catalyst of sorts, just as she herself likes to be.

No, what interests her is the machinations of the people around him - the people who did not ask for this situation, and do not know how it came to be, but are determined to twist it to their own advantages nonetheless. People who do not expect to be rewarded for their worthless gifts, who recognise that nothing in this world is free, that power can only be gained through preparations and partnerships and polite doublespeak. Through trickery.

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Still, none of this is to say that the goddess never keeps favourites.

There is an old temple of hers, abandoned for centuries. She had a cult following, once. They had outfitted the building with trials and tribulations, and she had added her own perils since. It was long ago, and she had been, not young, perhaps, but inexperienced.

Two women - or girls, maybe, neither could have yet reached one score - have stumbled into one such surprise: a dark, locked room, empty but for two knives and a glowing inscription.

It is rare she bestows a single person with her favour, and that has become rarer still as time passes, but occasionally there comes someone whose actions are so decisively unexpected, as to startle even her.

Those, she claims for her own.

The girls look similar - dark haired and willowy. Sisters, perhaps, though she cannot be sure. Usually she would let this pass unwatched, but something tells her to take notice. They both have wide eyes, deep brown, but where one’s hold the faint promise of golden warmth, beneath the frantic fear, the other’s are blank and cold, like smooth stones bedding beneath a frozen river.

Those eyes are not fearful. They betray nothing, but the slight squint at the corners seems shrewd.

For those eyes, she watches.

Both girls have taken a dagger, though one is clutched in a trembling fist. The inscription is merely pictorial, some implication that only by killing one can the other escape. It is not true, in that killing your companion in no way ensures, or even aids, the search for an exit, but the ‘test’, as it had been called, had amused her when it was first proposed.

The warm girl is muttering reassurances to her friend, that they will both make it out, that everything will be alright, that -. Her shaking voice is cut off mid sentence with an abrupt gargle.

She falls to the ground, hilt protruding from the throat, still spluttering. The cold girl pays her no heed, but she walks to a stone panel in the wall and, making no attempt to open it, speaks directly to the carving inscribed.

“I want to make a deal.”

The goddess smiles.