Salvation of a God

The sea gods were relatively subdued until they were insulted. And then their anger would sweep over the shores, creep further inland until the gods’ fury would rest in the valleys as ponds of salty, useless water for weeks. 

This was the old belief, the explanation for hurricanes and ocean floods. What else could the water be than a punishment for a crime they couldn’t point out? That belief had been swept away by the Nel, Saed, and Spyre family decades ago, leaving it to the grandmothers and widows shuttered away in the halls of their families, sending prayers to what their younger family members assumed were legends.

In actuality, the old women’s prayers and stories were the only things keeping the water gods alive. There were very few of them left; after the fall from belief from the people on the Common Continent, many of the weaker and lesser known spirits drifted away or were lost to the depths, and the ones who remained were reminded of their mortality. The sea gods, though powerful and awe-inspiring, were never as well known as the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (though the sea gods had always wondered why humans would pray to inanimate objects when they and the fire, earth, and air beings were right there keeping them alive). 

Voana was the keeper of the deep. Surrounded by guards and buoyed by the fear humans held of the depths, he were the least likely to submit to the Creator’s beckoning call to the Dark. His anger was just, if not heavy handed, and it burned brightest towards sea poachers and fishermen. He had sent many of his creatures to swallow boats whole, but he always called his monsters back to his side with words of praise on his tongue.

Kaivi controlled the tide with the help of the Moon. While the Sun, Moon, and Stars were not true gods, the sea gods did have to admit their spirituality and gravity. When their collective rage boiled over, it was Kaivi’s hand that swept over the waves and pushed them inland over the human’s crops, livestock, and homes. Despite her malevolent job, Kaivi was the least easily angered, content to keep the little ones on the shores of the seas safe with gentle waves and comfortable tides. Because of her gentle nature, she was one of the most easily remembered names of the sea gods, even by those who didn’t believe in them anymore. 

The protector of the wildlife, Buira, found himself butting heads with Voana more often than not. Despite being the protector, Buira saw the worth in letting humans take what they needed, but no more. Since the fall of the dragons, Voana found Buira’s impassivity to their passing nauseating. What Voana didn’t know was that Buira was losing his grip on his connection with the creatures. 

It started with the fish, the small ones that Buira hadn’t necessarily paid attention to because even with humans taking them for food, they repopulated easily and quickly. It was a strange feeling, losing something he had had for years, and it only grew from there. The next was the seals and arctic whales in the Southeastern corner of the world, then the dolphins and smaller whale and shark species that Kaivi was partial to. 

By the time Voana and Kaivi realized how bad it had gotten, Buria’s connection with Voana’s monsters was fading as well. They had gathered in the mouth of the bay near the Nel fortress, in a set of caves so that Voana wouldn’t be burned by being so close to the sun, but close enough to the surface that Kaivi could stay warm and comfortable in the sun’s rays. 

“What do you mean you don’t know where my monsters are?” Voana’s voice echoed in his cave, slanted eyes glinting as he no doubt crossed his arms over his chest. 

“I’ve lost my connection with them,” Buria said, “I can’t hear them. And I can’t reach out to them.”

“Can’t you build the connection again?” Kaivi asked, “Find the largest or most aggressive or alpha of them all and rebuild it?”

“I’ve tried,” Buria let himself float along with a wave before swimming back to the others, “I think the humans are forgetting me. I don’t think I have much time left.”

The others froze, Kaivi’s seaweed flying around her head as she looked at him in shock, Voana’s eyes widening just the slightest bit before narrowing again.

“I’m more inclined to believe that the Creator would come down at moonrise and take the color from the coral reefs that Kaivi is so fond of,” he said.

Kaivi scoffed, “Do not pretend you do not appreciate them as well.”

“They hurt my eyes.”

“Ooh, sensitive, are we?”

I have no qualms against siccing one of my monsters on you.”

She hissed at him, ready to fire back an equally hostile retort, but Buria shot them both a look that was silencing.

“We are some of the only ocean gods left,” Buria said, “We can’t afford to be bickering like human children.”

“You cannot honestly believe that the humans are forgetting you,” a jellyfish floated towards Kaivi’s seaweed, taking a small nibble and twining its tentacles around her fingers when she reached up to pet it. 

Buria tried to reach out to the animal, hoping the proximity would help, but he received nothing, “I do. I can’t hear a single thing from him.”

“So what do we do then?” Voana asked, “Gather those of us that are left, send you off to the Creator that way?” He came out of his cave to speak, anger radiating off of his frame, “To the End with that. I refuse it.”

“What if we made them believe in us again?” Kaivi asked. The others looked at her like she had suggested reciting the story of the One backwards while swimming in counter-clockwise circles. 

“How do you mean?” Buria said.

“Are you playing with the pufferfish again?” Voana asked.

Kaivi’s weeds flared as she answered, “That was a long time ago, you cave dweller.”

“And so what if I’m a cave dweller? The Creator didn’t make me to live near the surface.”

“Alright, you two, that’s enough,” Buria exhaled and the two quieted, taking in the paleness of Buria’s features, the sunken look to his eyes, the pronunciation of his ribs under the weave of his shirt, “What was your idea, Kaivi?”

“What if we reveal ourselves to the humans?”

Voana lurched forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, “Are you mad? If we reveal ourselves, we go directly against the Promise.”

She pushed his hands off of her, much more gently than Buria would’ve expected from her, and shoved Voana towards his cave, “What good is the Promise if we are dying by following it?”

The Promise had been an oath that all sea gods and devils and deities had sworn at the time of their creation. In exchange for keeping their lives a secret, the Creator would keep them safe and leave their ruling of the waters to themselves. 

At the fire beings’ creation, the same oath was offered to them, but they refused, and the Creator put chains on their abilities and organized their tasks for them. After that, the air spirits and earth guardians agreed to the oath nearly before it was offered. 

Voana didn’t have an answer, but he continued to glower as Kaivi continued on, “I refuse to die without being missed.”

“How do you plan on keeping yourself alive?” Buria asked. 

“First off, Buria, it is ‘how do you plan on keeping all of us,” she gestured widely to the three of them, “alive.” She grinned farrelly, showing all of her sharp teeth, “And we go to the children, obviously.”

"A child's is a nearly unshakable thing," Kaivi explained as she gathered materials for her scheme, "Nearly as strong as that of the old crones who still sing our songs."

The issue was dropped for some time, and Buria continued to feel his power wane day by day. Voana had been nearly impossible to tear from his caves in the deep. He sunk innocent fishermen that strayed too far from the shore in his anger, especially foolish young men traveling the Suffering Strait.

He'd never admit it to any of the others, but watching Buria waste away terrified Voana. How long would it be until Kaivi or he followed along down that road? Somewhere, deep in his seemingly impenetrable heart, he hoped that Kaivi's plan worked.

Meanwhile, Kaivi was working like a demon to keep Buria from meeting the Creator. It may have been selfishness; if any of the other spirits asked her for a reason, she'd say she wouldn't want to be stuck with Voana until the next one of them died (what an ugly, mortal sounding word that was). In truth, she had always felt protective of Buria. The god had taught her what it meant to be a god, how to control and channel her anger so that she surpassed even him, where to find the pull of the sun and the moon the clearest. He had become somewhat of a father figure to a fatherless goddess.

Revealing herself to the children in the low tide was harder than she anticipated. Most of them had nannies or older siblings there with them, and had they been mostly sisters (girls seemed more apt than boys to believe anything, fairytale or not), Kaivi would've been more confident in approaching them, but many of the siblings and even guardians of the children were predominantly male. 

And then Kaivi got lucky. Two young children were paddling through the gentle waves, a boy and a girl, their tiny, tinkly laughter combating the heavy winds above their heads. Their guardian was a young man, reading further on the shore, perched atop a rock, but the wind was loud enough that it would cover Kaivi's words.

She swam towards the shore, hoping her size wouldn’t frighten them (humans had such a problem being terrified of things larger than themselves. Not everything was out to kill them), but she wasn’t expected to be startled by the little girl’s squeal of excitement when Kaivi emerged from the water.

“Mith!” she turned towards the shore and ran for the boy on the rock, “Mith! Look it’s the princeth from your ‘tory!”

The small boy in the water remained standing there, looking at Kaivi with wide eyes, “Pretty.”

Kaivi didn’t know what to do from there. Luckily, she didn’t have the chance to make a choice, because the girl was dragging the young man into the water by his hands, talking faster than the dolphins would swim chasing after the sharks to bully them. 

The boy was older than she thought he was, perhaps nineteen winters judging by the curve of his jaw and the width of his shoulders. His hair can’t decide what color it wants to be, a thick, slightly unkempt mop of blonde, silver, and brown streaks atop his head, and Kaivi can see that his eyebrows and lashes do the same.

“What are you talking about, Xian?” his voice was smooth and rich, his tone playful as he followed the little girl through the water that soaked through his dark pants.

“Your ‘tory!” she said and continued to drag her towards the littler boy, “The lady that lives in the thea!”

“Ka-Vi?” he asked, amused, “What did she look like?”

“It is actually pronounced Kaivi,” the goddess rose above the surface of the water and the boy froze, face a mixture of awe, fear, and excitement.

“My apologies,” he paused, trying to get his words and emotions under control, “my name is Miise. I didn’t know we were pronouncing your name incorrectly. That’s how my grandfather said it.”

“Grandfather?” 

The boy - Miise - nodded, “He learned the story from my grandmother when they first met. About the sea spirits.”

“Who do you know of?” Kaivi asked. This boy didn’t realize how important his information was, “How many of you still believe?”

The boy looked slightly confused, but rattled off a few names of spirits who had been long dead, “No one truly believes anymore,” he winced with his bluntness, “you’re all legends. Myths.”

“But that is enough to make people believe,” Kaivi said, “We do not need to be believed in like gods anymore. We have not been believed in as gods for centuries.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Miise took the other little boy’s hand and picked him up, cradling him against his side.

“We are dying,” Kaivi said bluntly, “and without more people to believe in us, we will continue to die until the last of us meet the Creator and the seas fall to chaos.” There was no way to explain to this boy, these children, that the remaining gods were keeping the waters from flooding the shores, staving off hurricanes attempting to form near the islands, and repairing the cracks in the ocean floor to prevent earthquakes and tsunamis from buffeting the land. 

“I didn’t know gods could die,” Miise said. The two younger children continued to stare at Kaivi with wide eyes.

“We have been for years.” Kaivi responded, voice harsher than she intended, but she decided it was worth it, “One of the eldest of us is dying. I need your help to keep that from happening.”

“Not to be callous,” Miise said, “but what’s in it for us?”

Ah, so this boy wasn’t as naive and sweet as he outwardly appeared.

“Mith,” the girl whined, “what does callo-calla- what does that word mean?” She played with the hem of his shirt as she spoke, frowning slightly as if she could tell that he was being crafty.

“I’m just watching out for us, Xian,” he pushed her hair away from her eyes and shifted the boy in his arms and looked back to Kaivi, “I’ll ask again, what do we gain in this?”

Kaivi thought fleetingly of making something up: claiming that they would be turned into sea gods themselves, or that they would always be able to reel in a full net, but she knew that those things were beyond her own capabilities, “I cannot offer you bounty or wealth or blessings. I cannot promise goodness for your future. But I can swear to you that when you or these children are near the sea, the only tides your shall see will be safe, and the waves upon the horizons will be gentle.” 

Miise studied the goddess for a long moment before glancing down at the children, “Does that seem fair to you?”

Xian nodded furiously, “I like thwimming.”

The baby only continued to stare at his guardian, and then back at Kaivi, fist securely held in his mouth. 

“Tekin think’th tho too,” Xian said.

“Well if Tekin was so opinionated about it, I suppose we have no other choice,” Miise said. 

Kaivi couldn’t tell if she thought that convincing humans - or teaching them tales about herself and the other sea gods - would be more or less difficult than it actually turned out.

Miise and the children met Kaivi at the shore once every full moon to relay their progress. Out of the three of them, Xian was having the easiest time as she told the other children in the area about Kaivi, Voana, and especially Buria (Kaivi made sure to tell them the most tales about the communicator). Miise didn’t have many chances to talk with others about anything other than work or his two charges; he was a carpenter and architect, but when the neighbor girl would watch the children for a night, he would go to the tavern and tell magnificent tales that completely enraptured his audiences. 

Below the sea, Kaivi saw Buria’s slow, but sure, improvement. He moved with an agility Kaivi hadn’t seen in what felt like decades, his face no longer resembled a skull, and his words and laughter were boisterous again, yet still gentle. Always gentle, and Kaivi was glad to see him alive again.

Even Voana had to admit that Kaivi’s plan had worked, especially after Buria convinced one of Voana’s monsters to attack his master (all in jest, of course). 

The last time Kaivi met with Miise, he was alone, and it was a warm night on the cusp of the summer months. Miise had been reading by moonlight on the rock she had first seen him on all those months ago. She called to him softly and he waded out into the cool tide to meet her.

“I have to thank you,” Kaivi said, “and your children. Without your assistance, as unsure as it was, at first, one of the beings that I am closest to in this world would have drifted to the Maker.”

“You’re welcome,” Miise replied, “but they’re not my children, though I am their guardian.”

“I am afraid I do not follow.”

Miise laughed, a happy sound that made Kaivi smile despite not knowing why, “Xian and Tekin are my niece and nephew.”

“What happened to their parents?”

Miise’s mirth died slightly, but his mouth was still twisted in a small smile as his gaze focused on the soft waves, “My sister and her husband died shortly after Tekin was born. It was a less peaceful time than it is now, and rioters lit their house on fire. I had only been visiting, on my way to see a sweetheart near the coast, but I couldn’t save them as well as their children.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Miise nodded, “I am too, once in a while when our house is quiet, but mostly, I’m glad that I’m the one that’s raising them instead of them being in an orphanage.” He glanced at Kaivi again, smile growing, ease returning, “And besides, without them, I wouldn’t be able to be the salvation of a god.”