what might be the birth and death of a goddess

All She could feel was salt, a sickening and bold smell remained on her skin, as new as the rough grit of the sand. The air was as she had never known before, as the salt and sea foam she originated from dried on nearly human skin. 

She was nowhere near one with it anymore, centuries passing without her acolytes to sing her praises.

But who could ever know what she wasn’t anymore? As she lay sickening on the coast of her birth.

It was a blight on whatever she had that approximated eternity.

But she could survive it if she also forgot what she was. Like her followers saw fit to forget.

What aspect was she again? How was she broken to fit? before they forgot.

She misses the salt for the grit of the sand, as she tried to remember that which was already lost. Less laying now, then basking, as she bargains.

She, like so many, was born from rot. It was the first thing she knew, even as the seafoam became her. 

It would be dangerous if it were the last too. 

She’d thought she was done the first time, when those parts in the beyond offered her that precarious perch. How much longer could she possibly have in a storm of fading memory?

Her people, her patrons, were gone. The people who thought still of her were fading too. She might be lost entirely, to be only an artifact of dead idolatry. She was once a creature of love, or maybe terror, she was once the wildness of her birth, of course. She was likely both. 

But that was never what they worshiped, was it?

She was so much more than their capacity. 

There were people here, tiny things to her. She was unseen by them, her presents unheeded, muted maybe by her fading self. And while it is beautiful for a time, in the sun, she watches them scatter obeying the weather rather than her. 

She couldn’t much bask in the rain, but with little to do she stayed.

How long was she fading before she noticed?

She was life from death, once.

At one point she grew sick of the rain, and she stood up to walk from the sand. She could try to find one of her temples, but to walk within one would likely be the same.

She went to follow the puny things, up from the beach. Even if she wasn’t to be seen there was always room for spirits among people. She kept to herself while in the common room of a public house of some kind. She didn’t bother the integrity of anything there while she listened to her unaware hosts. Many of the people were there, seemingly to wait out the rain.

“It sure was a shock wasn’t it? The rain startin’ up like that,” went the server, to someone who seemed familiar.

“Not really, I’d been having a headache all day,” went a rather soggy person.

“Oh really, explains why it took you so long to get out then.” the server said, throwing a towel at the soggy one. 

“What’s funny is that it was only once I got out to the beach that I felt it,” the soggy one said, working the ocean’s water from his ears, “it was this tight feeling through my head beating.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, you’d think the sand could ease anything, but you can’t escape atmospheric pressure apparently.”

“Maybe it’s just the salt getting to you?”, the server went, “the smell of the seaside isn’t enviable.”

“As if, you know how I am out here. And I’ve never had those types of issues,” the damp one said, now it was only the towel that was soggy. “I wonder what my luck was today.”

“Maybe you were sensing a spirit?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well. some people have an affinity to those kinds of things you know.”

“Of course I do, I’ve just- I didn’t know there was anything like that here.”, the damp one said, a little worried. 

“Well of course you wouldn’t, it's been a long while since those kinds of things were properly tended,” the server said. At least he seemed to understand her predicament. 

“What kind of spirit do you think it was?”, the damp one asked, trying to laugh off his curiosity.

“None I could name.”

“That sounds like a bucket full,” went a patron.

“oh, so you want to hear about the spirits?”, there was a certain affirmation among his patrons, and having caught an audience the server decided to parse out what he knew. 

The server started, “Well you see there was once a storm god brought over from the mainland, he’d been overseeing his acolytes across the south, in their conquest of the islands there. I say it was the god himself, since there ain’t much given other than his followers.”

“Where we stand of course was one of those islands,” the server said to an over dramatic gasp from the other side of the room and subsequent laughter from his near captive patrons. 

With a wave of his hand he told, “It’s said that in sacking the islands older spirits were buried, under their own temples, leaving them stranded beneath their people.”

“But it's better known that the storm god was forgotten also, his followers though willing to conquer and convert were ultimately unable to worship him eternally,” the server told them, “And as the storm god’s followers dwindled those long buried spirits rose again.”

“But it's been so long since then that the original spirits of this place have forgotten themselves, just like their conquered people forgot them.”

“Oh, that's kind of sad.” said a young lady who was getting quite weepy over it.

“Isn’t it silly to forget something like that so easily?”, said the girl next to her. 

“What do you even mean?”

“Like, can you imagine letting go of something as sure as a real spirit.”

“That's silly.”

“Then why be sad about it?”

The rain of course didn’t let up for their squabbling, though whatever tension there was had thoroughly left the room. The one who was so diminutively called a spirit wasn’t much amused, but she was rather trapped as an unknown at the moment. 

“The thing is that if such was the case, I ain’t sure it would matter,” one patron went, “they were conquered right? They didn’t passively forget.” The spirit likes this one, but he didn’t have a presence.

“Well yes,” the server said, working on someone's drink. “But they forgot anyway, and now people get odd afflictions when they bother the spirits.”

The puny things decided to mumble to themselves until the rain cleared. The people leave one by one as the graying rain-clouds shift, leaving behind only the damp one, the server and the spirit. The server went about his work, leaving the damp one essentially alone in the room.

“Ah, so that's how it works,” the spirit said, “the way you were bothered I’d thought you were a sullied priest.”

“Who said that?”, the less damp one asked. The spirit is surprised at this new development, she wasn’t expecting such a boon. She thought for a moment, how did she impose upon her priests before. 

“Quite, damp one.”

“Well that's a bit rude,” 

“Sorry,” she’d really lost all her decorum hadn’t she? “You really don’t know me?”the spirit asked.

“no.”

“That’s good actually, I need someone like you, I don’t think I’d make it how I was.” 

“really?”

“Oh yes, there are things my acolytes failed to think of when they parsed out my aspects. You heard.”

“Yeah, you weren’t that lucky I assume,” said the dry one, “I mean, you temples.”

“For some things, but not for all I was- I was never worshiped at full capacity, no matter how well liked I was in my time.”

The dry one knew where she spoke from, but couldn’t really see her, come to think of it. She was rarely seen even at her height. Since the dry one had nothing else to do, he listened. Like her worshipers never could. With the storm since weathered she had no worries beyond reformation. It was only so long before the dry one lost the prophetic pressure, and she the ever-present fading. They even walked away together, when the server deemed the dry one a loiterer.

She was able to share her aspects, and her power felt risen with even just one experiencer. She had lost the worry and weakness of centuries, and she might even outmatch her old perch. She flopped down on the sand and for the first time since before her acolytes she felt real.

She was basking in the moonlight unafraid of the sky, cradled in the sands of her birth.

As she looked up at the stars in the sky, she wanted to remember them. She wished she did, hoping against hope that she, like the salt and sea foam of her birth was ever at least in part, one with the now blackened sky. For all she knew the Dry-one could make it so.