The Watcher

“Turn back,” I whispered, my voice nothing but a breath of wind on the rugged mountainside. But she did not listen. She did not care. She was oblivious to my watching.

Sara trudged forward, her snowshoes crunching in the snow as it piled higher and higher around her. The water in her hydropack began to freeze in the tube between her sips, the reservoir still liquid only because it was pressed against her body in the pack she wore. As the white-out conditions intensified, she pulled out a compass to check her bearings. She was already fifty meters off the trail, which had become buried in the snow. But she didn’t know this. Her phone had already lost service at this altitude and was draining battery fast searching for a signal. Her GPS device might have been able to help her, if only she’d paid the monthly charge for the satellite connection. Sara was foolhardy and stubborn. But I saw strength in her defiance of her own mortality.

My all-seeing eyes, the ones that occasionally looked like knots in a tree trunk, pale stars in the sky, or drops of water on placid lakes, knew there was a mountain lion half a mile from the summit of Sara’s hike. The hungry animal, desperate for nourishment in the cold and icy conditions, would have no trouble identifying her scent on the breeze and stalking her.

“Turn back,” I whispered again. Not that Sara could even understand the language I spoke. The humans and the gods do not share a common tongue.

She was growing fatigued, I could tell. After having watched her for some time, I knew all the signs when a hike was going south. Her breath, usually steady despite a challenging workout, fell into an irregular pattern of gasps. Her thighs shook just a bit through her heavy snow pants. Her balance–

Right on cue, she lost her footing and flopped down face first into the snowy incline. Her snowshoes got crossed underneath her and her trekking poles did little to keep her upright.

“Jesus Christ, Sara,” I muttered, invoking the name of one of the gods the humans made up. They, of course, don’t know our true names or understand the nature of our presence at all. But I’d heard Sara use this curse quite frequently and I found it endearing.

“Why her?” Justice drawled, his voice thick with the scorn he reserved to critique my choice of humans. “She’s pathetic, Strength. You know this.”

“Don’t you think enough gods are spending their time and energy watching world leaders, military generals, and psychopathic billionaires?” I retorted. I was unpopular with the other gods, if you couldn’t tell.

“We have a betting pool, you know. For how long this one will last. How many more, Strength?” he asked with a sigh. “How many more dead humans are you intending to add to your flock?”

“Hush,” I said as Sara untangled her snow shoes and attempted to stand up. She had to get herself off this damned mountain. Justice had a point though. My so-called flock of dead humans was larger than anyone else’s. Was Sara next?

Mercifully, the fall was enough to knock some sense into her and she turned around and started back down the trail. The mountain lion had not caught her scent. Justice tisked in admonishment.

“There is strength in the ordinary,” I said, before Justice voiced whatever he was going to say next. “I am the god of strength, am I not?” I gestured down at Sara. “I pick humans that are tough as nails. The ones who try to summit ridgelines in November snowstorms.”

“Humans are unbelievably fragile,” he said. “That is why they are constantly dying. That is why this one will die too.”

“But maybe not today,” I said. “Maybe she’ll make it out of this one. That’d be true strength.” Justice grumbled and vanished from my side, returning to watching the humans he deemed more worthy of a god’s attention.

The wind whipped against Sara’s face, threatening to blow her right off the mountainside. All she had to do was make it back below the treeline and the conditions would improve. Then it was a quick jaunt down to her car at the trailhead. Her car, I’ll note, that had not yet become snowed in. But time was of the essence. Though her breathing evened out a bit now that she was going downhill instead of up, the muscle fatigue was still a problem. Falls were a higher risk on the decline.

“Come on, Sara,” I whispered. “You can get out of this mess. Imagine sitting in front of the woodstove after a long hot shower.” I always found these kinds of simple human pleasures interesting. Without a body, I could hardly conceptualize what it meant to be cold and get warm again. The humans possessed some powers and abilities the gods would never have.

Sara stopped in her tracks and looked around, almost as if she’d heard what I said. I knew she hadn’t. They never do. Yet it was uncanny how she chose that exact moment to peer around, as if she expected to come across a fellow hiker.

If she died on this mountain, I’d miss her very much. I’d grown quite fond of her. I was always drawn to the reckless, adventuring types. The ones who stared their mortality in the face and grinned maniacally. They were strong. (And yes, they also died more frequently than the timid homebody who remained curled up on the couch under a blanket.) But at least they were stronger than the pathetic men who traded human welfare for power whom the other gods obsessed over.

I wondered if the humans ever knew how much the gods fawned over them, incessantly watched them, and squabbled over their choices. I wondered if they knew how they made us laugh and cry and feel sick. Unlike the gods they invented themselves, we required no praise nor acknowledgment. We did not need them to believe in us, abide by some arbitrary set of rules, or harm one another in our name.

Sara made it to the treeline. I breathed a sigh of relief that, if she’d been paying attention, sounded like the faintest tremor in the pines surrounding her. Mercifully, my flock would not receive another addition today.

When she made it back into her car and pulled out onto the road back to town, she exhaled deeply. She shivered, waiting for the vehicle’s heater to warm up. Then she leaned her head back and laughed aloud.

“Not today, Satan!” she exclaimed, invoking the name of another human-made deity to celebrate the accomplishment of making it out of that snowy mess.

“Not today, Sara,” I whispered with pride, invoking the name of my deity. “Not today.”