The Fall

I stared the goddess down, knowing that she could ruin my fragile mortal self with a flick of her finger and spat, “You know what? I quit.”

“You, what?” she asked, aghast. It was clear she did not expect this from me. How could she? She’d given me more power and privilege than any humble human ever expected to receive and here I was, turning my back on her.

“I’m done,” I reiterated, crossing my arms over my chest. I could feel the big sweeping wings adorning my back, the one’s she’d given me, ruffle in the breeze. They were keeping me afloat in the clouds as we spoke and I was hit by a sudden pang of regret for having taken my stand thousands of feet in the air.

The goddess, and my lover, floated on the air effortlessly, a sadistic smirk gracing her ordinarily lovely face. “You really want to leave?” she asked. “My champion, my winged angel, my–” she postured before I cut her off.

“You can’t just kill humans like that,” I said, gesturing to the ground frightfully far below us. “That entire village of people you just wiped out was innocent.”

She looked at me as if I’d betrayed her, when in reality, she was the one to betray me. “You’re more god than human,” she said, gesturing to my wings. She’d given me other, unseen gifts as well. “How can it be that you are more loyal to your origins than to me and the impressive creature that I formed from your human flesh?”

Creature. That’s all I was to her. A pet. A creation. A servant expected to be loyal because of all the gifts she’d given me. She loved me, or at least she told me she did. But at that moment I wondered what kind of love it really had been. Did she love me for who I really was– a human– or for the fact that she’d been able to buy my companionship and believed she could get away with literal murder?

Regardless, I did love her. I loved her deeply, sincerely. And not because she’d turned me into a demigod. I loved her for who I once knew her to be. Sweet, gentle, and benevolent. She was the goddess of life, after all. The goddess of spring flowers and autumn harvests. The one the humans praised for their newborns and for each birthday their children celebrated. She’d given me white wings like a dove or an angel when she made me her champion. I loved her as if she was my equal, and yet, it became clear in that moment that she did not see me the same.

I would always somehow be simultaneous beneath her, and yet also require gifts of godlike powers to remain loyal. It was my loyalty that she coveted. And after I saw her giggle as humans died by her hand, I played my final card. The one she feared I’d pull. The one piece of power I had over a god.

“I am done,” I seethed. She was not who I fell in love with. She was a monster masquerading as a god.

I dove down from the sky, knowing I was in a sprint to reach the ground before she took away my wings as easily as she’d given them to me. I pumped the hollow bones and feathers hard in the wind, knowing that she was faster than I could ever be. She made sure of that. No matter how much power she gave me, it was always a careful calculation to be less than hers.

“You will regret this, Lydia,” she said, her voice booming like thunder in the pale blue sky.

I felt it the moment she snapped her fingers and took her gifts back, stripping me of the demigod powers she’d once granted to win my favor. The familiar ache came back into my knees, my vision unfocused from its heightened state, and as I expected, the fluffy white wings affixed to my shoulder blades vanished in a pop of ash. I was still far too high in the air to survive the fall. I was going to die. This was the end for me.

In the few remaining seconds I had before my body plunged into the wide river below, I breathed deep knowing that I would die free. Free from her sadistic games and the trap she’d lured me into as her champion. My body would wash up on the shore, and likely, no one would know who I was or where I had been. There’d be no marks, no evidence of the time I’d spent floating through the sky as a demigod. The record of my existence would be wiped away and the goddess, and the rest of the gods, would go on telling their stories to their acolytes and priestesses and the humans would never know the divine for who they truly were.

But I knew. And I was going to die free and human. The way I was born. The gods had no power over me anymore. A profound sense of comfort in my freedom washed over me as I hurtled, arms flailing in front of me, into the river.

***

My story should have ended there. The goddess of life and all her cronies would have preferred that my knowledge fell to the bottom of the river with me. There was no god or goddess of death, but if there had been, I perhaps would have felt I owed them for sparing me. But as it was, there was no such divine intervention that pulled me from the silt. I was a traitor of the gods. And I somehow survived a fall that should have killed me.

I was my own god now.

“It’s a woman!” I heard someone shout as I laid sprawled on the banks of the river. “That’s what fell from the sky!”

Pain seared hot in my forearms, my lungs aching. Humanity hurt. I lay there among the rocks, unable to move, just staring up into the pale blue sky. I heard movement as villagers, presumably from the nearby village that the goddess didn’t kill, began to make their way toward me. They spoke in hushed voices, asking who I was and how I’d come from the sky. They called a healer to attend to my injuries.

I wondered if they’d believe my story, the one the gods didn’t want me to tell, as they pulled me from the rocks and wrapped sticks and cloth around my broken forearms. I wondered if there were marks, scars left on my shoulder blades from the white wings that were no longer mine. I wondered if any part of me revealed the partial divinity I had rejected. Would they think me to be a fool? Or worse, some sort of anti-god crusader, sent to represent humanity? Could they smell the goddess on me, the sweetness of her breath on the places she had kissed me? What would they even think of a human that had become not only the champion, but the lover of one of the gods?

In the end, none of their opinions would matter. I was living my second life, a life that never should have happened. A life that defied the goddess’ attempt to kill me. And I knew the truth. I held the story that, should I tell it, could undo every human’s loyalty to the gods. The thing they feared the most. My arms were broken, but the bones would heal.

“Thank you,” I croaked as I was carried to safety by folks who’d seen me plummet from the sky.

My voice, though achy like a raven, was still strong. And it was mine. I was my own god now. And I was going to tell my story.