Mortal Earth

Fortuna: Goddess of Luck

There was a beauty to casinos. The music of cards shuffling, the murmur of celebration and despair. Chips slid across tables and gold rings clinked against glasses.

Fortuna liked to watch the sweat drip from their foreheads. Their hands gripped the cards so hard the plastic bent under sweaty palms. She liked to listen to their prayers for help, for mercy, for this one last deal to be their lucky break. It never was.

She had spent millennia watching, listening, feeding. The mortals were prisoners as much as she was. They were all slaves to fortune, luck, and hope.

He appeared out of nowhere.

Her father looked older than she remembered. He was still handsome, but boringly so. His black beard was streaked with silver and crow’s feet marked the corners of his eyes. In his hand was an ornate cane; its golden tip shaped like an eagle. In her memories he held it loosely, swinging it from side to side as an over- elaborate fashion choice rather than a necessity. But standing before her, his weight was shifted towards it, knuckles white where they settled between the golden wings.

He grinned at her, oozing too much confidence and just enough charisma to pass it off. The sight of him made her sick.

“Good afternoon,” he said in a voice like distant thunder. She scowled.

She loathed her family, especially when they were in her home, throwing their voices around like it was nothing. A couple of mortals’ gazes flickered upward, already drawn out of their stupor by his presence.

“Is it?” she asked tartly.

“Mind if I join you?”

She did mind. She minded an awful lot. But curiosity won over her annoyance. She hadn’t been sought out since the middle ages by any of her family. “Who am I to stop the almighty Jupiter?”

“I’d rather join you as a father.”

She froze. It was very rare when the “F” word was brought up among the gods. Usually it was when a deal was about to be made, or vengeance was about to be wrought.

He took a seat beside her, cane propped up gently against his chair. They sat in silence. He tapped his fingers against the golden eagle to a beat she didn’t recognize. She still did not speak. He squirmed in his chair, clearing his throat. Still, silence.

“…I thought I’d find you here,” he said, finally, when she made no move to start the conversation. She knew what he was waiting for. Questions, allegations… She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Besides, the statement was absurd. She would always be there. He’d forged her chains himself.

“Finally got the balls to show up?”

She shouldn’t have said that. She tried not to flinch when his grip on his cane tightened and his smile grew hard as granite on his face.

Gods didn’t like competition, and they especially didn’t like powerful goddesses and daughters rising above them. She’d held power over him once and he had never forgiven her. Even the lack of it, the roaring hole where her power should have been, was enough to unnerve him. Enough to carve a predator’s smile on his face, masking the burning rage underneath.

He said nothing and neither did she. Silence settled over them again. Fortuna listened to the shuffle of cards, the clinks of chips in machines. She watched a bead of sweat drip from a player’s face. He was in deep. He’d been practically living at the table for three weeks. His wedding ring had disappeared after two.

“What do you want?” she asked, finally. “We haven’t spoken in 500 years. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I just thought I’d reach out, that maybe you’d like to reconnect.”

“And what the hell gave you that idea?”

“We might as well try while we have the chance-”

“Have the chance?” she asked with a snort. “Is the world ending or something?”

He was silent. Then, “So, you haven’t heard?”

“I haven’t heard anything. This isn’t exactly Mount Olympus, is it?”

“But… I mean it’s-”

“Spit it out or swallow it.”

“The world is ending, Fortuna.”

“It’s always ending.”

“No. It’s ending.”

“Which fortune teller told you that? The fates? The-”

“All of them. Every medium, psychic, fate, and spirit.”

“So now the kids are all getting along?”

“Fortuna, this is serious.”

“Are you blind? The world’s been on its way out for a very long time. It’s not my fault the rest of you are only catching up now.”

Jupiter didn’t look at her, only kept his eyes trained on something very far away she couldn’t see. His face looked even older up close. Like paper, rotting away into ash. The years hadn’t been kind to him, and the idea sent a rush of satisfaction through her.

“So, is that it?” he asked, “I came here to-”

“To what? Reach out to your long-lost daughter and tell her how sorry you are? I haven’t needed your approval for quite a few millennia and I definitely don’t need your apologies.”

“I’ve come here to offer you freedom, Fortuna,” Jupiter said. His voice was low and harsh like waves colliding with a cliff face.

“But you don’t offer it freely.”

“Nothing in this world is free, my dear. Something you know more than most.”

They grew silent as a waitress appeared and Fortuna was saved from the rage bubbling inside of her spilling out. She took the moment to breath. She was in control. She had nothing else to lose. She had nothing to fear. He was playing a game and she knew better than to make a move before she could see all his pieces.

“Can I get you a drink, sir?” the waitress asked. She didn’t notice Fortuna. They never did.

Jupiter leered at her, his smile all teeth, eyes gleaming. He was a hunter and mortal girls were his favourite prey.

“A bottle of wine, please. Dealer’s choice.”

The waitress nodded. Her name was Mary. She’d worked there for three years. Fortuna had watched her struggle. Had watched her eat food off half-finished plates and down secret drinks between shifts just to keep her feet moving and the smile plastered on her face. They were prisoners there. Together. Chained to the hands of men and their smiles.

“I’ll be right back. Are you waiting for someone to join you?”

“I’m sure my daughter will be around shortly.”

Mary gave another nod before slipping away. They watched her weave through the crowd. The mortal men’s heads turned as she brushed past them. One’s hand brushed her bare back. Another managed to pull her all the way into his lap before she regained her balance and wrenched away.

Fortuna’s stomach rolled as Mary smiled sweetly at him and she could see the apology on the girl’s lips.

All the waitresses were schooled in apologies. Were masters at slipping away without causing the patrons much sting to their egos. Too much hurt pride would send them scuttling away before they could spend all their money.

“My mortals are off limits,” Fortuna said.

“You are not in any place to make demands.”

Fortuna levelled a glare at him. It was better not to talk to Jupiter. His own mind was his worst enemy. She held no cards in his game, she had nothing to wager. But she also knew he wanted something.

Jupiter put his hands in the air, a sly smile returning to his face. “Okay. A peace offering. Your mortals will remain untouched by myself,” he said, flashing another hard smile.

That was a surprise.

“What do you want, Jupiter?”

It was the question he’d been waiting for. The smile cracked his face in two, all teeth and red gums. A laugh lolled off his tongue like rocks falling into the sea.

“You. In Mount Olympus, once again.”

She looked at him sharply.

Here he was, offering her… everything. A place amongst the gods once again.

Freedom. The air on her face. A place away from mortals. Away from the men with too many smiles. Away from the cigar smoke and prayers and desperation. And all in time for the end of the world.

“That all?”

“I will release you from your bonds. If you ask for it.”

“Ah, the catch. You want me to beg?”

“I want your power, Fortuna.”

She understood. He wanted her power and her presence was the necessary evil to keep it under his thumb. She’d been banished for her strength by her own father. And now that he needed her, he wanted her to submit first. To beg and plead and play his games. He was probably expecting her to cry and thank him and tell him how merciful he was. He’d never known her very well.

“Why now?”

“I already said. It’s the end of the world.”

“I’m growing tired of your cryptic nonsense. It doesn’t make you clever. Just annoying.”

“I like this world, daughter. I like these mortals scrabbling in the darkness. I like women in my bed, an open road, and enough cash to get me where I need to be. It’s been a fun ride. I’m not ready for it to end.”

“Ah, you’re fighting fate… You’re an idiot.”

“It’s been done before.”

“No. No it hasn’t. I should know. Is this what you needed me for? The goddess of fortune, on your side? You think my allegiance is enough to win your battles?”

“It’ll be enough to save this world. Don’t you want to live? I can give you anything you want. You can live for millennia more on Mount Olympus. I’ll give you gold? Servants? Power-”

“I want you to apologise.”

“Excuse me?”

“Say you’re sorry. You’ve locked me up for thousands of years and now you come with baubles to tempt me into… what? A war against fate? No, that’s not enough. Say you’re sorry.”

“I am Jupiter.” His voice struck like lightning. She remained steeled against him, face passive, even as his words shook the air around them. “I am leader of the gods. And I’ve had enough of your whining whims, woman. You’re my daughter, my servant. If I-”

“Not much of an apology.”

“Does a boot apologize to the bug? My decrees are made for the good of-”

“You can leave.”

“Fortuna, you are letting the world burn.”

“Then let it burn. I don’t see much worth saving, anyway.”

He stared at her. His eyes were the colour of the sky just before a storm. She smirked at him. She had nothing else he could take away.

He left the same way he came, with a pop of energy and the smell of rain.

Mary appeared beside the table and looked around, confused as to where her customer had gone. In her hands was an expensive bottle of wine already open. The managers wouldn’t be happy with that.

The poor girl looked exhausted. There were dark bruises around her eyes.

Fortuna sighed. There was not much she could do any more. But she could do little things.

She reached out and followed the golden threads of the casino, examining and chasing until she found a little rope of luck. She pulled and tugged until it came just loose enough to hook onto Mary. With the bit of golden fortune, she told her that after she got off she would go straight to the small convenience store down the street and buy a lottery ticket with the numbers 20, 26, 12, 48, and 05.

She couldn’t do much anymore. But she could save her small piece of the world, all by herself.
 
Selene: Goddess of the Moon

You are the moon.

You are the moon and you have been alone for a very long time. There was never a moment when you were not alone. You drift between awareness and sleep. You float between the stars and slip through the Milky Way. All is quiet.

When you wake, you watch the Earth. You watch the Earth and you wonder at its oceans and its forests. You reach for the tides and your fingertips brush seafoam. You can just barely touch the trees, one leaf at a time, and you leave silver trickling like blood to the soil.

When you sleep you do nothing. The universe breaths. Planets spin. You drift.

Time passes, as time always does. Oceans eat away at coastlines. Trees fall one by one. Grey bleeds into the cracked surface of your planet.

Days pass, or years, or eons… these terms mean nothing to you. Moments run together, like streams becoming rivers becoming oceans. It is during one single moment, you breach the surface of consciousness once again, and see a star plummeting straight for you.

Fire streaks across the universe.

When it gets closer you see the metal and glass.

Later you’ll know the name “rocket.”

The astronaut lands and you’re not alone anymore.

At first you hate him. You want to throw him off. He makes your skin itch and he’s too big, too clunky. You don’t want him on you. He keeps you awake when you want to sleep. He’s loud. He’s always there on your skin where you don’t want him to be and it’s all too much.

But you’re curious. You’re so curious because you’ve always been alone. And now something’s on your skin and you can touch him if you want to. He can touch you, if he wants to.

You let him stay and you watch him.

You watch his face. You watch the creases at the corners of his eyes while he focuses on his work. You watch the way his cheeks dimple when he smiles. You watch the stubble spread across his face like the tide spreading across a beach. You watch him take pieces of you and you give them willingly.

Sometimes he stands against the universe and watches the earth.

You watch him watching the earth.

And finally, you think, you know what it’s like to not be alone.

You are wide awake, and everything is perfect.

Until it isn’t. Until he gets in his rocket and flies away.

You can’t let him go. He’s yours. You will not be alone again.

So, you reach out. You reach out and try to pull him back.

He’s fire blazing across the universe. He streaks across the Milky Way like a comet. Too fast for you to catch.

The rocket is gone. Thousands of pieces of metal drifting into the universe. He’s gone. He’s atoms exploding into space.

He’s gone.

You watch earth. You wait for someone else. They’ll send someone else. They have to send someone else.

You’ll do better the next time around. You’ll let them leave. You promise. If only they’ll just send someone else. You can’t be alone again.

You can’t be alone again.
 
Loki: God of Tricks and Lies

It started with rumours. A Walker&Co factory up north had fired half its employees. Another in the next state over had lost 90% of its workers. Suddenly, everyone knew someone who knew someone who had lost their job.

Jonas James Walker himself had visited their canning factory and told the workers Neil among them, that under no circumstances were any employees losing their jobs. His voice was calm, smooth, sincere. He understood their concern. They were all safe though, there was nothing to worry about. He cared, after all, about all his employees. They were like family.

The other factories weren’t mentioned.

Neil had been content with that. He trusted people, trusted his employers, to do the right thing. If they were going to lose their jobs, he expected to at least be told about it.

Later, that would be the thing that angered him the most. They had all been lied to. They’d been looked in the eyes and told not to worry. And he had been the sorry sod who’d defended them.

Not all his coworkers had believed Walker. Mick, who had worked across from Neil for over a decade, had sworn up and down that they were next. Their jobs weren’t exactly difficult, after all. They picked up a fish from one conveyer belt, chopped off its head, and then tossed it on another conveyer belt. That was their day, hour upon hour, fish upon fish. Neil would come home smelling so foul his wife refused to kiss him until he showered. And even then, the stink of guts would cling to his clothes, to his hair, under his nails. His back would ache from standing, and whenever he closed his eyes at night all he could see were fish eyes staring back at him.

“I’ll tell you what,” Mick said, jabbing a headless fish at Neil, “no one is safe anymore. No one. They’ve got them screens that take your order at restaurants now. Don’t even have to talk to a person. If they can manage that, I know they can think up a machine to cut up fish.”

A month after they’d been told not to worry about losing their jobs another meeting was called. This time, Walker wasn’t there. Instead there were three men Neil had never seen before in dark suits with briefcases. They looked too clean to be standing in the middle of the dim factory floor.

Neil was under no illusion about his intelligence. Most of their speeches flew right over his head. The men in suits threw a lot of words out that sounded technical and hard to understand. A few of the workers tried to argue but they were quickly shut down with undecipherable legal jargon and frustratingly calm smiles. Neil tried to find his own voice where it was creeping beside the panic at the back of his throat. But when he opened his mouth to ask about their jobs, their future, only a squeak came out.

In the end it was understood that machines were being pulled in to replace most of them. They would pick up their last pay packet before closing. There would be no severance pay, no pay out, nothing.

Neil stayed to finish the day. Most did. It didn't feel right, somehow, to leave a job undone. When 6 o’clock came around he collected his last paycheck with everyone else and trudged home. He could feel the panic resting in his throat, could taste it sitting on his tongue.

He slipped through the door quietly and spied his wife flitting about the kitchen like a hummingbird. When Neil opened his mouth to tell her what happened, he found no voice.

“Is that you, honey?” Catherine called. He didn’t move from the doorway, didn’t call out to her. But she knew he was there anyway. She always did. “How was work? I'm not coming near you until you've had a shower! I swear you smell worse every time. They must be putting something in that fish.” Her voice was light, lurking on the border of laughter, like she was halfway through a joke no one else knew the punchline to.

Neil tried to speak again. Nothing.

He knew he should greet his daughter. He could hear Eliza playing in her room. Her voice was a low murmur of funny voices and dramatic tones. She could never simply play with dolls like normal children, she acted out dramas and tragedies with them instead.

“I think you were right,” Catherine said. She jumped to the doorway and shot him a dazzling smile before twirling away again. “We could probably afford a Christmas tree this year. A real one! That would be nice for Eliza, wouldn’t it? We’ve never had a Christmas tree with her before.”

He knew he should take a shower to rinse the stink of fish guts off for the last time.

“Your quiet today, Neil. Tired? Hey, you know, Beth’s been asking about that big elephant Toyland has out in its window. I swear, why do they always have to put the expensive stuff out front like that? All she wants is a teddy… Do you think it’d be alright if I tried to make her one instead I think I’ve got some leftover fabric from last year…”

Then he should sit his wife down and break it to her gently. He should tell her there would be no Christmas tree after all this year. That they definitely couldn’t afford the expensive elephant from Toyland. That their meager savings were going to have to do for rent and food until he could find a new job because there were no new paychecks anymore because a bunch of metal and wires could do his job better than he could.

He knew what he should do. But he didn’t. Instead he went through dinner with a weak smile on his face. He let his wife talk so he didn’t have to. And that night, lying beside her in the quiet of night, he prayed to any god who would listen.

And at that exact time, one happened to be passing through.

Neil woke up to sounds in his kitchen. He got up more out of instinct than actual worry. He shuffled down the hallway, fumbling his way through the dark.

When he got to the kitchen, he found a man. A beautiful man with fair blond hair and a cruel turn to his mouth.

The man was lounging against the table, a pudding cup in his hand.

“You don’t have much in the fridge do you? I was hoping for something a bit more… substantial.”

Neil could only blink stupidly at him.

“I heard you calling… You needed some sort of help…. Or something? I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention. What I do remember is feeling that-” the stranger stopped and sniffed the air, his cruel mouth turning upward in a dangerous smirk. “Ah yes… there is it. That anger. So much of it too. I can definitely work with that.”

Neil seemed to find his voice and managed to gasp out, “Who- how-”

“Yeah I know,” the man said flicking his wrist as if batting Neil’s words away, “The boring questions. Such mortal questions. Loki the trickster, nice to meet you.”

Sense seemed to dawn on Neil and he suddenly realized he was in his underwear talking to a probably drugged up junkie who’d broken into his house while his wife and daughter were sleeping.

He turned on his heel and marched to the door. “I’m calling the police,” he declared quite proud of the way his voice didn’t shake. He went to open the door, not remembering when he’d shut it, and turned the handle. It stayed stuck fast.

“Oh come on, don’t leave yet. You were just about to get to the good stuff! I know you were.”

Neil rattled the door, but it stayed stubbornly closed. “What- what do you want,” he asked with a trembling voice.

“Ah yes! The good question. There it is. It’s not what I want. It’s what you want. You called me, remember? Well… it was more of an open invitation. But I came! That’s what happens when you send up a little prayer. Tell me, what did you pray for?”

“You can get me my job back?”

“Hmmm… no… no, not even I can do that. I’m a trickster not a miracle worker. But what I can do is work with some of that delicious anger. How about this? I can make it so that they regret ever lying to you. Ever betraying you. It’s what I deal with best: lies and betrayal. They played a nasty trick on you, didn’t they? Let’s play one on them.”

Neil’s head felt hazy. There was so much fog. His body felt far away. The world seemed to slant and jolt underneath him. He was in his head, floating slowly up and down… up and down…

Loki told him to leave the house, so he did. Loki told him to walk to the factory, so he did. He knew his bare feet should hurt against the sidewalk, that the cold should be burning his skin… but he didn’t feel a thing.

He blinked, a long and heavy blink, and when his eyes opened he was standing on the factory floor when the men with suits and briefcases had stood hours before. In his hands were a box of matches. The air didn’t smell like fish anymore. It smelt like gasoline.

He didn’t light the matches though.

Instead, he stood very very still. He could hear voices hanging in the air. Loki snickered and told him to follow the voices, so that’s what he did.

He found Walker and the three men in dark suits in the office that hung over the factory floor. Loki told him he didn’t need to be worried about being seen, so Neil stood right between them. They didn’t notice him. They laughed together, toasted with glasses of whisky. Neil couldn’t hear what they were saying. Their words twisted together like a forgotten language and grated against his eardrums. He could only hear Loki’s sweet voice in his ear. Loki told him they were celebrating Neil’s failure, were toasting to his despair.
There was only the faded world lurching under his feet, white hot anger coursing through his veins, and Loki telling him that he should close the office door and lock it from the outside.

Then Neil went back down the stairs and lit a match.