Dear Diary #2
And without blood, it could not grant it.
Something so unfamiliar it did not have a name for it itched in the god’s gut.
Its limbs twitched with energy it had no way of expending.
Its long-fingered hands made fists, claws pricking holes in dried-out skin.
At its shoulders, the withered things that might once have been wings rose, cramped with disuse.
It had a priest again. A strange priest. Possibly, given their silence now, a dead priest—but how could the priest have died at the precipice of the god’s grotto and the god had not felt their death?
It shook the thoughts from its head but they clung, cobweb-like.
There were other gods, probably; that was an old thought, sometimes a hope, sometimes a dread, that there were other gods kept by other priests.
Perhaps its new priest had been captured by the worshippers of some other god, and sacrificed to fuel another’s prayer.
The god could sleep again. Undisturbed. Safe in the silence and the dark.
But it was disturbed.
Can you help me? the priest had asked, and for the first time, the god wanted to.
Dear Diary, I’M ALIVE!
The god’s many eyes snapped open. It hunted out the new light greedily, devoured the words with a hunger that it did not recognise as hunger until it had something new to feed on. I’M ALIVE!
And more words, too, a banquet, a feast:
I still can’t believe any of it worked. I feel like if I sit down I’ll be back there and it WON’T have worked, and this is all some about-to-die dream but I’m NOT sitting down I am UP and I am ALIVE and sorry if my writing gets a bit bad because I am jumping around a bit too.
Don’t know why people go on about adrenaline crashes I feel like I could fly up and kick the moon.
Btw do you think it counts as murder if they were trying to kill you first?
Its priest was alive. Still as confusing as the last time, but alive.
Also I’m pretty sure I killed their god or something last night as well? Is there even a word for that?
YES, the god wrote, laboriously. Then: TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION.
There was a long silence, during which neither of them wrote.
The god wasn’t used to this. In its experience, the priests made their requests, and it granted them. There was never conversation.
It had never desired conversation.
And yet somehow, it knew the concept. So it stretched out one skeletal finger and carefully inscribed:
DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?
It desperately wanted the priest to talk about it. For more years than it wanted to remember, the glow of prayers on the obsidian wall had meant pain and horror. Now it was something new. Each new word was no longer a new wound, but a new—a new—
Something it did not have a name for.
But it wanted more.
You know what, ghostie, I DO want to talk about it. Because holy shit, your girl just took out a whole team of creepy cultists and their freaky god, and if I tell anyone else about it they’ll think I’m insane. You don’t think I’m insane, do you, mysterious ghost who lives in my diary?
NO.
What a relief lol. Anyway there I was…
The god read on, bathing in the light of its priest’s words.
She described being wrenched from her prison and thrown into a casket of some sort—the same they had transported her in previously, with her belongings strewn in its ‘trunk’.
And that was the first mistake they made, ghostie.
Not that I had time to do anything about it before they hauled me out again and tied me up.
They had lowered over the opening to a vast cavern, from which greasy noxious fumes belched (SO BAD, ghostie.
It was RANK.). But her captors had not counted on her knowing how to slip out of even the most tightly bound constraints (what can I say, ghostie, your girl is flexible like a hot noodle and too many of my exes did not know what aftercare is, and that includes ‘untying a girl when you’re done’).
Nor had they, apparently, or the god they had been attempting to sacrifice her to, been ready for the mace she had retrieved from the travelling trunk.
The god was not sure how her captors could have missed that she was armed.
Of the few things it remembered of the mortal world outside its grotto, weapons made up most of them.
It knew what a mace was: a length of hard wood, often tipped with nails or spikes.
How could they fail to notice one in her possession?
Idk how they missed it either but to be fair to them idk how I FORGOT I HAD IT IN MY BAG during literally the exact situation I bought it for? I mean I thought I might be mugged not kidnapped and sacrificed to Godzilla but same thing.
Anyway they all stood around me chanting or whatever and I guess the clouds were this thing’s breath or something because when it finally popped up the thing was GROSS.
I was literally crying it was so bad. Could not see a thing.
I got my hand loose, thank you noodle wrists, grabbed my mace, sprayed the shit out of whatever it was—
Sprayed? the god wondered. Evidently weaponry had changed since it last roamed the mortal world.
And when I tell you. The screaming. The screeching. The flailing around. For a god that stunk that bad it sure couldn’t take what it was handing out. It smacked me right out of that rig the hooded creeps tied me to. I landed on one of them, I think? What was left of him anyway.
Not gonna lie. It was a lot. I cried like a little baby and ran away until the screaming stopped.
The god thought back to its own experiences with screaming. THAT CAN SOMETIMES BE THE MOMENT WHERE THINGS GET WORSE, it wrote.
Ok true and I did think of that. But in this case the screaming had stopped because everyone was dead or like, melted. Or both. Whatever the thing they were trying to feed me to did, it did it melt-ily.
AND YET YOU SURVIVED.
If your girl can do nothing else, she can persist! The god was still thinking through the ramifications of the word girl—the ramifications of the term your girl—when a series of untranslatable glyphs followed the words. It stared at them, bewildered.
WELL DONE, it said at last.
Thanks. It’s nice that someone’s happy for me. Someone who isn’t STEVE.
STEVE IS THE ONE WHO—
Would do anything not to try pegging, yeah. Apparently. I mean I know my picker is broken but ‘has access to evil magic and shit’ is a step below the sort of assholes even I usually date.
The god let the words, and whatever meaning they might contain, wash over it.
I’m Riley btw
You should probably know my name if we’re going to keep talking like this
Another unintelligible glyph.
What’s your name?
The god thought. It remembered all the names its priests had once given it. Dark, bloody names, to match the bloody deeds they performed over it.
It considered the fact that this Riley had just escaped sacrifice to a creature that might have been given similar names.
I HAVE NO NAME, it inscribed, the words sparking bloody smoke from its skeletal finger.
First ok that does really should not surprise me and second I am sorry if that was an insensitive question.
The god shook its head slowly. More puzzles.
You’re a book I guess? Do books have names? I mean books are called things obviously they have titles but does that count as a name? I should have thought about this before I asked but
There was a pause in the scrawl.
Ok just checked and if there IS a title on you I can’t find it. Or read it. So I wouldn’t have been able to call you that anyway, regardless of it that would be rude or
Another hesitation. And then, to the god’s horror, Riley’s words began to disappear. They vanished in scrawling swathes, as though something was scratching them off the obsidian gate.
Her words were disappearing. She was disappearing.
WAIT, it began, something it had not bothered asking anyone in a long, long time.
Sorry just tidying up. I figure not everything in my mind needs to leave it. Well I say I figure. It’s not like I’m the only one to ever tell me that lol
That final word was another mystery. The god stared at it, willing the magic that unfolded Riley’s writing into words it could read to unfold this strange symbol, too. Could it be two upraised arms and a head? A prayer? A plea for help?
I can’t just call you nothing. Can I? is that rude for a book? Should I just call you Book? or ghostie
please tell me if you don’t like me calling you ghostie
There was a franticness to her words that made the god’s bones ache. As though it could taste that she still had the dead god’s stench in her lungs as she took shelter from the screaming and the sudden absence of screaming.
It scrambled for an answer. Some way to divert the panic that scratched through each letter.
It liked that she called it ghostie, but it was the wrong name for it. The god was not a ghost. The god had been alive, from the start and through everything that happened since.
But…
It stared up at the first words Riley had written. The first words that had brought it no pain.
Yet.
I WOULD LIKE YOU TO CALL ME YOUR DIARY, it told her.
Time passed. Once again, the god felt its passage, the way it had almost forgotten how to.
Then, it had hated the passage of time. It had anticipated the coming of the light and the coming of priestly words with dread.
Now… it looked forward, and it hoped to see words appear on the great plinth that surrounded it.
It was a feeling entirely new to its divine experience, and it refused to waste it.
Writing to Riley had exhausted it, but it did not lie idle while it waited for her words to return.
It stole wakefulness from the sleep that had engulfed it for so long.
It clenched and flexed limbs and fingers and claws that had done nothing but lie still for aeons.
It breathed, and almost wasted all that effort of existing as the shrivelled husks that might once have been its lungs cracked and coughed on the dust they’d become.