When the darkness began to frighten us, the tendrils of black smoke curling about the air no longer receding with a prayer, we retreated to a sleepy little town on the eastern coast of the United States – far enough to the north so the wind comes in great sheets off the ocean, breaking up against the rocks and cliffs. When we arrived, the land was empty, or perhaps it was abandoned, or perhaps it was both. We made for ourselves a mortal town, blending into the world we now inhabited, trading familiarity for quiet comfort. Grand worship for life.

We are all here, the gods and goddesses of forgotten times. We came when the great darkness, the unnamed threat we had not been able to explain, nor to fight, encroached on our former world. We came and now we sit, waiting for the darkness to envelop this world as well. I have not decided which would be better – if it came quick, or if it never did.

In the time we have been here, I have learned to fill my time in different ways. I no longer drape myself over long couches and bask in the sun, day in and day out, waiting to be called upon. I no longer harness a wolf-bird to fly through the clouds. Instead, I walk. I stare out at the coast. I take in the world.

I have found myself a small house on the edge of a damp forest, muddy from a perpetual soft rain. The house is cozy inside, and I built it only for one. Elaera has her own home, on the other side of town, and she too lives alone. Those of us who once considered ourselves her harem have scattered, visiting on occasion, nodding at each other when we see each other in the street. Bidtha, who was, like me, a favorite of Elaera’s, has opened a bakery on Main Street. I don’t know if it’s any good; I’ve never been.

I have myself a dog, who I call Arkus, after the great wolf-bird I once flew, who was eaten by agents of the darkness long before we ever came to this land. Arkus the dog is a good lad, who follows me dutifully and loves to trounce about the woods, getting mud in his paws. Together, we wear down the path from my house to the cliffs – I walk it every day, memorizing the pattern of the tree-leaves above my head, observing the salt in the air the closer one gets to the ocean. At the edge of the cliff, I will stop, watching the waves crash against the rocks, the water gray and stormy like the sky overhead.

——

On some days I will walk into town. Our town is small but peaceful, just large enough for those of us that left before the darkness came – or who did not want to sacrifice ourselves by falling to it in the misguided idea that we might be resurrected more powerful than we already are. Power only decreases; you can never have more of it than you started with.

Main Street has narrow sidewalks, so Arkus runs through the street, dodging out of the way of the cars that crawl along, lethargic, like the way time moves or the fog through the air. We pass storefronts as we walk, some practical – a grocer’s, a hardware store, a salon – and some superfluous, like Bidtha’s bakery and a shoe store opened by young Heritius. We have all, in our own way, become mortals, with our silly preoccupations and our beating hearts. I traded white robes for thick autumn jackets and comfortable canvas pants. Chorus stares at Themien all day from across the bookstore and pretends that as gods we are immune to love, but they aren’t, and it’s only a matter of time. I love my dog, I suppose, and Elaera, although it’s different than it used to be. I was never one for love. I appreciate obedience. Perhaps that is why I love my dog.

There is a residential quarter with identical-seeming homes, each two floors, each with neatly- trimmed front gardens. The families live here, the young, partnered couples and the children they’ve made. Again, like mortals, life has become nuclear, romantic and familial connections no longer as tenuous as they once were. We once hosted, and attended, grand parties where you could fuck whomever you wished, and now some of us make love to only one person, and raise a child together.

The children don’t know much of what has happened. They simply accept, as children do – even the wise ones – that they are in a new place, that the old place might be gone forever. They carry on, playing about the landscape, learning what they are and what they can do. They also watch Saturday morning cartoons and ask for Twinkies for dessert. They are molds of this place and our own.

I feel all of us changing, growing slower, as though time has no meaning, as though we are all waiting for some uncomplicated end to reach us. We escaped the darkness, but in the escape we came to accept it, so that if it reaches us, here and now, we will not protest. We will slip into oblivion without argument. This world is a stopping over point for the inevitable.

——

Sometimes, I will walk – with Arkus – to where Elaera works. She has opened a hotel on the cliffside for the locals, the mortals. It is closer to their town than ours. Elaera is one of the only ones who is willing to talk to them, but then, she always felt for them, that bleeding heart of hers.

I see her on my walk, one day, drive up to the parking lot of the hotel, which she calls Rock Point. It is a very mortal name, I’ve told her, utterly meaningless. Arkus barks cheerfully when he sees her drive past, and she waves out the window at him. We follow her up the drive, Arkus and I, and take a turn about the hotel as she checks on each individual who works there, ever diligent, ever designating.

“We finished the renovations on the west wing,” she tells me. Elaera purchased Rock Point from a mortal real estate agent who had been looking to get an unwieldy property off her hands. She got it for very cheap. She opened it when only half the place had been renovated, in order to recoup some of her losses because, I believe, the heating was very out of date and had taken a long time to get fixed. But Rock Point has been a very big success, and she has very quickly needed to expand. Elaera is the right kind of person for this, I think – she’s very business-minded and capable of great management and designation. She comports herself very professionally.

Elaera shows me the west wing, which looks very lovely. There is a lot of blue and motifs of seashells and anchors, which she tells me is popular among the people here. I have noticed that, I say, and we contemplate why it is but I’m honestly not sure.

“Speaking of anchors – there was a young man here who asked if we had a dock. He has a boat, and he said he would like to take me sailing sometime.” Elaera’s face expresses confusion, and a light blush colors her cheeks. “I’m not sure if I’m ready for that.”

“Being out on the water?” Elaera smiles at me and shakes her head.

“You’re funny.”

Elaera ends the tour by walking me out past the heated pool and swimming patio. Outside, there is a driftwood path that leads to the beach and Arkus begins to sprint towards it, like any good dog, anticipating the salty waves splashing his feet, the sea breeze. I am partial to the beach, but Elaera is wearing smart stiletto heels.

She glances at her watch, an expensive, silver piece that sits on the inside of her left wrist. It is one of the many mortal things she has adopted that look perfectly natural on her – like stilettos, like her storm- grey Escalade. “There’s a marketing meeting in 15 minutes, so I should be heading back inside.” She pulls me in for a tight hug that is artificial – nothing of the looseness of limbs that we used to have. “Thanks for stopping by, love. Feel free to pick up something from the restaurant – on me. Just tell them I sent you.”

I watch her go and marvel at how at home she is, here at Rock Point, and how foreign I remain, even with her.

——

I stand on the beach below Rock Point, Arkus at my side. It is clear that he wants to run towards the water, but I can feel a storm on the horizon, and I do not want my dog to drown.

Behind me there are footsteps, quick through the sand. Likely a hotel guest, and I don’t turn, giving the appearance that I am too wrapped up in my own thoughts to pay attention to them. But whoever it is draws up beside me, a small figure in my peripheral vision.

A young boy stands there, with sandy hair and sunset-dune skin, in a pair of board shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, the name of a middle school baseball team emblazoned across the chest. He is wearing sand-encrusted flip flops, and he stares up at me with curiosity.

“You have a cool dog,” he tells me. Arkus looks at the boy, tongue out and tail wagging. The boy reaches out a hand. “Can I pet it?”

“Sure.” I watch warily as the boy kneels and rests his hand on Arkus’ head. He rubs softly, reaching behind his ears, and Arkus responds kindly to the affection. I exhale.

“My name is Zeke,” the boy says. “What’s your name? Are you staying at the hotel?”

I tell him my name – the mortal one which sounds closest to what I was given upon creation. “I’m not staying at the hotel.” Zeke stares at me expectantly. “I live here.”

“On the beach?”

“No, in the town.”

“Oh.” Zeke stands up. He squints at the horizon, a thin border of cloud clinging to the sea. “My dad used to live in this town. But he’s dead now, and my aunt is trying to figure out what to do with me, so I live in the hotel. For now.”

With little fanfare, Zeke sprints towards the ocean, running as far as his spindly, pre-pubescent legs can reach. He splashes forward under the water, head disappearing beneath the gentle waves.

He is under for a long time. I watch the surface of the water for bubbles, but they’re difficult to see. Arkus barks once, then twice. I am suddenly conscious that I am holding my breath, and then Zeke surfaces, shaking the water from his curly hair and grinning from ear to ear.

“Sometimes I pretend I’m a fish,” he tells me as he stumbles back towards the beach, getting caught in the tides. “Do adults ever play pretend? It would be boring not to.”

I’m not sure I can tell Zeke much about what adults do and don’t do. I let him pet Arkus one more time, and when he races back up the beach, waving goodbye to me. I raise a hand in response.

I stand there on the beach, watching the tide, until the sun has long set and sky and the sea are one dark mass on the horizon – until I can no longer be sure if the horizon is even there.

——

I return the next day with a paper bag of food from Rock Point’s takeaway restaurant – two greasy hamburgers in paper wrapping, a carton of still-steaming French fries, two sliced pickles, and a small tub of coleslaw. When Zeke stumbles onto the beach, as unsure on his feet as he was the day before, he smells the food and descends on it like a vulture.

I watch him eat, and indulge him by stealing a French fry or two, dipped in chilled coleslaw. I make a mental note to tell Elaera that the restaurant is very good. Zeke finishes one whole hamburger and most of the fries before he says anything.

“Do you have a job?”

We sit in the sand, cooling as an afternoon wind brushes over the coast. Arkus lays beside me, slumbering, relaxed. Zeke runs a hand over his head every so often.

“I do,” I tell him, “sometimes. I fix things for people.”

“Like cars and washing machines and stuff?” Zeke fills his mouth with French fries, talking around a mouthful of greasy food. He seems excited at the prospect that I am some sort of handywoman, and I feel bad that I have to shut him down.

“No. Like... relationships, and feelings.” It is a paltry way to express what I had once been responsible for, back when magic ran like rivers from all of our fingertips and mortals knew our names and prayed to them. My power has not been that strong in some time, but people still come to me; Elaera had always said that I had a calming presence, that I made her feel like things would be okay, sometimes.

“Oh.” Zeke makes a face. “So you’re a therapist.”

Therapy, I have learned, is a silly word mortals have for a person they can talk to, who tells them what is wrong with them and what areas of their emotional processing they should fix. I don’t know if I could be called a therapist. After all, I’m faintly horrid at talking. All I have learned to do is comfort, to respect that in the wake of what we have run from all we want to do is forget, and live in a blissful ignorance until the darkness comes.

All of this is too much to explain to Zeke. “Do you have a job?”

Zeke makes a face. “I’m too young for jobs. I’m only 12, you know. My aunt has a job; she cleans the hotel. That’s how come I can live here, because she does.”

I make a mental note to ask Elaera about a young woman with a nephew living in the hotel, and if there is anything she could, maybe, do for him.

——

Some time after darkness has fallen and the trees’ shadows loom large over my home, there is a knock on the door.

Elaera stands there, tired from a day of work, more tired than I have ever seen her. She is dressed like a smart businesswoman – stilettos and all – but she has shed her neatly pressed jacket and her hair hangs limp by her face. “Hello,” she says, her voice like a chorus of birds after all this time. “Could I come in?”

I make her a pot of tea, strong. We sit at the kitchen table under its pale white light, drinking in silence. I wait for her to be willing to speak.

“The young man with the boat asked me to go sailing with him again,” Elaera says. She swirls the tea in her mug in slow circles.

“Will you go?”

“I wanted to come to you,” she says instead of answering. “I’ve been unwell lately, and... well, I thought I would come to you. I thought it might make me feel better.”

These are the sorts of things Elaera used to say to me as we lounged in front of the hearthfire at night, her head in my lap. I would braid her hair, and she would sigh. Now, all things are different, but I have made her tea, and I am here. “How can I help?”

Elaera shakes her head. “No, no, you can’t do anything. I just wanted to see you.” She looks up, her eyes piercing mine with their golden color that has not faded despite this new realm, this new life. “How... how are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” I hear Arkus whine in his sleep from another room. I had not been sleeping when Elaera came to the door. “I walk, a lot, and visit others.”

“It feels...” Elaera trails off. “It feels like we’re all holding our breath.”

“We are.”

“When night falls, I get terrified.” I nod in agreement with her. There was never true night where

we came from – the pitch blackness of this town makes me feel like the air is falling out of my lungs, and I must remind myself the end has not come yet. “But I suppose that’s just part of life.”

“This life,” I clarify, and Elaera laughs, short and startled.

“Oh, darling,” she sighs. “What other life is there?”

——

It is late, very late. I walk the beach at night, taking in the stars above the sea, reveling in the silence. It is broken when Zeke sprints down the driftwood planks to the sand. Something about him is different.

“I saw you walking from the patio,” he says, all out of breath. “Hi.”

“Hi.” The wind whips my hair around my face, obscuring Zeke from my vision. He’s wearing pajamas, blue-and-white striped and a little small for him. “Are you all right, Zeke?”

“Can you fix my aunt for me?” I angle my head at him, brow furrowing. “You said that you fix people and relationships and stuff. I need my aunt fixed because she’s...” Zeke trails off, sinking to his knees as Arkus trots up to him, offering comfort. Zeke buries his hands in his scratchy fur. “She says I have to leave and go to Cincinnati because that’s where my grandmother lives. My aunt can’t take care of me anymore, she says, but- I don’t want to go to Cincinnati.”

There are tears beading at Zeke’s eyes, his lips twisting into odd shapes as he fights against something inside of him. “I don’t want to leave here,” he says quietly, leaning down into Arkus’ comforting form.

There is a long moment of silence, just the waves crashing against the break to serenade us. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to help him – I have never known. It is an instinct, and it fades with time, as does power, as does love.

But things grow over time, as well.

“I can’t make your aunt let you stay here,” I tell him, kneeling beside him in the sand. Arkus is a furnace for the both of us, warming us from the outside in. “Sometimes, we have to move – leave places, and change. It is the hardest thing you can do, especially when you don’t want to.”

“You told me that your job was to fix things for people,” Zeke says, in that accusatory way only young people have, when they don’t understand something they thought they did. “Why can’t you fix this for me?”

“Some things...” I must be careful with my words. “Some things don’t need to be fixed, even if they look broken. They just need to be looked at a different way.”

Zeke looks at me for a long while, and for a second – just a second – I think he might actually see me. The form that has been hidden away under lumberman’s jackets and a gruff exterior. The goddess who once laid across lounges and showered her mistress with praise and healed the hurt of others with her very presence, and who now wanders her town with her faithful dog, hoping her very presence mends something in the weave of anxiety that has overtaken us all.

“Okay,” Zeke says, and he must know me, he must. “I’m gonna believe you. For now.”

“That’s all you need to do.”

We face the ocean, its call and its warning, and the horizon beyond, slowly lightening with the first touches of dawn.

This world is far more from a stopping over point, and one would be foolish to think otherwise. There is beauty here.