AFTERLIFE: Artifacts

Ch. 3: Gods Don't Get Donuts

     Andraste grasped the clay mug as the shopkeeper placed it in her stark white hands. He had sat her on a stool in a little tent behind the shop front. The two children were outside, minding the store, or at least that's what they were meant to be doing. How well they attended to their task, well, that's anyone's guess. She listened with growing disheartenment as the dwarf's father chatted to her.

     "I'm sorry I can't be more help." He said with sincere regret in his voice. The goddess nodded. Water dripped off her hair and onto the dusty barren ground beneath her.

     "You've done all you can." She replied, "It isn't your fault that I cannot go up there."

      "Well, no, of course, milady, but..." The dwarven man wrung his hands as he sat on another little stool across from her. She looked up at him and blinked in a way that said, really now, stop it. He chuckled nervously. "Still, it seems like it was important to you to go there." She sighed and slumped her shoulders looking into the murky liquid in her hands. She watched the steam rise as she spoke.

     "Important? To be honest, it was just the only thing I could think of. Now I'm just sad that my god-ness makes it so I can't go there." She ran her thumb over the pressed pattern along the rim. "Makes me wish I had gone there in my mortal life. Think of all the adventures I could have gone on if I had known it existed and was able to get there. Now... such things I'll never see." She took a sip of the tea.

     "Still I hate to be the bearer of bad news."

     "Again, it isn't your fault, Granik." She said looking up at him with a sharpness in her eye. "And I'm not going to go on a rampage because you've given me some little bit of bad news."

     "That was not my..." He began, but then thought about how whenever he tried to explain himself it always came out wrong which was why Delle's mother left him and oh, dear, he always did manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, didn't he? So he kept quiet. Andraste sighed.

     "Sorry." She said with a little grimace, "You probably weren't thinking that. After all, there's no reason to be afraid of me. I'm as good as you here." She blinked. "Oh, no, th-that came out wrong. I didn't mean it to sound... conceited or anything. I just meant..." She sighed again. He took a sigh of relief as well and laughed.

     "Oh, quite alright, goddess. I muddle up my words all the time. I understood what you meant. No offense taken." He waved his hands dismissively in front of him with a smile. "You are right though; I mean more or less. There's no real reason to be afraid of you, except for the fact that you are much stronger than me from a purely physical standpoint. Magically, you've no power however. But then again, no one here does." Andraste smiled to herself and then at Granik.

     "It's kind of nice, isn't it?" She asked. "Almost like a little paradise or oasis. It's an equalizer. No god can help you, or blood pact with a demon. Not even some weird dragon ancestry. No, you've got to do everything yourself. Kind of refreshing."

     "Well, we rather think so." He agreed, "It affords us a degree of protection from the likes of you and others like you."

     "So why did everyone run away from me?" She swirled the liquid in the mug slowly as she spoke.

     "Aside from looking like you crawled out of a swamp?" He teased. Andraste laughed.

     "I still do, don't I?" The goddess wrung out a section of her hair to make her point. The dwarf laughed.

     "Well, minus the twigs and the dirt and whatever other muck you managed to decorate yourself with. Surely, an impressive feat. Where did you come from again? I don't think you said."