Temples Again

The thin trail of smoke from Lysanthe’s cigarette rose lazily into the sky like a thread of hanging silk, betraying the quiet stillness of the cool June evening. It was her tenth today. Sometimes she worried about that— feared that one day she would wake up and suddenly find herself fallen so far, rendered so mortal, that lung cancer would finally be able to descend upon her with its bulbous, tar-soaked claws.

She always quieted this fear with the unfounded conviction that if it was still too early for nicotine to affect her, then cancer remained yet at bay as well. Not that she’d be likely to know the difference of course. She imagined a regular mortal cigarette addiction probably functioned similarly to the hold the sad little sticks already held over her. Solitude, making oneself repulsive to be around… it wasn’t worship, but as an indulgence in what was once her domain it took the edge off her hunger just a little.

Her habit had had a peculiar effect on the kinds of places she was now confined to, she thought. The excision of the tobacco smoker from polite society constrained much of her movements. It fed her, dulled her hunger, but confined her to places like this: alleys, sad dedicated balconies in airports, stoops and back doors to yards. All places hidden away in the bowels of bustling society behind the face that humanity showed to the world beyond. The last kind of place she would have been permitted entry at the height of her powers.

Indeed, there was much about Lysanthe that no longer held the lustre of her youth. Her dark black hair had gone from being streaked with silver to streaking in silver over the last fifty years. Her gaunt, imperious face was gradually developing into a skeletal parody of itself, though she was not quite yet completely a crone. Her bony hands bore wrinkles now, and her wardrobe was stagnating on bottle green coats, grey jumpers and black leggings that showed little of the sartorial creativity her image had once boasted.

There was also, of course, the fact that she could no longer make herself forty feet tall whenever she wanted.

The buzz wasn’t kicking in right. Lysanthe looked around her suspiciously for what was disrupting her hit of isolation. Down the alleyway a restaurant dishwasher hauled a bin of kitchen waste up over his shoulder and tipped it into a waiting dumpster. There was a light on in one of the rooms of an apartment above- likely a bathroom given the tiny, frosted window. And a stray cat slank along the fire escapes across the alley in front of her.

But no, none of these things were what was spoiling her indulgence. Lysanthe’s eyes landed on an approaching interruption. A woman about her age— late forties at the youngest and probably past mid-fifties— in a sandy-coloured duffel-coat that bore sad, faded red hearts as an embroidered motif. Her features were lined and similarly faded, but still bore a distinct timeless beauty that in a mortal woman would surely take another decade at least to disappear completely to the ravages of age.

Not that the intruder was a mortal, of course. Lysanthe could tell from the way the light seemed not to behave properly around her— the last embers of a glow that in the old days would have made her a blazing righteous star on earth.

The woman stepped up next to Lysanthe and leant against the wall beside her. She said nothing, instead just letting out a long, low, mournful little sigh. Lysanthe did not reply, and the two women remained silent for a few minutes, just watching the dull mundanity of a back-alley evening passing them by.

Finally, the visitor spoke.

“I had a great temple.” She said, simply and sadly.

“You did.” Lysanthe replied, taking another draw on her cigarette. “In Dymyros.”

“In Dymyros. It was vast. A building of such scale that the cities across the water could clearly see my face in the reliefs on the roof. An opulent palace of worship, the fruit of countless years and multiple generations’ labour in the service of love.” The visitor turned slightly toward Lysanthe. “You would have loved it, you know.”

“I very much doubt that, Amarissa.”

“No but you would. It’s one of the very few things I had back then that I have no doubt you would have enjoyed. Because… for all it was a building of love, and of worship, packed with people, brimming with amorous— even libidinous— citizenry… being in the middle of it was so lonely. For me and for them. There was just something about it that made you feel so isolated, so alone, even stuffed into a crowd so thick you couldn’t move. It was too big, really. Too gauche. Too much. I still loved it, of course. I think it was just because it was the biggest. I was more of a child back then than I was ready to admit.”

“I had temples of my own, you know.” Lysanthe mused.

“A few.” Amarissa conceded. “But none like what I had. What you had were shrines. I would never have told you back then how jealous I was of your shrines. I had a lot, of course, and they were very nice in their own way. But they were garish, and very private. Built by adolescents in childhood closets and obsessives in basements. Your shrines ruled the wilderness around them, great bleak monuments to quiescence and isolation.”

“I did like the shrines.” Lysanthe tried to suppress the urge to crack a smile, knowing it would only encourage her old foe. “Almost all gone now, of course. And nobody knows what the ones that are left even are. They’re like cairns nowadays— a thing people do up mountains and in the woods for no particular reason.”

Amarissa nodded and silence fell again for a few minutes. When she spoke again it was with the note of an even greater, more exhausted sadness than before.

“Enomios is gone. Can you believe that? They fight each other with greater and more terrible weapons than ever before, spill blood with a… grotesqueness… but none of it in his name. He passed away in a retirement home in Eddingwell a month ago. I can scarcely believe it.”

“You hated Enomios.” Lysanthe turned to look at Amarissa for the first time. “You were always fighting with him.”

“I fought you too.” Amarissa sighed. “So much. We warred across the world, once. But I’m too old and tired and weak and mortal now to care about any of that. How many of us are there left, Lysanthe? I can only be sure of you and me. Perhaps some of the minor cast like Amepsia or Dysamnia are still alive, subsisting like us off scraps in the dirt. But most likely not. I think you and I are likely the last ones left.”

Lysanthe nodded sadly and let the words hang in the air for a minute or two, finally taking a big draw on her cigarette before furrowing her brow in anguish.

“My knees hurt. All the time. How is that possible? How do I even have knees to hurt? You and I were concepts once. Not jumped-up spirits poured and sealed into creaky old mortal bodies collapsing like eroding cliffs. Amarissa was love, you were one and the same on the lips of mortal men from Mantion to Sesanemhat. Lysanthe was solitude, I was everyone and everything alone. The independent, the dispossessed, the isolated… I lived in them all, I flowed in them. And now… I smoke in alleys next to restaurant dumpsters. I scrounge for worship, like a mortal beggar scrounges for change. I’ve tricked people into reading scraps of litanies before, just to keep me going. Have you ever done that?”

“…Yes.” Amarissa gritted her teeth. “More than once. I took a catering job at a wedding once just so I could sneak into where they were storing the cue cards for the vows and slip an extra clause in there. They fired me for it but it was delicious. Kept me going for weeks.”

Lysanthe’s mouth watered a little at the thought.

“What’s become of us? Really? In the old days I couldn’t even have conceived of being able to die, especially not if Nekrys had already gone before us.”

“Hmm.” Amarissa nodded. “I suppose, yes, he must be gone now too.”

“I know he is. I watched him die.” Lysanthe took a great mournful drag on her cigarette. “I was there for him in the end. He was fated to die alone, but he was terrified of it. Shitting himself like an old man in a hospital bed. That’s how he went out and all. St Carmichael’s, in Rockertown.”

“And you were there?”

“I was the only choice. Only way he could die alone but with someone holding his hand.”

“You’re not so bleak-hearted as you put on, in your way.” Amarissa smiled at Lysanthe. “In some ways, I suppose, you and your charges have never been truly alone. You had one another.”

“That’s not how you used to see it.”

“No, it’s not, true enough. Goodness, do you remember our battle at the Kydontum gates?”

Lysanthe did. “You wore so much red back then. And you had a jaw that could slay a man. You were never quite so much like Enomios as when you were the drathannic state religion. A plate-clad warrior-goddess, enforcing the blossoming of love in mortals’ hearts by any means necessary.”

“And you were never quite so much like Nekrys as when you were goddess-in-residence of the drathan-albastic wilderpoets.” Amarissa replied with a bittersweet tone. “A great towering sorceress of the wilds, bedecked in deadwood and feather and bone, and that necklace of headstones you used to wear with the words weathered away, slinging great whisps of despair from your hands like a bola.”

“Fuck I used to be so pretentious.” Lysanthe laughed, a single smoker’s braying croak.

Amarissa laughed along as well. “And I didn’t? Armoured warrior-queen of love? What even was that? Makes me cringe just to think of it now.”

“I think it was probably to make you look good on the engravings. The drathans did so love their engravings.”

“That they did.” Amarissa sighed. “Do you know there’s one in the museum at Gallingham City?”

“There is? Do they know who it’s of?”

“No. And I’m not going to tell them. It’s Pleinara, and she’s been dead… gosh, fifty-odd years now, so not like she’d get the benefit. Better to let old bones lie.”

“Poor Pleinara.”

“Poor, poor Pleinara… she’d have loved ordering pizza online.”

This final remark broke Lysanthe, who giggled uncharacteristically at the thought. “I was partial to it myself, once. But all the kitchens work too fast nowadays to bother doing the little prayers you slip in the notes. The food arrives, but not the sustenance.”

“Yeah…” Amarissa stared off into space in front of her and sighed. “It’s not even a sacrifice if you paid for it.”

“Fuck. Sacrifices. I can’t remember the last time I got a sacrifice. Gotta be decades ago at least. Some old lady living on her own out on the moors spilling me a thimbleful of her soup because her momma always told her to. Or something like that.” Lysanthe exhaled deeply.

“There’s a good luck proverb I’m in, for first loves. Families from the old country still teach it sometimes. A little buzz in the back of my head. But the kids say it wrong. They don’t know what it means. It’ll be gone soon.” Amarissa said, her eyes welling just a little. She looked over at Lysanthe and abruptly changed the subject:

“I didn’t come for a fight, by the way, if I hadn’t made that clear.”

Lysanthe stamped out the remains of her cigarette on the rough concrete floor and immediately set to work lighting another.

“That’s good. ‘Cause I’ve no more whisps of despair left in me. Best you’d get is a fag-end to the eye.”

“I don’t have my glaive any more either. I think there’s a plastic fork in my pocket. But… well, I don’t know how much it matters now, but I’ve been thinking lately. About you, and when we fought.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. There was just something about it, you know? It was different. From when I fought the others, I mean. Like when I beat back Enomios from sacking my temple in Dymyros by inspiring everyone barricaded inside to sing together to the Casalite general’s heart. Or when Algonos brought the great plague to Neknoruna and it was all I could do to shelter the tiny flames of love from him in what little of the population remained. It wasn’t the same as when I fought you. It didn’t feel…” she trailed off and Lysanthe turned to look at her.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know. I can’t really describe it. It was like I always secretly wanted to fight you, not even to win— at least not immediately— but more like it was just… what we were meant to be doing. Love and Solitude, locked in a righteous battle forever more.” Amarissa hunched against the wall. “Perhaps that was all I even wanted. Perhaps it wasn’t even the fighting. Hardly really something we can do now and yet… maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I’m all right with it. Maybe… maybe it would always have been okay to be alone, just as long as I was alone with you. Does that make any sense?”

Lysanthe’s eyes bulged as she overdrew on her cigarette and descended into a coughing fit. Puffs of smoke billowed from her mouth and hung in a miasma around her as she struggled for breath. Amarissa’s hand shot to the other goddess’ shoulder in concern, but before either of them could say anything the sound of clattering and shouting drew their attention further up the alley.

The back door of the upstairs apartment three doors away from Lysanthe and Amarissa swung violently open, casting a ray of light out onto the utilitarian metal balcony and fire escape outside. A gangly young boy, probably about fifteen and clad unconvincingly in a mint green shirt and a pair of slacks, staggered backwards out onto the door pursued by an older man in a stained polo shirt.

“—ever set foot in my house again you disgusting freak, do you have any idea of the shame you’ve brought on me and the whole family?” The older man spluttered, “What a goddamn embarrassment, did you ever think of what it’d do to my image? Or to your poor mother? How will we show our faces at church now?”

“Dad, I—” tears welled in the youth’s eyes as he attempted to get a word in edgeways.

“And that’s another thing.” A middle-aged woman, blonde and dagger-eyed, appeared behind the man in the doorway. “You can forget about anyone in the church ever speaking to you again, you ungrateful little faggot. Once word gets out about this none of them’ll dare touch you, and a damn good thing too.”

“Makes me sick.” The man sneered. “Thinking about that degeneracy festering under my roof.”

Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes and were promptly jarred down his cheeks by the impact of a sports bag, thrown from the door, that impacting his torso and knocked the wind out of him. The illumination left his face as the door slammed in front of him, and the alley fell quiet again.

Lysanthe and Amarissa shared a raising of eyebrows. They watched the youth stand up, sling the sports bag over his shoulder and dejectedly descend the fire escape. When he reached the bottom, he slumped down against the wall and sat with his head in his hands.

Lysanthe gestured to Amarissa and stood up straight. She carefully approached the boy, the other goddess hovering a small distance behind her.

“Hey kid.” She said softly, proffering her packet of cigarettes. “Wanna smoke? You seem like you could use it.”

The boy looked up, his wide, glistening eyes taking in the sight of the two oddly iridescent older women above him. He nodded, sniffling a bit as he took a cigarette from the pack.

“So.” Lysanthe produced a dirty plastic lighter and struck it alight under the boy’s cigarette. “What’s your name?”

“Marco.” The boy sniffed. “I guess you guys saw that stuff with my parents.”

“Sure did. Seemed pretty rough. What was it about?”

Marco grimaced, squeezing his eyes to try and scrape away the tears. “It’s… oh fuck… what have I done…?” He snatched the cigarette from his mouth so he could put his head in his hand. “There was a boy… at church. I thought… I was such an idiot… I love him and I thought… somehow I thought it would work out okay if I told them.”

“A boy?” Amarissa peered over Lysanthe’s shoulder.

Marco nodded, sniffing pathetically. “His name’s Luke. I love him so much and now my parents are probably going to tell his and I’ll have ruined his life too. I’m such a MORON!” He returned the cigarette to his lips and took a drag of such forceful magnitude that Lysanthe and Amarissa’s eyes widened; before collapsing into a coughing fit.

The two burnt-out goddesses exchanged a look.

“You were… exiled?” Lysanthe breathed.

“For daring to love…” Amarissa crooned.

“Yeah…” Marco tried to blink away the tears. “And now I can’t go home… and I’ll have been thrown out of the church too. I’ve got nothing. I’ve fucked it all up!” He balled his fist and beat it against his thigh.

“That’s the problem with the modern church.” Lysanthe mused. “It’s all or nothing. Put one foot wrong and you’re out. Time was…” A slight smile crept over her face as she looked up at Amarissa. “There were gods for almost everything, and if you fell out of favour with one, there were others there to catch you as your life changed.”

Marco sniffed and nodded, dragging on the cigarette again. “Huh. That sounds nice. Whatever happened to them, huh?”

“Most of us died.” Amarissa said with a deadpan tone.

Marco’s eyes widened and he looked directly at Amarissa for the first time. “Wha—”

“Marco.” Lysanthe’s voice was steady and urgent. “I think I can help you. In fact, I think we both can. But look at us. We can’t do anything unless you have some faith that we can.”

“Faith…” Marco’s tone was incredulous but the tiny glitter in his eyes betrayed the innocent hope that he still just couldn’t quite shake despite how low it had already brought him.

“Yes. Faith. We… we need it. Like you need food and shelter. That’s why we’re dying, Marco. It’s why the others died. Nobody believes in us anymore, but you need… so little, in the grand scheme of things. If you could just… believe in us,that we can help… it would be so simple to ease your pain, to make it all… bearable.”

“That’s insane.” Marco shook his head. “You’re a couple of crazy people and that’s… that’s blasphemy, I guess. Fuck, heresy even.”

“Like what you did?” Amarissa glowed a little more than usual as she stepped past Lysanthe. She squatted down a little to make eye contact with Marco and put a hand on his shoulder. “Marco, my name is Amarissa, but over the centuries I’ve also been called Cordelia, Merut, Kariritu and Qamatu. I was the goddess of love to the Drathans, the Velledians, the ancient Coscilicians and the city-state of Dymyros before it was consumed by the sea, among so many others. And I promise you: There has always been room for your kind of love in my temple.”

Marco evidently didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. And yet he couldn’t stop a single breathy word escaping his lips.

“Always?”

“Always. I swear it. The Drathans wrote poetry about it. The Coscilians considered it a holy gift. Your love isn’t wrong, Marco. It never was. And with your help I can make sure there is always a church for those who love the way you do. I just need you to have faith in me.”

Marco let out a sharp single peal of choked laughter. His eyes flicked to Lysanthe. “Oh yeah? And who’s she then?”

“My best enemy.” Amarissa smiled. “That’s Lysanthe. Or Solitria. Or Wahret. Or Zamītum. Whichever you prefer. The goddess of isolation, of exile, of solitude. The companion of those who have none, the walker of the wilds and wastes.”

Marco smirked through his tears. “Heh. Kind of seems like I could really use you both. Feels like a like… paradox or something.”

“Maybe.” Lysanthe said warmly. “But there’s no rule against that. I can help you too. But you have to believe I can, Marco. Our days are done. The rest of our pantheon are dead, shrivelled away to nothing from being denounced and forgotten. Without your faith… without your conviction… we’re nothing, and we’ll die the same way. But if you just let yourself believe… helping you in little ways is little more than a conjuring trick. I could still do that. I still have it in me.”

Marco looked from Lysanthe to Amarissa and back again, his face incredulous and streaked with tears. Finally he shrugged and made a face.

“Sure. Whatever. What have I got to lose, right?”

Lysanthe’s eyes widened. “That’s the spirit.”

“So is there like… a ritual? Or a sacrifice or something?” Marco’s eyebrow remained raised. “In the old church there wasn’t a lot of talking to the big guy face to face, don’t know if that changes things.”

“I just need to hear that you believe I can help. And I need you to mean it. The rest of that stuff… don’t worry about it. Look at us. We have no temples left, nothing. If you want rituals and sacrifices and stuff you can make it up later. I’ll roll with it. I’ve done it before.”

“So have I.” Amarissa nodded.

“Okay.” Marco closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. “Lysanthe… Amarissa. I… I believe you want to help me. And I believe… that if I believe in you, you can. And… and I beg you. I beg you please help me I’m so scared.”

Lysanthe felt a tingle in her fingers she’d not felt for almost a year. A smile crept over her face and she looked at Marco with eyes that newly glittered with an inhuman sparkle. Gathering the weave of the world around her fingers in a clumsy, fat-thumbed fumble, she poked and prodded for the thread of fate she needed, grasped hold of it and tugged.

Nothing happened.

“NO!” Lysanthe choked. It had to be enough. The thought of being so weak and mortal that she couldn’t even save a single frightened boy from starving cut through her like a knife. But tug as she might… it just wasn’t enough. The kid believed… but she was too faded. Too forgotten. She looked up at Amarissa and saw the other goddess with her hand over her mouth, eyes brimming with the same tears.

“What’s wrong?” Marco’s couldn’t stop his voice cracking as he subconsciously picked up on the despair in the women’s own.

“It’s not enough.” Amarissa wept. “Marco I’m so sorry. Sweetheart I am so sorry. I’m… we’re too mortal. We’re too far gone. I can feel the threads of your fate, but I can’t… I can’t move them. I could feel Lysanthe trying too. There’s too little of us left now. We’re less-than-gods. Baby I’m so so sorry. I really thought we could do it still…”

Lysanthe’s eyes unfocused and as she tuned out, deep in thought, the sound of Amarissa’s thousand sorrows and the unbidden tears Marco began to weep in response seemed far away and under water. It gave her focus, just for a second. She could think. And she didn’t have to think very much. The answer came to her naturally. In front of her the whole time, minutes old and yet stretching back almost to the dawn of civilisation. A simple two-piece puzzle to be put together if one could only see the pieces.

“Amarissa.” She said firmly. “Shut up for a second.”

Back in the moment, she saw Amarissa turn to her, mouth open mid-sentence in surprise.

Lysanthe exhaled her smoke and took a step toward her old foe.

“Neither of us can do it.” She said simply. “But that’s not the point. Think about what we were trying to do. Think about it. What they’ll be. In their darkest hour.”

Amarissa retained her gobsmacked expression for a second, then realisation washed across her face.

“Alone together.”

“Alone together.” Lysanthe nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “Amarissa… you asked me a question, just before we were interrupted by poor Marco here and his horrible parents. You asked me a question and I have my answer now.” She stepped closer and closer until her forehead was right up against Amarissa’s, and she could smell the smoke on her breath bouncing off Amarissa’s skin, and she could whisper.

“I love you too. I always have.”

She leaned forward and twisted her head, locking lips with Amarissa and kissing her with all the tenderness and adoration of two and a half millennia apart. Amarissa melted into the kiss as naturally as if it were an old sofa, one that had seen decades of service in the coziest, safest house one could imagine. She glowed resonantly in Lysanthe’s embrace, enough that Marco had to squint to look directly at her, and her hands reached to her old companion’s face, gently caressing the lines and gaunt bony cheeks beneath.

Lysanthe broke off the kiss and looked directly into Amarissa’s eyes.

“Do you feel it?” She smiled.

“I do.” Amarissa breathed with stars in her eyes. “I feel it. I feel it in my fingers. It’s been so long, I didn’t realise… I thought the other stuff—”

“So did I!” Lysanthe laughed. “But no… you know when it’s the real thing. Haha… I can FEEL it!”

“Feel what?” Marco asked, completely lost as to what was going on.

“We can HELP!” The goddesses cried in unison.

“You can?”

“Together we can!” Amarissa nodded, buzzing with excitement. “Ready Lys?”

“Never been more ready.” Lysanthe laughed again, the sound unfathomable sweet music to Marco’s mortal ears.

“Then let’s do it!” Amarissa reached out with her right hand, her left still interlocked with Lysanthe’s.

The two goddesses reached out confidently. The faith this simple homeless boy had instilled in each of them, so impotent alone, intermingled in their clasped fingers and burned like a flame in their palms. Their outstretched hands found the thread of his fate, grasped it, and pulled it toward them almost effortlessly.

Lysanthe looked down at Marco and smiled warmly at him.

“It worked.” She said simply. “Go now. Go to the park on Breslin Street. Luke is there. His parents did throw him out. They’re not quite as bad as yours, and in time if he wants to try again and mend bridges with them he’ll be able to bring them around. But for now he’s alone, and he needs you.”

“Go to him. Talk to him.” Amarissa continued. “He needs you.”

“I can’t.” Marco avoided their gaze. “This is my fault. What if he hates me? What if—”

“He won’t. Marco that’s how this works. Just go to him and talk to him. And then… go to the drag bar on Nester Avenue. Turn up at the stage door after tonight’s show and tell your story. There’s a queen there who performs under the name of Lick-uid Lunch. She’ll take you in for a little while. She won’t know why, exactly, but she’ll need to. She won’t let you back out into the cold.”

“You promise?” Marco’s eyebrow raised again.

“We promise!” The goddesses smiled in unison.

“But you have to go now!” Lysanthe gestured urgently. “Our power is still weak; we can’t hold the thread forever. If you don’t go to Luke now you might never see him again. But if you do… we guarantee you’ll be safe.”

Marco stood up straight and swooped down, grabbing his bag. He dashed his cigarette against the wall and turned back to Lysanthe and Amarissa. Wordlessly he stepped forward and threw his arms around the two of them, weeping into the seam between their bosoms in relief and overwhelmed gratitude.

“Thank you.” He breathed. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome.” Amarissa said. “But… just tell others about us, please? If you possibly could.”

Lysanthe nodded. “We have a long way to go before we’re even a cult, let alone a temple again. But the more of you there are, the more of you we can help. The exiled lovers. Those alone together. You deserve to live, to love. We can help, Marco, but only if enough of you have faith. Make up those rituals. Invent those sacrifices, when you finally have things you can spare. You can save our lives, and with us the lives of so many others like you. None of us are dead yet.”

“No.” Amarissa beamed, turning back to Lysanthe and kissing her on the forehead. “None of us are dead yet.”

Marco nodded and stood up as straight as he could. For a second he seemed lost, spacing out in confusion, but then he leant forward slightly. He clasped his hands together in front of him— the sign of the praying supplicant but performed with the violence of action of a military salute.

“I won’t forget.” He sobbed. “I promise.”

“Good.” Amarissa said.

“Now go!” Lysanthe added.

As Marco ran off into the night toward Breslin Street. Lysanthe turned back toward Amarissa and raised her free arm for her lover to see. A dark whisp, like a little black eel, flitted around her hand and between her fingers. As she raised it to Amarissa’s face, it glittered and gleamed a hundred colours, iridescent like a slick of oil on a summer’s day.

“You know Am…” She ventured to her glowing companion, putting her arm down again. “…I know that kid’s going to come through for us. He will. And you know what’ll happen after that?”

“What?”

“We’ll have temples again.”