Legends of Forlienne

Chapter VII: The Sirens

The gods rarely deigned to travel down from their perch on high to mingle with the mortals who lived and suffered and died on the planet below. When they did, it was rarely for long. They would stay only as long as it took to do what they had set out to do, and then return immediately to their celestial realms.

This aloofness didn't come out of a desire for isolation. Rather, it stemmed from fear; fear of their own weakness; fear of what could be done to them should they linger on the mortal plane. For the longer a god is away from its home, the greater their power drains, until they are, with time, little more than a mortal being, unable to return to their own realms.

This did not bother many of the gods. For most of them this was no great loss. Why wander among the dead and dying when you could enjoy an eternity of unimaginable comfort among your own kind? Others, though, loathed their own immortality and, though they would never surrender it, longed to live and love and experience all the planet had to offer beside the mortals who lived there.

Nauefek was one such immortal, though she would never admit it. She looked with envy on the world below her. She wanted what they had. There was a way for this to happen; a way for the gods to linger on the mortal plane without fear of losing what made them gods. They were called avatars. A god's avatar would share the features and many of the traits of one specific god. That god could successfully inhabit that avatar's body on the planet's surface without losing any of their power.

These avatars were rare. perhaps one appeared every other century,and the odds of an avatar belonging to a specific god were even more slim. And yet, by some strange trick of fortune, Nauefek found her avatar on the day when she longed most for a semblance of a mortal life.

She took her chance gleefully, not caring that there was a sentient life she was pushing aside in seizing control of the avatar's body. She didn't think about the human miller's daughter who would never have a future or a life. All she thought of was her own curiosity about the world of mortals.

Her first act as the entered the avatar's body was to shield herself from the prying eyes of her fellow gods. She didn't want them to know of her fascination with the mortals or her secret love for their way of life. She looked around with human eyes, seeing for the first time the beautiful simplicity with which the world seemed veiled. There was no shimmering, transcendent grace like that which the gods saw when they looked at the world. She did not see the trees and clouds and glowing moon as patterns and waves of energy.

Instead, the trees around her were solid. They were made of leaves and wood and bark. The ground beneath her feet was tangible; she could feel each step as she made it, conscious of her own existence.

And there were desires. For the first time, she longed for food, and drink, and sleep. And love. Above all, she felt the desire to lay beside another living, breathing mortal and be joined as one. She did. She pursued those desires willingly, surrendering herself over to her new form; her new life. Yet in time, she grew bored of those simple, transitory pleasures. She longed for something better, something more. She longed for someone to share her bliss with.

And she found it. It started when she met a man; a human like her own avatar. They bonded immediately, although it could not be said that there was love between them. Their relationship was formed of little but powerful lust and mutual loneliness. They both knew this, and yet, for their individual needs, it was enough.

In the human, Nauefek had found companionship, but it was not enough. She needed something more, something deeper. As it so happened, this would come to her far sooner that she might have anticipated; mere months after her and her human lover had parted ways.

They left each other on the best of terms, each one satisfied with that chapter in their lives and ready to close it. She left him nothing to remember her by, but he, as it turned out, had left her a child. A daughter who would be born to a mother who had barely scratched to surface of what it meant to be human and had never dreamed of rearing a child.