A Curse of Competence

6

^^ Estate ^^

— Thimera —

As far as traditional Forest Walker Celebrations went, Ilene's Blessing Day Revelry was Insultingly Plain. Half of the invitees hadn't even shown up, and half of the ones who did were sober, preferring to look down their noses at those doing their due diligence and reveling while they stood in the corners and brought down the atmosphere like a sack of wet clothes growing moldy in the closet; still, every single one of those present froze in disbelief when the eyes of the statues depicting the gods began to shine a blinding platinum, instead of the usual soft silver glow. At first, I thought she'd managed to get Axos and Daxos to both Bless her, as they did on occasion bless the same person, and my heart leapt with joy, but then I saw Io and Resid lighting up as well, and whipped around to check, gasping incredulously when I saw Eros and Remos had followed suit.

I'd heard of children blessed by many of the main deities instead of one or two, of course, everyone had. Often, children with the Innate Skill of Somnus Librum were blessed with multiple Blessings, and I could think of two off the top of my head that'd been blessed by all six, but to think one would be my own child... pride swelled in my heart, a deep and unabashed pride, a feeling not of accomplishment, per se, but rather excitement and eagerness; questions ran through my mind like quicca running from foxes, darting by and going unanswered for now. What would she try to accomplish? What would her life be about? What would her Skills be? How would she use them? Would she be a Warrior? A Scout? An Explorer? A Craftswoman? A Queen? Now would be the time she chose, her Skills would help inform that decision, as the gods gave her what she needed for the life she wished to lead, and I was incredibly, immeasurably eager for whatever it would be.

But Ilene didn't move, and the statues began to glow even brighter, the glow spreading from their eyes to their bodies as the stone they were carved from began to crack and shiver, creating runes and glyphs out of the divine light that began to reshape the statues to better suit the deities they represented; this only happened once a century at most, as the gods were amorphous beings who changed shapes as they pleased, but the last time it had happened was less than thirty years ago, when my younger sister had been Blessed by Io. It had been the cause of her arrogance for many years after, even as a small child, that the gods had chosen her to be a conduit by which they made their wills known to the world, and even then the change had been small, subtle, and the light had certainly only extended to their faces, not their entire bodies. To see divine runes and glyphs make themselves known upon the bodies of the gods was something that I didn't think was possible, but it was happening before my eyes, and I couldn't ignore it at all when Axos's trident slowly seemed to sharpen and gain definition, a rope appearing on the end and attaching to his belt while his skin changed from a pale stone to a cracked red iron ore, his features changing slowly but surely to the features of an equatorial islander, and Daxos' body changed suddenly and sharply from that of an older, frailer man with a set of scales to a large and buff man with an imposing figure beyond reproach. Io slowly lost some of her youth, gaining an old and crone-like appearance with her signature spear still in her left hand but a new thing in her right, a heavy blacksmithing hammer, while Resid's winged ankles grew even larger and paler, his bow gaining a sudden very odd curve I'd never seen before, which looked like his bow had broken, and his plate armor was replaced by simple leather armor. Behind us, as I glanced nervously at the incarnations of Magic and of Death, Remos and Eros, I was stricken by a change so profound as to completely alter the entire statue of Eros, as he had changed from a small bookish man with a book held to his chest to a tall silver-skinned beefcake of a being kneeling with the book on his knees, a bleeding chain attached to his heart and pouring silver blood into its pages. Remos hadn't changed much, I noticed, except for gaining small bags under his eyes to insinuate tiredness and having his staff change color from iron ore to obsidian, and aging opposite of Io, instead growing younger until he seemed barely twenty-five. Finally, the glow slowly ended, and the light retreated to their eyes... and stayed, for a solid hour of apparent deliberation, another unprecedented event that made me pause, concerned and also proud: clearly she'd caught their interest, but whether or not that was a good thing was yet to be determined. Her eyes stopped glowing first, as was the norm, and the glow in the gods' statues slowly died down while the stone and ore hissed slightly as if the light had been hot enough to heat the stone through till it glowed with heat, as well.