The Last Prayer

It has grown cold here. And dark. I try so hard to tune out my senses, but they always seem to come back, nagging away at me like unanswered prayers.

I am hungry.

I am tired.

I am lonely.

I hear others shuffling around sometimes – muffled grunts of pain and dirtied rags trailing along the floor. It does not matter whose. It does not even matter who is left.

My fire is small, scarcely more than a candle, but I nurture it as though it were the Sun. I dare not add more kindling, though there is nothing else around me but ruins. I do not want the others to see. They will take my tiny flame, try to steal it for themselves, and they will fight and squabble over it until they are simply fighting over ash.

So instead I hoard it. And I sit here, my fingers so frozen and aching that I must deny the urge to plunge them into the flames just to feel something again.

Sometimes, to distract myself, I watch. We all did, at first. Back when the palace halls still stood, bright and shining, with so many colours it was as though the rainbow itself had been shattered to form its walls. (Of course, this was not the case. She was with us, Isis, that is – nursing her goblet until one of my siblings sent her to aid some new hero who had attracted their eye.)

Change was slow, as it often is, until it came faster, hungrier, like fire catching on wood. The calls became less frequent: there were no demands for crops to be watered; for a neighbour to be punished; for my brothers and sisters to cease their lovemaking and warmaking and lawbreaking. We all brushed it aside at first – I cannot deny that. There would always be fields to plough; disputes to settle; hearts to be broken. We had made sure of that.

They could not leave us so soon.

Except, they did.

Eventually, the halls grew quiet. My brothers and sisters grew restless, staring out endlessly for the possibility of some new hero, some champion on whom they could bestow the wonders of their divinity and magic and kindness. But there were none to be found – at least, none who cared to be heard. The gleaming walls seemed to dim, dust settling over the corners of the palace like the first frost of the winter. The others lost interest after that. Why should they care to watch the humans, when their home was dying all around them? Instead, they huddled together, scheming, searching desperately for a solution. But as our world grew ever darker, it became all they could do just to light a fire and stave off the desperate cold. All our lives, we had each of us been defined by power – a strength that told us this is you. This is your gift to the universe. Your dominion. Now, we had nothing. And weakness took over like a plague.

But I did not join my kin. This was not my home to save – it never had been. I stayed here, at the edge of the palace – at the edge of our world – gazing off into the inky blackness of the heavens, down to the swirling waters and plains below. We were all weaker now – and I was no exception – but my eyes remained keen. I watched the people call out to each other, with languages I had not heard before; in new buildings and settlements that I had never seen. Their thoughts and their tools and their lives were all alien to me – even their animals began to change. Yet I could not look away. I was at the heart of these people – I was in their homes, in the warmth of their fireplaces, in that brief glance between friends who know each other so well, that words need not be spoken. But now, I could not understand them.

Was this how they had felt, looking up at the stars all those years ago? Looking up at us?

I did not move, not to eat, nor drink – not that there was much of either to be had. That was when hostilities began to start. We had all heard the prayers. We all knew what happened when famine made its covetous presence known. We were simply too arrogant to assume it would come for us.

Wars were fought, though small, and uninspiring. They were not the great wars against Giants, or Titans, or even those of the mortal heroes against their mortal kin. These were the fights of the starving – the desperate, heartless fights of brothers and sisters running one another through for scraps of meat, uncaring of the groans of the dying as their essence poured uselessly over the palace floors.

I did not even turn around. I felt them go, one by one, their immortal lives fading away like a sputtering-out candle. I could guess who had gone, I suppose. I remember the day the wine ran dry; and when the forges would no longer light. But what is the point of remembering? What is the point of clinging to what we were, when down there, on that shining sphere of blue, is something alive – something real? And so I continued to watch. Soon the battles grew less frequent. There were no more curses and cries; words had no value here. The echoing darkness of the halls was broken only by ailing moans, and grunts, like those of beasts hunting for their next meal. I could feel my own ribs keenly beneath my timeworn dress, my long hair – once sleek and dark – hanging in thin threads about my shoulders. They tried to reach out to me, once or twice – the things who used to be my brothers and sisters, my nieces and nephews. I spent many days sat in nervous silence, bracing myself for the tap of a skeletal hand on my shoulder, rank breath warm against my neck.

But they soon lost interest. And I was left alone.

No, not alone. Never alone.

I had them.

They grew so fast, and soon their world was so full of lights and colours, it seemed brighter than ours had ever been. Some days I could almost feel the warmth of it, shining like a beacon through the night. But of course, I could not.

I watch them now, bustling across those vast plains and oceans as though it were nothing. My eyes are not as sharp as they were, and so when I see it, at first, I think I am imagining things. (It has happened to the others – in the early days, some would ramble to themselves of feasts and kings, of things that once were and never were and may someday be, as they slowly muttered themselves into madness. I envy them sometimes. Their suffering, at least, was swift.)

It is when I see it again that I am certain.

Some kind of craft – a ship, perhaps – drifting away from that great world, diving through the stars like a dolphin through water. The fire is flickering now. I am so cold, so hungry. I can no longer sit up, so I allow my body to fall to the ground. But I do not take my eyes away from the strange metal ship.

I do not know what they are doing, what it is they seek to find so far from their homes. Go back, part of me wishes to tell them, do not go out into this coldness, this darkness.

But another part of me, a weaker part, whispers out a small prayer. I have never prayed before, but oh, I have heard it done.

Hestia, please warm my fire, my hands are so cold.

Hestia, please cook this food to feed my husband.

Hestia, please find me a hearth to rest besides.

Hestia, please…

And so I pray. The first prayer, and the last, that I shall ever utter.

“Help me,” I whisper. “Help me. Please.”