38. Her Greatest Treasure (Patreon)

A/N: Hey, everyone! Happy Thanksgiving! And sorry for the wait, this one needed a liiiiittle extra time in the oven to get it just right. Enjoy!


I yank the robber into the side hall, stewing in frustration. Why does this keep happening to me? Why? And more importantly, how does he have magic!?

I mean, he obviously got it from me somehow. Everyone I know who has it is someone that spends time around me, and I've had my suspicions on how exactly that works. The Goddess is the one that gives souls, after all, and this guy having Heat magic pretty much confirms my theory: he was around me for less than a minute, but during that time the Goddess was there. Being physically nearby when someone else channels the Goddess is what gives you a soul. That seems to be the most likely possibility.

Which means I can't let some criminal dumbass go around using magic willy-nilly!

"Were you seriously about to throw fire at me in public!?" I hiss furiously at him. "Are you insane? Have you lost all intelligence?"

He stares down at me, utterly speechless. Ugh, I can only imagine what's going through that head of his. Dude robs two women, gains fire powers, tries to rob a store, and then ends up accosted by a girl a whole head shorter than him, yanking him around despite the knife and superpower that he both just pulled on her. He's either realizing how completely out of his depth he is and freaking out, or I've just awakened a new kink in him.

…Aw, ew, why the heck did I have to go and think that? Gross gross gross. I'm going to have to distract myself fast or else my morbid curiosity will get the better of me and I'll end up using my spatial sense to see if he has an erection. Suppressing a shudder, I squeeze his wrist harder and harder until he drops the knife, which I snatch out of the air and pocket.

"Say something," I order him, taking a step back.

"I-I didn't know!" he stutters nervously. "I didn't know what it was! I didn't know there were rules!"

Okay, he's scared of me. He probably thinks I'm one of the magical spooks that keep the secret from the world. And… well, I guess I kind of am.

"You didn't know what it was so you decided to use it to rob a restaurant!?" I growl. "Do you have any idea how dangerous the gift you've been given is? Do you care?"

"No, I don't know anything!" he insists, protectively raising his hands in front of his face. "I just needed money!"

"So you tried to set me on fire?"

"You grabbed me! Look, my mom's in the hospital and—"

"No!" I snap. "No no no! You mugged me! Twice! No being sympathetic!"

"Wait, wait, hold on!" he pleads. "Look, I-I'm sorry. I don't wanna hurt anyone but I don't know what else to do! I don't know anything ‘bout anything but they're gonna foreclose our house and mom can't work and I just… I don't know what I'm doing with this stuff, but you said this is magic? Like, real magic? Can you heal her?"

Aaaaaagh I specifically told you not to be sympathetic you little rolly deer turd! I don't need your problems; I have plenty of my own! …Though I guess this guy is one of those problems, now that I'm thinking about it. I gave him magic when I… well, when I tried to kill him.

…Right. I tried to kill this kid. Fuck.

I don't think I can help with his problem, though? Ida can't heal people she doesn't care about and she's not going to care about a stranger. We still don't know what Brendan can do, Autumn's spells aren't any good for healing, and my Order magic just cleans and sorts things. What the heck could I do with that, sort the diseases out of her body?

…Actually, wait. Can I do that!? If I incant Refresh I can manually circulate the friggin' fraggin' blood through my body. I can probably sort impurities out of the blood too, right? Right? Shoot, why have I not thought about this until now?

There are a bunch of limitations to this. I don't think I can do cancers, because those are attached to the body and ripping a tumor off is a bit outside the realm of sorting things. I can sort solutions of things because solutions aren't physically bonded at all, there are plenty of ways to separate them out normally, like evaporating the water out. But a bunch of bacteria or viruses floating around inside the bloodstream, or in the intestines, or in a tooth or whatever? I could probably do that, as long as I have a proper receptacle to put them in afterwards. And there are proper receptacles for diseased material!

"...What's your mom sick with?" I ask, not wanting to get ahead of myself.

"Um, a lot of things, I think?" the mugger… gah. No, the desperate kid says. I might have been over-assuming his age because he's tall. He doesn't act very old. "She has an immunodeficiency disease, the doctor says. So she's got COVID, but… also a lot of other stuff, I think?"

Fuck. Okay. Damn it. HIV is a virus, right? Can I cure AIDS? Oh Goddess, maybe I can. I think I've been seriously underestimating my favorite spell. If I can just directly pull diseases out of people, I should pretty much be working at a hospital full-time, right? I can heal basically any infection as long as I incant my spell to make it strong enough. Which would, uh, permanently give everyone nearby a soul, and therefore magic.

My eyes narrow. Goddess, you dastardly bitch. I can cure people, but only if I want to risk giving them Chaos magic or spawning another Sindri into the world or something equally horrible. Can I do that? Is that worth it? Magic is absolutely terrifying, but I don't want to let people die!

…I can sleep on that issue, I guess. Deciding the fate of the world isn't a job for a ten-minute work break.

"Are you hungry?" I ask the kid.

"Um. Y-yes?"

"Okay. Any foods you can't eat?"

"Not really?"

"Good. Stay right here," I order him. "Do not move."

I briefly return to my cash register and order a mac and cheese with my employee discount, since that's just sort of the basic normal thing most people under the age of thirty order when they come in here. Pointedly ignoring the questioning looks from my co-workers, I wait the barely thirty seconds it takes for them to make one and hand it to me, then return to the side hall.

"Here," I grunt, handing him the food. "I get off work at ten tonight. Does the hospital allow visitors that late? I can't promise anything, but I can give it a shot."

"Really?" he gulps, practically jumping on me in excitement. "Oh, thank you, I—!"

I firmly shove him away before he can get huggy, cutting him off.

"I have conditions," I insist. "First, you need to understand that I'm not a healer, I'm a hail mary. What I'm planning might work, but I've never done this before and being magic doesn't mean I'm a miracle worker, okay? We're giving this a shot, and you still have to abide by my other conditions if I can't do it."

He immediately gets a lot less excited and a lot more suspicious. Good, he's not completely stupid.

"...What are the conditions?" he asks. "I don't really have much."

"Chill out, I'm not extorting you. I just need to stay in contact with you and teach you how to properly use magic. …I'll also need to teach your mom how to use magic, since she'll probably be able to do it if this goes well."

"Wait, really!?"

"Don't get excited!" I snap. "Magic is crazy dangerous and if you use it wrong it will kill you! Or your mom! So you will listen to me, no questions asked, when I tell you not to do something. Okay? And the first thing you're agreeing to is to not tell anybody about magic. Not your friends, not anyone else in your family, no one. You got that?"

Yes, I realize I'm being completely hypocritical when I say that. But I want to impress on him the importance of not calling whatever magical spooks still somehow haven't gotten clued into the situation down on our heads. If he cracks and tells a trustworthy best friend or something… I can't really fault him for that. But if I tell him that's okay, then he's way more likely to tell even more people. Humans push boundaries no matter what those boundaries are, so it's best to set them significantly before any potential breaking point.

Because that's the problem here: I don't know this kid, and I don't have anywhere near as much power over him as I'm currently pretending to have. But I need him to stay in check, to not call the Goddess down and inadvertently start handing out arcane nukes to everybody within arm's reach.

"Second rule: you can feel free to use your magic, but don't let anyone see you and never, ever say anything out loud while you cast a spell."

"What? Why?" he asks.

"Because it could cause you to immolate yourself to death," I say seriously.

He blanches. Good. The real reason I don't want him to do it is because it would cause him to summon the Goddess and therefore start that whole magical infection train, but it's definitely true that doing so would also endanger his life. It's rather easy to make people scared of the Goddess when she is so Goddess-darn scary.

"Third," I conclude, "and I feel like this should go without saying: stop mugging people! You jerk!"

"I… but if you can't heal my mom, I'll still have to—"

"We can figure the money out some other way," I dismiss. "You would've made, what, barely three hundred dollars for taking all the cash in the register? And every time you do that you risk getting hurt or going to jail?"

"I don't… three hundred dollars is a lot of money."

I rub my face and sigh.

"We'll find another way. Alright? No more pointing knives at people."

"You took my knife."

"Yes!" I confirm, stepping back towards the main room of the restaurant. "I did! Now eat your food and stay out of trouble until ten. If you fuck around…"

I turn my head, sneering just wide enough that my lips creep up past where my mask covers, revealing jagged teeth peeking out between the straps.

"...You will find out. Understand?"

He gulps.

"Y-yes ma'am."

"Good."

I turn to depart, brushing my face as I leave to make sure I'm properly hiding my teeth again.

"W-wait!" he calls out as I step away. "What's your name?"

"Hannah," I answer.

He looks shocked.

"...You're a magical monster named Hannah?"

I glower at him.

"S-sorry!" he quickly corrects. "I'm Jared."

"I won't remember that," I tell him honestly, and then head back to work.

What a pain. What a pain! I don't know or like this guy, so why am I getting roped up in his problems? Ugh, listen to me gripe about potentially saving a woman's life, though. I'm the worst chosen one ever. I guess I could just tell him to screw off, but… no. Even ignoring the practical problems with unleashing a criminal fire mage into the world unchecked, it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

He doesn't deserve his problems any more than I deserve mine. If I can't solve mine, though, I may as well solve his.

"So, uh…" one of my co-workers says, clearing their throat at me. "What was that?"

Hmm? Oh. Uh. Right. I guess they just saw me drag off a guy who pulled a knife on me. …And then I ordered him macaroni.

"He's, uh, my cousin," I lie, pulling out the knife he used to threaten me to show that I have it now. "He thought he was being funny, but I disarmed him and gave him a talking-to. He's got some… issues when it comes to understanding what kind of things are appropriate to do in public. He's harmless, though. Sorry."

They give me the sort of look one gives when they don't quite like the smell of the bullshit I'm giving them but don't really have any grounds to call me out on it. As long as they don't press the matter, though, I'll consider the lie a success.

"Hannah, what the fuck is your life?" the other kitchen worker asks.

Damn.

"I, uh, don't know how to answer that," I say honestly.

"Well, it's just… you pretty much never talk to anyone but Dave. You're just kind of the big mystery of the store."

Dave? Dave Dave Dave. That's the general manager's name, I think? My boss. The context checks out, at least, since he's the only person I talk to at work.

"Um, sorry?" I manage.

"No, no, it's fine," he insists. "It's nice working with you and stuff. You're good at the job."

"...Though you could maybe stand to be a little less good at the job," kitchen worker number one grumbles. "You keep raising the bar for the rest of us."

I hesitate, glancing awkwardly towards the door in the vain hope that a customer will come in and save me from this conversation.

"Is… that a bad thing?" I hedge.

Both the kitchen guys laugh, number two giving number one a friendly smack on the shoulder.

"Shit, no one is gonna believe us about today, are they?" number two chuckles.

"Do you, now?" number one intones, copying the furious tone I used after grabbing the mugger kid's wrist. The kitchen guys laugh again and I feel myself blush, my hands fidgeting unconsciously.

"God, I was about to shit myself!" number two howls. "And she just fucking… grabs him!"

"Goddess," I correct automatically.

"Huh?"

Aw crap on toast!

"N-nothing," I insist. "Sorry, forget I said anything."

I turn away and stoically refuse to say anything else to them for the rest of the shift, which is unfortunately and rather uncharacteristically difficult considering how they keep trying to start conversations with me for some reason. Even worse, when other people start to show up for work to deal with the dinner rush, they start telling the story of me grabbing the mugger's wrist and dragging him off! I can't just ignore those, so I have to give people mumbled dismissives like 'it was my cousin' and 'he wasn't going to hurt me' all dang night. It's awful. By the time closing rolls around, I'm practically itching to go find the kid and drive to the hospital with him just to get away from work.

Thankfully, I find him loitering outside the door so I motion him over, making a slight show of lifting the car keys and pointing them at the target before hitting the unlock button so he spots the blinkers go off and knows which car to follow me towards. I gesture to the passenger's seat when we get there, heading into the driver's side.

"Um, nice car," he says.

"It's my dad's," I grunt.

"Oh," he says. "...Um, is your dad also… uh. What are you, actually?"

I sigh, putting my seatbelt on and opening up the map app on my phone.

"I don't actually know," I tell him. "And no, he isn't. Which hospital is your mom at?"

He tells me, and I plug it into the phone and wait for it to load. Around us, my co-workers' vehicles depart and disperse, leaving us alone in the parking lot. Good.

"Aura Sight," the Goddess speaks, swirling around me and giving me an amused pout. The kid shudders, and then She's gone. I can feel him now, smelling distinctly of Heat and Barrier. Hmm. So he has two elements, huh? Neither are Chaos or Pneuma, though, so that's not too bad.

"W-what was that?" he yelps.

"That was the Goddess," I tell him. "The source of all magic and a being you do not want to annoy at literally all costs."

"You said something while you casted a spell," he realizes.

"Which I am allowed to do and you are not," I snap. "I know what I'm doing. You'd burn your house down before they can even manage to foreclose it. Understand? You will die. Anyway, I checked what kind of magic you have. You use Heat and Barrier. Barrier is interesting. It's about protecting, shielding, warding, stuff like that. Very defensive. Weird combo with Heat, which to my understanding is pretty destructive."

"Is that bad?"

"Might be, but I doubt it," I shrug. "It probably means you have more defensively-oriented fire magic, or more aggressively-oriented barriers or something. Or maybe you just have a bunch of Barrier and Heat spells that don't have anything to do with each other. You'll have to figure out the possibilities yourself. Just be sure to only practice somewhere safe. Okay? Not where anyone can see you, not where you can accidentally start a fire."

"Uh, g-got it, okay," he nods. "You, um, want me to practice? You don't want me to stop using it?"

"Would you listen to me if I told you not to?" I ask, starting the car.

"...Um."

"Yeah, better that you practice, then," I shrug. "Magic is dangerous, but it's still magic. Of course you're gonna use it."

"Uh, heh, yeah. I guess so."

I pull out of the parking lot, and we make the rest of the trip in silence. There aren't a whole lot of cars in the parking lot of the hospital at this time of night, and frankly it's always nice to see a hospital not be busy. I realize that hospitals have perfectly normal busy and not-so-busy hours because people do like, routine checkups and stuff, but it still tends to make me anxious to see a hospital with a full parking lot.

We get out of the car and I follow my freshly magical companion to a weird little side door that he lets himself into. I frown but don't protest, and he leads me over to a counter, behind which a very tired-looking woman sits.

"...Jared," she sighs upon seeing us. "Visiting hours ended fifteen minutes ago."

"I know!" my mugger-buddy says. "I'm sorry, I know, but I just… I haven't been able to get here today, and I just…"

He trails off helplessly, and the nurse-or-maybe-secretary turns to glare suspiciously at me.

"I'm his cousin," I lie, not wanting her to think I'm his girlfriend or something. "I'm just here to chaperone. We'll be in and out without a fuss, I promise."

She lets out a long-suffering sigh that implies this isn't the first time Jared has dropped by after hours to see his mom and she knows it won't be the last. The fact that she seems inclined to let him is quite surprising to me, but I'm starting to suspect he might not have any other family in his life.

I suppose this kind of devotion and care for your nuclear family is what I'm supposed to have.

"Don't wake her if she's sleeping," the probably-nurse warns, and we nod diligently before Jared leads me to the back.

We soon arrive at a small pseudo-bedroom, where a cot on which a gaunt-faced woman with curly blonde hair rests, her eyes closed and her mouth and nose in a respirator. It's hard to tell exactly from how illness has ravaged her face, but I doubt she's more than a few years into her thirties. Which would make her… quite young, when… shoot, what was his name? J-something? I just had it. Well, when he was born. And to be raising him alone all this time?

I've heard about these sorts of things happening in stories, but it's kind of chilling to look at it in person. I just… don't really know how I'm supposed to be reacting to this.

I guess I should just focus on what I'm here to do. I motion for J-mug to stay here as I head out to look around, eventually spotting my quarry: a wall-mounted dispenser for red biohazard bags. Perfect. I grab a bag and open it up, briefly checking the area with my spatial sense to ensure there's no one else around before returning to the room. The boy just sits silently next to his mother, hands wringing nervously in his lap.

I wish I could say I felt any more confident than he seems to. Goddess, please help me not mess this up. Especially since I'm pretty sure the first step is…

"I'll need to make a small incision," I say.

"Wait, why?" J-boy says fearfully. "The, uh, the doctor said it could be really bad if she got hurt."

Well she's unconscious and on a respirator with an immunodeficiency disease so that makes sense. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Yeah, uh, I'm really not so sure this is a good idea," I tell him frankly. "I'm not a doctor, and my spell isn't really designed for healing. I think it should work, probably, but if your mom's in critical condition I don't know if it's a good idea to mess with her."

He hesitates.

"...What are you going to do, exactly?" he asks.

"What I want to try to do is pull the harmful bacteria and viruses directly out of her body. I have a… sorting spell, basically, that's capable of removing specific substances from a solution, and also quite capable of micromanaging the movements of blood. It won't get everything, but it should hopefully remove enough of the infections in her to put her on the path to recovery. And… well, the attempt will give her magic, and there's a chance whatever magic she gets could help her, too. But that's a distant chance which I wouldn't count on."

He hesitates.

"...What do you get out of this?" he asks.

I blink.

"Uh, nothing?" I answer. "I'm doing this pro bono."

"What?" he asks.

"The only thing I get out of this is the satisfaction of having not sat back and done nothing to help a dying person," I clarify. "That matters to me, I think that's enough. But… sometimes the best thing you can do is sit back and not make the situation worse with risky mistakes, you know?"

He looks down at his hands, a small puff of flame appearing above them for a moment before vanishing.

"Every night I've prayed for a miracle," he says quietly. "What are you, if not that?"

I resist the urge to scowl and only halfway succeed.

"I'm not so sure the Goddess grants prayers, kid," I tell him.

"That's okay," he answers. "I wasn't praying to a goddess. Do it."

I grit my teeth. You might not be, but I have to. I'm ready to beg, because there's so much crap that could go wrong here. If I filter out anything other than harmful viruses and bacteria, I might just kill her. And that 'harmful' qualifier is a really scary one, because there are pounds of bacteria and viruses in the body that are explicitly there to make the body actually work, and killing them off could make her even more sick. Not to mention how easily I could kill her if I pull out anything other than microbes.

Goddess, if You're listening, I really, really need your help for this cast.

Her presence suffocates the room, and I realize I'm being foolish. She's always listening, always watching, and Her interest in me is far greater than average, besides. What task do I have for Her, that I would be so interested in Her time?

I take off a glove, ignoring J-whatever gaping at my inhuman hand, and cast a silent Spacial Rend on one finger. I make a small cut into the sleeping woman's arm, and though she flinches slightly in her sleep she does not wake.

Goddess, I want to heal her. I want to pull the diseases from her flesh and sort them into this bag, where diseases belong. But I fear for her. I fear for my skill. Without You, I don't think I'll be enough.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that it's rather silly to assume the Goddess would care. She oversees more people than I can ever imagine. She witnesses more death every day than I will in my pathetic mortal lifetime. The incantations call Her, it's true, but She only offers a slice of extra strength in exchange for breath. Not guidance. She does not hold the reins. What would be the point of giving power to mortals if She is still the one that ultimately wields it?

I gulp in instinctive terror, mortified at the thought that I might have wasted Her time on this. …But no retribution seems forthcoming. Maybe She's open to the idea after all? Was that question a legitimate one, rather than rhetorical?

I feel the world smirk, the Goddess' presence reaching inside the respirator and stealing a single breath from the dying woman. She flows around it, in it, through it, suffusing the air with divinity until it is no longer air in any way but metaphor. Then she gently pushes it into the woman's chest. Motion, my still-active aura sight intuits, the feeling wafting from her like waves on a calm beach. It's beautiful, transcendent, terrifying, and rather succinctly confirms my theory about how soul distribution works. …But I should try to focus.

The Goddess doesn't care about individual sapient life. That… makes sense, unfortunately. If She did, She could pretty easily make everybody immortal, I bet. Death is a form of magic, and I hold no doubt that She has full control over it. So what might She be interested in? If not this woman's life for the woman's sake, maybe She cares about not wasting the effort that went into giving her a soul?

I feel a sense of immense disappointment. I am an idiot, not that She ever expected much better. If She cared about losing souls so shortly after their creation, She would obviously make far fewer Chaos mages. I'll need to think a little harder than that. Yet… I'm not sure what to do! I clearly don't have anything I can offer a Goddess. If She doesn't care about any particular individuals, if people's lives don't matter to Her, what is She doing this for? Why, Goddess? What's the point of any of this?

I blink, and I am sitting on a beach.

The water glistens in front of me, but I don't want to swim. I don't want to build sandcastles, I don't want to play with the other kids, I don't want to read a book, I don't want to sunbathe… I don't want to be here at all, really, but here I am. Sitting alone in the sand with nothing to do. How… boring.

I pick up a handful of sand next to me, letting it fall through my fingers. I do it again. It's not fun—it's not anything, really—but what else can I do? Coarse and uneven, it falls back to the beach, clattering down. Tiny, inconsequential. What care is there to give a grain of sand?

Motion catches my eye. A small, black speck, getting closer inch by inch. It's an ant. With each step its body shifts, reorienting on the rough terrain. Some grains of sand are the size of its foot, others are larger than its head. It plots a course towards a destination I cannot divine, but it is here and it is something and that is more than I could say before. It keeps getting closer, and while I don't want it to touch me… I'm not sure I really want it to leave, either.

I pick up more sand, and pour it directly overtop the ant's head. It is buried now, a molehill-mountain rained down upon it from above. By my will, the ant is trapped.

After a few moments, the still sand shifts, just a few grains at a time. And then, the ant emerges. And it walks towards me again.

That… was neat! I buried it completely! If I got buried in a mountain of boulders the size of my head, I'd surely die. I push my hand underneath the sand this time, then slide it underneath the ant, displacing a veritable tidal wave of stone grains, bowling the ant over and crushing it in rolling rock. And again, moments later, the ant merely carries on its journey.

It would be so easy to reach out and crush this creature, but now I'm rather invested! This little ant has grown on me, I have to admit. I use more force this time, slapping sand at it in a huge torrent. It continues. I dig a hole underneath it, the careful attention I pay to the ant enhancing the beauty of watching the sand part into a pit, shifting and twisting with intricate detail, each grain playing a part in a natural work of art. Again, the ant climbs out with apparent ease. Now I'm interested in working the sand. I craft a large wall, and the ant looks for a way around it. I surround it with walls on all sides, and the ant scales them with ease! I pack wet sand into a far sturdier mound and bury the creature again, yet it still digs itself out! This is enrapturing, and I'm not even entirely sure why. I mean, it's just an ant.

But I guess I have nothing else to do, so why complain?

Again and again, I pile the tasks higher for the ant. Again and again, it overcomes my mighty challenges! I dig deeper holes, taller walls, larger mountains! I bury it, again and again and again, delighting in each escape, until eventually, and entirely unexpectedly, the ant finally fails to emerge.

I unearth it, worried that my fun has come to an end. I find it, trapped and immobile, and it starts moving once more. But now… I realize there is nothing more I can do. I have found its limit. How… disappointing. Still, I follow the ant. I watch it struggle on without my interference, melancholy weighing me down as its excruciatingly slow pace is tolerated simply out of my own boredom.

Eventually, though, the ant leads me to an entire nest of its kind, and I smile.

Closing my eyes, I shudder, a feeling like a cold shower washing over me. This is wrong, isn't it? Ants aren't people, they're not sapient. Ants don't feel love or joy or sorrow or hate. But we do! And You do too, Goddess! Ants cannot suffer; their bodies aren't capable of it. To torment one is callous, but to torment a sentient creature is—or at least should be—a different thing entirely. Do You think of us that way, Goddess? Devoid of meaningful emotion?

The universe sighs, the universe shrugs. Metaphors are such picky things! I open my eyes again, and the beach returns, the anthill returns, but instead of ants I see countless tiny humans, each wearing a different outfit, each scurrying around and talking and eating and working and endless other human things. They live, they love, they suffer. I pick up a stick and press it into one, pinning it to the earth. The human screams, pain and terror evident on its face. I recognize these emotions. I know that I feel these emotions. I can imagine how horrifying it must be. I feel bad about this. I do.

It's not very interesting, after all. Every human around shrieks and panics, seeming to have noticed the stick but not the hand holding it. I sigh, frustrated and mildly annoyed. There's no satisfaction in the act, no engagement. It's more fun to watch them fight or love each other on their own terms.

I squeeze my eyes shut again, trying my best not to panic. Petty entertainment. Is that all this is? All the death and destruction?

My eyes open, and I grin. Of course it is. Entertainment is a valuable, valuable thing. What more of a reason does there need to be? Besides, it's not all bad. I pick a few fruits from a nearby tree, each different from the others, and chop them into miniature cuts. One by one, I start feeding the tiny humans, personally ensuring that each and every one of them gets their favorite fruit, delighting in their excited coos and beaming faces. I love the little humans. Truly, I do. That's why I'm collecting more! When they fight, when they flee, when they fly, when they fuck… I love it all, happy or sad, triumph or despair. People are my greatest treasure.

Which is why, when I pour the next bucket of sand over them, it will only be to watch them dig themselves out. I lick my lips in delighted anticipation, and blink.

I'm in the hospital room, the Goddess hanging lovingly on my shoulders, her cheek against mine. Do I have an idea of what I could offer Her yet? Ah, how She hopes that I do.

I swallow dry, my body shivering in fear, wondering if She'd ever shown that to anyone else before. Then I stop wondering, because I know She has not. I can't ask more questions, though, because it's time to focus. If I want help, I'll need to make it worthwhile. But there's nothing I can offer. So… why might the Goddess help anyway?

The answer seems so obvious now that I've been the one to ask the question. If I knew it would set my favorite ant up to fail even more spectacularly in the future, it could certainly be funny to give her a hand.

The Goddess grins like a curse. I inhale, and she takes the breath.

"Refresh," we say, and disease pours from a woman's wound, each and every last drop of it and not a molecule more. It collects in a horrid, vaguely yellow goop inside the biohazard bag, along with all the excess moisture in her lungs, the plaque on her teeth, the stain of urine in her underwear, and the snot dripping from her nose. She becomes as clean and healthy as a Refresh can make her, and while that's far from perfect, I can only hope it's enough.

Or, I am reminded with a playful flick on my ear, I can pray. The Goddess does answer them from time to time, after all.

"Did… did you do it?" the boy asks as I seal the biohazard bag and put my glove back on.

"Yeah," I say, my voice drained of all emotion. "It worked. I don't think I can do any better than that."

"She looks the same," he says hesitantly.

"I removed the diseases in her, but I didn't give her any energy back," I tell him. "She'll probably need a while to recover from the damage the sicknesses have already dealt. But with them officially fought off, that should hopefully not take too long."

What have I done? Will this be worth it? The Goddess grins with delight, and I can't help myself any longer.

"Damn You," I blaspheme quietly, causing her to howl with laughter. "Why me? Why me, of all people? You could have picked anyone to torment like this."

She purrs, gently caressing my beloved extra limbs, hidden away in 4D space. It's not all torments, I am reminded.

"That's not an answer," I hiss.

I collapse to one knee, the weight of Her on my shoulders nearly crushing me to death. The stick, pressed gently on the ant. A hand around my face, She lifts my chin up towards the heavens. I'm not entitled to an answer, She reminds me. But that's okay. Once again, I will be indulged. Just for being such a good sport about it.

I imagine a game. A puzzle. One where each time I fail, I have to start anew from the very beginning. It's challenging, yet engaging. Over and over, I try to solve it. Over and over, I make a mistake. Yet each time, I learn. Eventually I fail right before the end, but rather than despair, I am filled with joy! Total exuberance! Because I know I've finished the puzzle. I just have to go through the motions, one last time. All that monumental effort, about to pay off. How exciting is that?

I am the needed piece, She tells me, because I am kind. I am thoughtful. I am self-aware and driven and skilled and intelligent. I am, all things considered, a fairly good person. But like I've always known, I am not good enough.

Her presence finally vanishes, and I collapse sobbing on the floor.