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The sunlight was autumn-gold, and the crispness of the air matched the fizzy anticipation in the temple girl’s stomach as she ascended the steps into the temple. Moss was beginning to grow in some of the cracks in the stone again, she noted; she’d have to give the stairs a thorough scrubbing before winter set in and it was too cold to do it properly. She shifted the heavy bag over her shoulder and eyed the corners of the building hopefully, wondering if today the Goddess would be in physical form or—
“Hello again.” The voice of God spoke out of the empty air, making the temple girl jump.
...Well, that was okay too. As long as she was here...though of course the Goddess was everywhere, it was just...nice to think that she found the temple girl worth talking to. It was presumptuous of the temple girl to want to look at her in addition to that.
“Good morning,” the temple girl said, trying not to seem flustered, and set down her bag of apples. Maybe they weren't a traditional sacrifice, but no matter how important this place was to her the idea of killing an animal made her stomach roil. Besides, they were the first of the season and she had no one else to share with. She sank to her knees in front of the altar. “I brought you something.”
“Quite an offering.” A quiet laugh. The temple girl’s face heated up as the air stirred around her and she felt an invisible presence nudge her shoulder gently. Her heart flipped over in her chest, but not out of fear.
“I know it’s not the most proper offering.”
“It’s...nice. You do things your own way.” The temple girl squirmed a little under the frank tone of her voice. “Besides, maybe it’s time to innovate. Maybe that would get people back into this dump.”
“That would be nice…” the temple girl started.
The Goddess sighed. “Yeah. The two of us, starting anew. They’d make a saint out of you.”
The image popped into her head perfectly formed, as if someone else had placed it there: herself, standing straight and confident, crowned with flowers, admired and looked up to instead of brushed aside...she felt herself flush, abashed by her own thoughts. It was too fantastical a thought to entertain seriously for more than a moment. “I don’t care about that,” she said quietly. “Being able to talk with you is enough.”
The silence that followed her words was sharp, watchful, and for a moment she regretted saying it. She knew the Creator could see into her heart, but saying it out loud was something different.
“Well well, temple girl,” the Goddess said. Her voice was airy, but it had an undercurrent of wariness. “Aren’t you becoming familiar?”
The temple girl’s heart sank. She blinked, her vision suddenly misty. “I’m sorry, I—“
The voice continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “How familiar would you like to be?”
The temple girl shivered, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling under her cowl. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“You come here every day. Only you.” The Goddess’ voice was still light, but was rapidly losing the layer of ironic detachment. The air shifted around the temple girl again, and she suddenly became aware of something in front of her. It reminded her eerily of the way it felt when her mother used to sit on the edge of her bed when she was sick, and her weight would cause the straw mattress to sag. It felt as if there was something immensely heavy before her, causing the whole temple to fold inwards toward it.
“I wasn’t always forgotten like this,” the Goddess said quietly. “You know that. Someone had to have built this place. Someone had to have repeated the stories enough that you heard them, even if you were the only one who took them seriously. Half a dozen generations since I had a devotee as dedicated as you, and yet even with my memory faded so much it was still powerful enough to draw you here. Do you understand? Can you imagine how much I was loved then?”
She stopped suddenly, sounding almost lost.
“But even before, the ones who built this place...even when the floor ran daily with the blood of their best sacrifices, none of them really saw me.”
The temple girl felt a cavern open up in her heart.
“I'm so glad you let me see you,” she said. “I think you’re amazing. You deserve to be seen and - and appreciated.” Admired and looked up to instead of brushed aside— “I want - I would give anything to do that for y—”
Even the stone under her knees seemed to shiver. “Please.”
She felt a sensation like someone taking her hand, lacing their fingers together and guiding it out to touch something unseen -
A pillar of ruby flame engulfed her, and the temple vanished.
The heart of God was like nothing she had ever seen. Fractal spikes of gemstone expanded out past the point her eyes could see. Sheets of flame curled around them, reflecting off the glass-clear surfaces, and in the empty spaces between the shards she could see stars, comets, ropes of something that could be either organic or mineral, or neither, or both. Lakes of simmering auroras, nebulae blooming like flowers. A multitude of hands, reaching out.
It was—
She was—
—beautiful.
“Beautiful,” she was saying - gasping, stunned breathless by the sight of her. A shift in the array of colors, and tears sprang to the temple girl’s eyes as she realized that the Creator of the galaxy was blushing.
“You,” said the Goddess in a voice that resonated, bell-like, in the temple girl’s chest, “are pretty cute yourself, you know.”
The temple girl felt the phantom sensation of fingers touching her again. She could see them this time - delicate, wispily translucent hands, hovering very gently over her arms and the ends of her hair. Her cowl was gone, she realized, along with the rest of her clothes. Somehow it wasn’t frightening or embarrassing, even with the towering beauty of the divine in front of her.
The Goddess stroked her hair again, soft, with a question in her touch. The temple girl reached out in turn, felt the impression of a smile against her mouth, and the two of them fell together like waves crashing.
The Creator pressed into her, thundering down her bones. She had made her, and now she set herself to taking her apart, lavishing every piece of her with heart-stoppingly devoted attention. The temple girl was familiar with the feeling of her heart pounding after a brief scare or when carrying the heavy buckets of mop water up the temple steps, but now she became aware of not only her heart but of every vein in her body. She could feel every branching capillary light up at the Creator's touch as if they had been filled with fire. Hands stroked her from the inside, fingers walking up her spine, soothing across the inside of her skull, gentle.
For one perfect, gleaming moment, the temple girl felt what it was like to be one with the divine.
And then it was over, and she was back in her physical body, shaking on the floor of the temple.
The sense of loss hit her like a physical pain, and her fingers twitched, seeking something to hold onto. She felt desperately small and desperately alone in her head. Her vision spun and she staggered to her feet, not even sure where she was going - and was caught by slim hands that didn't so much as stumble when the temple girl's full weight fell into them. She blinked, dazed, through her tears, and saw that it was the same form the Goddess had taken on when they first spoke, before the temple girl had realized who she was.
"Sorry if that was too much. Are you going to die?" she asked, voice light and playful, face deadly serious.
The temple girl shook like she had a fever. "I—you—”
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have.” The Goddess turned her face away, and the sense of loss screamed in her chest again. She realized she was clutching at the Goddess' cloak, bunching up the smooth fabric in her calloused fingers. She wanted her to look at her again, see her, only her—
"No, please, don't—please don't go." She didn’t know what to do or if what she was doing was right, but it seemed vitally important that she showed her true self as thoroughly as the Goddess had bared hers. Her hands seemed rough and indelicate on either side of the Goddess' face, and when the Goddess looked at her in surprise she could see fire and gemstones in her black eyes for just a second before she pressed their mouths together.
There was no fountain of sparks, no explosion of flowers. The Goddess' mouth was flat and cold under hers, and the noise she made in the back of her throat was gravelly, rough, all-too-human.
It was far more terrifying than seeing her heart.
Their lips broke apart and the temple girl gasped against her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see the shock in the Goddess' eyes. "Forgive me," she said. Her heart had climbed so far up her throat she felt she might choke on it.
The Goddess kissed her again. “No,” she said, voice slurring wetly as she spoke into the temple girl's mouth, “I won’t forgive you if you stop.”
The temple girl whimpered, tears spilling from her closed eyes. They kissed again, and then again - soft and curious, reverent. She still craved that moment of perfect oneness, but this was more than good enough. It was her turn to offer herself up, to show the Goddess how humans sought imperfect unity with the ones they loved.
Their hands found each other again in a beam of brassy sunlight, seeking connection, and soon enough the rest of their bodies followed suit.