Archive of Our Own

Rose had told you that the Goddess of Light would lead you to the domain of the gods, so you followed the beam of light She sent to the top of a mammoth mountain. The mountaintop is cold and severe, far removed from the subtropical climate of your modest seaside village. It’s a miserable place that you decide you hate long before you reach its summit. You’re a fisherman, not a mountain climber. Your hands and feet are freezing, and you can’t stop the shivers from clenching the muscles along your back. When you breathe, your lungs hurt. 

Your name is John Egbert, and if you don’t stop the God of Breath from snoring in his sleep, the storms he creates will surely destroy your village.

Blinking against the howling wind, you look up to the sky. The beam that guides you holds back the worst of the storm, and it finally comes to a stop at the highest point on the mountain. You clamber up to it and look into the light. “Okay, uh, Miss Goddess!” you say. “I’m here. What do I do now?”

A sudden gust of wind picks up around you, whipping up a swirling vortex of snow, and you are blinded by bright, white light. You shield your eyes, and when you lower them, you find yourself somewhere totally new. A warm breeze caresses your face, and a field of green grass, perfectly picturesque, surrounds you in all directions. Lazy clouds broadcast images of lands you’ve never seen. Hot damn, you think, it’s like you’ve landed in Eden or something. You watch the clouds with growing interest, staring at the sky.

“John, what are you doing?”

You jump, startled, as a woman materializes in front of you, appearing out of the rays of light that slice past the clouds. Her dark hair flows in the breeze, and...she’s grey? And she has horns, too.

"Do I know you?" you ask.

“I’ve been guiding you this whole time!” she says, rolling her eyes. One of her eyes has one, two, three...eight pupils? You don’t realize you’re gaping until she releases an irritated huff and snaps her fingers in front of your face. “John, pay attention!”

“Oh, sorry,” you say, laughing sheepishly. “You must be the Goddess of Light! Nice to meet you...your Radiance?”

“Vriska is fine.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Vriska!”

“Nice to meet you, too, John,” she says with a small smile. “You know why you’re here, right?”

“Because the God of Breath is snoring?”

“Yes!” she says with a dramatic groan, crossing her arms. “Every time he goes to sleep, he starts to snore, and I can’t stand it anymore! All you have to do is turn him over, and he’ll stop. He always snores when he sleeps on his back.”

You frown. “Um, Vriska? If it bothers you so much, why don’t you just go turn him over yourself?”

“Didn’t my priestess tell you?”

“You mean Rose?”

“Yeah, her. We just broke up.”

“You and Rose?” you say, taken aback. You hadn’t known they were dating! You would’ve expected Rose to tell you if her girlfriend was a goddess.

“No, John. Me and Tavros,” Vriska says. Oh.

“Who’s Tavros?”

“The God of Breath! See, when we were dating, I would turn him over myself, but now it’s kind of weird for me to do. Do you see the problem?”

“I guess,” you respond, raising an eyebrow. “But his snoring is actually causing really big problems for my village! Couldn’t you have just...dealt with it?”

“Yeah, I know about the storms,” she says with a shrug. “We’re gods, okay? It’s our job to go around wreaking havoc for you mortals. It makes you stronger and more durable.”

“If you say so...”

“Trust me on this one, John.” She winks and turns around. “Tavros is in another part of the astral sphere. I’ll take you to him.” With a wave of her hand, one of the clouds in the sky floats towards the two of you. Its image flashes from a giant metropolis to a breezy chamber lined with pillars and strewn with plush dolls and a variety of sleeping alien creatures. You feel your face fall in disgust as you look at the strange animals. What even are those things? The cloud stops in front of you, close enough to touch, and you peer closer. There’s somebody sleeping on a bed, a man with horns bigger than Vriska’s. Before you have time to ask questions, you feel Vriska’s hand on your back and you’re tripping into the cloud. When you fall, you fall into the chamber on a fluffy pillow of plush animals.

“Have fun!” Vriska says, and then she’s gone.

The room is silent except for the sound of Tavros snoring. It seems perfectly harmless from here, nothing more than a guy making a lot of noise while he sleeps, but you know that in the mortal realm, your friends are probably all taking refuge in the Temple of Light while a brutal typhoon slams against its walls. You struggle out of the plush pile and sneak over to the sleeping god. He looks formidable, with his gigantic bull horns and his sharp teeth. You spare a moment to wonder why the God of Breath is bull-themed, but you don’t waste much time. You have to get this guy on his side or stomach or something, or else wake him up. Since his horns seem like too much of a hassle to turn, you decide waking him up is your best bet. You look around the room, and your eyes fall on a small fountain, trickling water into a basin for the animals sleeping on the floor. A slow smile creeps across your face.

You walk over to the fountain and cup your hands together. Normally, you would prefer to do this with water balloons, but you didn’t think to bring any balloons with you on your journey. Next time, you’ll make sure to remember to pack for the occasion. When your hands are full of water, you tiptoe to the sleeping god and dump the water onto his face. His eyes shoot open, and he sits up, sputtering and gasping. You duck behind the bed out of force of habit, suppressing a laugh.

“What...?” he says, wiping the water from his face. “Is somebody here?”

All the animals in the room are suddenly awake, and a thing that looks too much like a massive spider starts to scurry towards you, its several legs clicking on the floor. With a yelp, you scramble away, standing up. A chorus of growls greets you. You put your hands up as a sign of peace, backing up to one of the pillars lining the room.

“Who are you?” Tavros asks, looking you over with narrow eyes. “You’re...a mortal?”

“Yeah, hello, my name’s John,” you say. A beastly creature with huge fangs circles you, and you press your back against the pillar behind you. “Could you call your animals off, please? I’m sorry about dropping water on your face while you sleep. That maybe wasn’t as good of an idea as I thought it was.”

“No, I think they’re probably fine how they are,” Tavros says, and you notice a faltering lilt in his speech. The way he holds himself while he’s awake takes the edge off his more threatening physical traits. You can’t help but think he seems a little lame for a god. “Why are you here? Are you trying to steal something? Because if you are, I’m probably not the right god to steal from, since I tend not to amass treasure the way Vriska and Eridan do, and you’re a stupid human for not doing any proper research on your mythology.”

“No, I’m not here to steal from you,” you say. “I’m here to wake you up!”

“Wow, that’s a pathetic excuse to sneak into somebody’s bedroom while they sleep, and I’m gonna call bullshit on it.” He’s watching you closely, and you can tell he’s trying to gauge your sincerity even as he discredits it. You keep your hands up as you push away from the pillar.

“I don’t know if you know this, Tavros—can I call you Tavros?”

“No.”

“Okay, but I’ll probably do it anyways. When you snore, you kill hundreds if not thousands of people in the mortal realm.”

His eyes widen with shock. “What? Why would my snoring kill people?” he says. He looks between your eyes, and you can see him growing skeptical. “That sounds like either really awful logic that equates two things together with a cause and effect relationship that doesn’t actually exist, or else a lie, which I’m thinking is probably the case.”

“No, dude, I’m being completely truthful and serious,” you say, and you take a step towards him. The animals are no longer growling at you, which is a huge plus. You’re making headway. “My village sent me. I have a good friend who’s a seer of the Goddess of Light, and—“

“Oh, so that’s why you’re here,” he interrupts with a groan. The animals all lose their aggression and back away, allowing you to relax. As you put your hands down, he turns his back to you and lies down. “You should go back to your human realm, human, and not listen to what she has to say to you, because she’ll only trick you into doing things for her benefit that don’t actually need to be done as much as she makes it sound like they need to be done.”

“No, that’s not it,” you say. You circle around the bed so that he can see you. He glares up at you as you continue, “Your snoring really does cause a lot of problems! Huge storms have been hitting my village for the past several weeks. Nobody can do their work. I haven’t been able to catch nearly enough fish to feed everyone, and we don’t have enough time to repair the damage of one storm before another one blows in. Seriously, you’re going to kill all of us!”

You see doubt flash across his face, and his glare softens. He props himself up on his arm. “If all that is true—which I don’t know about that still—I don’t really know what you want me to do about it. If my snoring is really causing the storms, I can’t stop them, because at the time of it happening, I am not conscious to make the changes that are needed to prevent my snoring from occurring.”

“You could try not sleeping on your back,” you suggest with a hint of sarcasm.

“Um, I don’t know if you noticed, but my horns are not conducive for good sleeping in positions other than on my back,” he retorts, meeting your sass.

“What did you do when you were dating Vriska?”

His face turns bronze in what you can only guess is a flush, and he says, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, and you should remember that you’re only a mortal among gods, so watch what you ask me.”

“Whatever,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Listen, Tavros, a good god should be able to control his powers. If I had awesome powers like yours, I would have everything under control enough to not kill hordes of mortals every time I go to sleep.”

“I doubt that from being the case,” he says with a soft bite. “It’s harder than you think, to have amazing powers like mine, and if you had to deal with it, you would understand how hard it is.”

“I bet you anything that I could do better than you do if I were the God of Breath,” you say. After the short time you’ve spent talking with him, you don’t even think you’re talking shit so much as being honest.

“No, no, I don’t think you understand what sort of responsibility that entails, because you are an awful human who probably has never had any remarkable skills that were a hassle to control.”

“Hey, I have plenty of skills!”

“You mean, like sneaking into people’s bedrooms while they sleep?”

“If I had your powers for even one day, the world would already be better off.”

“No, you’d just destroy everything like an imbecile, which—”

“You mean, like you?”

Glaring, Tavros swings his legs off the bed and stands up. You take a step back, but to your surprise and secret delight, he’s slightly shorter than you. His glare deepens into a full scowl. You stand looking at each other, sizing each other up, and the annoyance in his expression tells you that you’re winning.

“If you want to try being a god, one with powers that can produce horrible storms and destruction just because you breathe the wrong way, then for one day, you can have my powers. Then you’ll see that I’m doing the best I can, and that it’s really hard to be a god, and I’ll laugh a lot at your expense. Your failure will be sweet to me, like candy or the kiss of a lover.”

“Don’t get weird about—wait, what? You’ll give me your powers?”

“Oh, you can believe that it’s going to get weird,” he says. He gestures for you to come closer. You hesitate. “Are you scared now?” he taunts.

“What? No,” you say, and you step to him. Without warning, he grabs your hair and pulls you into a rough kiss. At first, you react with alarm, but then you notice a flow of power moving from his mouth into yours, a strong, surging force moving on the current of his breath. The feeling is overwhelming, almost intoxicating, and you grab onto his shirt as a gale of wind forces itself from your body. Your mortal form feels as though it’s being ripped to pieces and replaced with an ephemeral mist, a light substance that just barely keeps you grounded in your body. The sensation fades as the wind dies down, and you are embarrassed to find that you are kissing Tavros back with a passion you didn’t know you were capable of. You break the kiss and take a step back.

“Whoa,” you say, looking down at your hands. By a command your brain didn’t know it could give, your fingers become mist and float away into the air. They come back, solid again. Your face breaks into a grin. “This is amazing!”

“It’s only for a day, remember,” Tavros says, and you see a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. He didn’t expect you to get the hang of it so fast.

“If you say so,” you respond with a laugh. Throwing him a cheeky wink, you let go of your physical form and allow yourself to float away on the wind.

You gust down from the realm of the gods, riding on a current of air and allowing your new instincts to guide you. You become the breeze you despised so much on the mountaintop, and the cold can no longer touch you. Never have you been so free. You glide down the mountain and through the valleys, doing all sort of neat windy tricks that probably wouldn’t be considered natural by normal standards. You wonder for a moment if you’re being irresponsible. Should gods try to stick to natural law when they impose their sweet as hell powers on the world? Probably not, you decide. Without a body, you express your joy by knocking some unsuspecting lady’s fancy hat off.

By the time you finally stop fucking around and return your village, you’re coming down from your high. Everyone is outside, repairing the beaten and broken wood of their huts. You swoop down next to Dave, becoming a physical entity again with little effort. “Hey, Dave!” you call. He drops a board onto his head in surprise.

“What the hell, John,” he says, rubbing his head. “Where did you come from? I thought you were still hanging out with the gods in the extraterrestrial plane of divinity or whatever they call their godly crib.”

“I was!” you respond with excitement. “I woke Tavros up and got some sweet windy powers. Do you want to see them?”

“What do you mean, windy powers? And who’s Tavros? What the fuck, man, you can’t have possibly gone to the netherworld, told the god of sleeping too soundly to stick an anti-snoring mouthpiece in his face when he hits the hay, and come back in the span of, what, a week?”

“No, dude, it’s way cooler than that. Watch!” You lift yourself off the ground. “I can fly!”

You see Dave’s jaw twitch, betraying his shock as much as if he had actually let his jaw drop. Admittedly, you would have liked a little more of a reaction, but it’s enough, coming from Dave. You grin. “John, what the hell did you eat?” Dave says.

“I tricked Tavros into giving me his powers for a day!”

“Who’s Tavros again? I think I already asked that, but just to be sure.”

“The God of Breath.”

“You tricked the God of Breath into giving you his powers?”

“Yup!”

“Holy fuck, dude, you are a smooth criminal. That is the best possible way to prevent a god from screwing with our pathetic mortal existences. Anyone else would have thrown themselves face down at his feet, throwing out offerings left and right, kissing his shining robes, and begging for mercy, but you just elbowed your way to the front of the line and punched him right in the goddamn face, didn’t you?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t punch him,” you say, floating to the ground. “I just made fun of him until he let me have them.”

“So you wore down his general sense of self worth until he threw his job at you?”

“I guess...that’s one way to say it?”

“Well, whatever, who cares? You’ve got sweet windy powers. What are you gonna do with them?”

You think about it for a second. The possibilities seemed endless when you were gusting across the land, but in the context of daily life, you can’t think of anything in particular that would benefit from a little wind. “Well,” you say, “maybe I could take Jade out on the sailboat to catch some fish.”

Dave groans. “Is fish all you think about?” he asks. “You’re basically the new God of Breath, and all you can come up with is catching some slippery wet assholes for the same tasteless seafood dinner we have every night of our lives from birth until death? Come on, Egbert.”

“What would you do with them?” you counter. He falls silent, and you watch him while thinks.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” he says. “I’d probably fix my house and fuck with some of the loud ass birds that shit all over the beach.”

“Then let’s do that!” you say, grinning. The suggestion doesn’t seem like much at first, but soon you’re helping everyone carry wood on tiny whirlwinds and floating from house to house, patching up hard to reach places. The work goes quickly, and everyone’s spirits rise. By sunset, not just you and Dave are running around the beach, harassing birds and kicking up sand, but the whole village joins in. You all arrange a cookout, bringing a modest amount of food from your pantries. Jane and Roxy bring kites. Dirk breaks out his surfboard. It’s the first relaxing afternoon you’ve all had in several weeks, and when you return to your hut to sleep, you couldn’t be happier.

When you wake up at sunrise, the weather is perfect. You’re excited and almost smug that you’ve managed to sleep an entire night without forcing disaster relief workers into overtime. You turn to breeze and slip through the window, and above the waves of the ocean, you watch the sky shift from gold to blue.

“Hey, asshole,” you hear. You look over your shoulder. Tavros is standing on the beach, probably getting sand in his stupid socks. Why would anyone wear socks with sandals on the beach?

Shifting in midair, you respond, “Hey, jerkface. How did you get down here without your powers?”

“Obviously I wouldn’t give you all of my powers, because that would be foolish, and besides, I’m still always a god no matter what you do,” he says. He crosses his arms. “We made your world, and giving you some special abilities wouldn’t change the fact that I am one of your creators for any reason.”

You roll your eyes. “Okay, Mr. Creator, I get it. So...did you come to enjoy the sunrise? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Tavros glances at the horizon. “Yeah, it is nice, but no, that’s not why I came. I think you know why I’m here, and I want you to be cooperative, so that I don’t end up looking like a huge idiot.”

“Cooperative?” you ask. An interesting choice of word, you think. Your lips curl into a sly smile.

“Yes, cooperative,” he says. He’s eyeing your smile, and you can tell he doesn’t like it. “Our deal was that you would have my powers for a day, and that after that specified duration of time, they would stop working, and you would spend the rest of your life then contemplating the complexity of my domain, perhaps to inspire you into making a large temple in my honor for the purpose of my worship.”

“Was that the deal?” you ask, suppressing a laugh. “I don’t remember that last bit. When did you say all that?”

“I didn’t, because it was implied in the transaction, as a probable and appropriate reaction to the mindfuck of living as a god with my level of power and responsibility...”

“Well, Tavros, I must say that my mind has been completely fucked!” You try to keep the smirk on your face from growing, but your face never really listens to what you want it to do.

“It...has?”

“Oh yeah! I’ve learned a lot! I was up all night worrying about my breathing and all sorts of other important god stuff.”

“Really?”

“No.” You laugh as his face falls.

“Okay, okay,” he says, “I guess you had a good joke at my expense, which is not something that is uncommon to do, I guess. But now it’s time to stop playing around. Come here. Please.”

You look down at him. You suppose you should feel bad, because now you really are teasing him and you realize you’re being a bit mean, but you just really can’t. “You come here. Can you?”

He scowls. You expect his feet to lift off the ground without effort the way yours do, but instead, a pair of shimmering butterfly wings unfold behind him. The smirk slips off your face and your mouth falls open. He flutters to you. “Of course I can,” he says with a smug air of triumph.

“You’re a bull fly!” you say before you can stop yourself. His face turns bronze.

“Okay, no, I’ve had enough playing around. Come here and kiss me.”

The command only startles you because it was so forward. You think about it for a moment, and then the smirk returns to your lips. “Okay,” you say. He looks taken aback.

“Really?”

You disappear into the wind and reappear in front of him. He blinks. Before he can react, you plant a small kiss on his lips, just enough to return a bit of the wind to him. “There, you’re a god again,” you say, flying away. “And so am I!”

“What? No!”

“And if you can catch me, maybe you’ll get the rest of it back!”

You laugh, fading into the breeze. Now you don’t have the responsibility of divinity, but you can keep a little freedom for yourself. You doubt he’ll ever really catch you anyways.