Chapter Text
Eternity was a difficult concept to understand, especially for one left unaffected by Time’s flow. During the Goddess Sothis’s reign, the passage of mortal lifespans was more so a celebrated affair of joy and life, rather than something measured by circumstance.
Yet since awakening, Sothis had found that Humanity had changed in more fascinating ways that she could ever have imagined possible. The world had grown abundant and rich beyond its once simplistic bounds into one she no longer recognized. Mortal innovation had advanced and flourished across the continent she once knew, becoming nearly something wholly unrecognizable.
The lifespans of humans no longer passed in fluid indulgence through each century like seasons. There were discoveries to be made, titles to be earned, grand stories yet to be told. The world as it was now was one unfamiliar to the goddess, yet all the same, one Sothis desperately sought to experience and understand.
All through the eyes of one Ms. Byleth Eisner.
From the moment she awoke, Sothis knew she loved the strange young woman to whom Fate had intertwined her with. The feeling had come as instinctually as it would for a mother to hold her own for the first time. They were not merely connected by chance. Byleth was her soul, her other half meant to exist alongside her newly conscious incorporeal form.
Byleth was the only constant she could rely upon finding each time Sothis felt the unearthly call of her accursed slumber pull her back beneath the never-ending waves of darkness. The Progenitor God existed within each and every one of Byleth’s experiences, just as Byleth’s dreams allowed her to witness and know all that Sothis once had. The shared silence of their existence was as acutely attuned to one another’s as the sides of time to Fate.
When blood would soak the skin of Byleth’s palms, both sets of eyes, one unseen and ethereal, would sharpen like uncut gemstones from the depths of the furthest seas. When passing an expanse that exposed the coming dawn of the horizon line, both women would melt inwardly, embraced by the warmth of the coming sun.
Compassion, joy, desolation, hunger, pain, Byleth’s existence allowed Sothis to experience every facet of morality that she had once sought desperately to understand and protect. But no longer could she guide from the perch of godhood that had once left her unbound to the fear of death. Byleth bled just as any other human could. And much like her father, she was equally as capable of shedding the blood of others.
Sothis knew well that the reality of their shared destiny was far from “blessed”…Byleth had been given no say in the agreement, nor agency over its consequences. What Sothis may have been able to grant in terms of power came heavily costed in regardless to Byleth’s humanity. All those intimate emotions she was able to experience through Byleth were nothing more than the diluted fractions felt in comparison to others. One’s with living heartbeats. The world shared between Sothis and Byleth was…blurry somewhat. As if detached from the present, yet never far enough so to leave fully.
For 20 years, the immeasurable burden of their split souls kept Byleth’s heart unmoving and heavy. As an extension of that disconnect, Sothis could understand Byleth’s loneliness better than anyone.
They wanted something that they both could not name. Longed to feel something more than the slow trickle of blood on their hands and fleeting admiration for their father. Something, anything to free them of the solemn unchanging rhythm of the Ashen Demon’s life.
Then with one single chance encounter everything changed.
It was as if the hands of time had snapped back into focus and begun to move again after an eternity of silence. Ticking forward once more with resounding clarity.
Sothis felt emboldened, strong enough speak to Byleth beyond the confines of their hazily lit dreams. And what more, Byeth could hear her! Could understand, acknowledge, and even respond to her.
It had seemed like a blessing unlike any other, the first miracle of her newfound life that had been gifted by Fate directly into to open palm of her hands.
Please Note: This preemptive bout of excitement was almost immediately cursed, lamented, and redacted upon less than 24 hours later by Sothis, who came to learn 1 critically unanticipated facts about her supposed partner in destiny.
Regardless of any amount of god given power, mortal foolishness knew no bounds, and Ms. Byleth Eisner was one of the greatest fools around.
You put a handful of charges before an objectively pretty mercenary woman and you would think that the greater cognitive function of their minds completely launched itself outward into the heavens! Honestly! In all her centuries of living, Sothis had never seen so many young people fall so brazenly for someone they knew next to nothing about.
Not to say that Byleth made it easy for anyone. There was an undeniable charm to her vessel's ridiculous behavior that just seemed to endear the great many of her students to her. Her impulsive “protect first think later” nature had nearly gotten both her and Sothis killed several times now even beyond the night she had recklessly used her own body to shield Edelgard from the bandits perusing them near Remire village. Without her Divine Pulse intervention Byleth Eisner would likely be six feet under ten times over.
Never mind the fact that Sothis would be hard pressed to find someone at the monastery that DIDN’T allow their gaze to desperately trail after Byleth’s passing form with the intensity of an attention starved pup in need of praise. What with the constant gift giving, invitations to tea, and boundless devotion towards memorizing every single student’s personal interests, Byleth had developed something of a reputation at Garreg Mach. Being that almost everyone in attendance of the monastery agreed she was to be protected at all cost.
A frankly hilarious notion given that Byleth had access to powers far beyond all of mortal conception, but nevertheless. It was far more amusing to watch the oblivious fool she all but lived vicariously though experience the joys of friendship and courtship all while being none the wiser to the effect she had on everyone around her. Especially with that Hresvelg girl…the poor girl was as subtle as a meteor hitting a glass house.
However, Sothis would admit that maybe, perhaps, she had allowed her amusement to go a bit too far given the current insanity she was now living though. She had never intended for such a simple tease to spiral this far out of control, but honestly when you are an eternity’s old deity left to entertain yourself for too long, no one could really blame her for wanting to pull a prank or two every few millennium.
All Sothis had wanted was to perform a bit, simply spin a fun and silly tale before a willing ear just as she used to for her children. She had been watching Byleth read page after page after page after page of scribble scrabble from Seteth for hours. Something about it being ‘mandatory for all newly instated faculty’ yada yada yada. The content couldn’t have been drier and by the second hour in Sothis had come close to slamming her head against the open air hard enough to inspire a multidimensional concussion though boredom alone.
She'd eventually lost her patience and pleaded for Byleth to listen for a spell and humor her. Of course her dear vessel had obliged, as always willing to indulge others, even Sothis’s intentional distracting antics.
Upon receiving full attention, the Goddess had practically flooded Byleth with stories of her past both grand and fond. How she had once wandered barren forests of lush emeralds, and the desolate peaks of lands buried beneath the salted earth. How she had once threaded life into children of the soil and skies. It had been so long since she spoke of the past and the storyteller within her had reveled at successfully enrapturing her audience. She enjoyed it so much in fact, that without even realizing it, Sothis began accidentally falling further and further into the retellings of her favorite myths and legends that she had used to tell her children just before they would turn in for their night’s long rest.
She spoke for hours about everything and nothing, simply filling the shared space between Byleth and her with fantastical nonsense and laughter. By the end of the evening wick, every candle in Byleth’s room had melted down to the ends of their holders, and the early morning sound of birds chirping outside began to filter through their personal quarters open window. .
Byleth had been enraptured by her tales, inspired even you could say…Looking back upon it now, Sothis realized she may have been a bit presumptuous in assuming that Byleth would have been able to tell when she was being overdramatic for narrative flavor rather than completely truthful.
As it turned out, because of course it would, Byleth had not only taken her fictitious stories as retellings of real myths, but also challenges that she could easily top.
Now, as she floated before the soft colored sky of early dawn, Sothis wondered if her pride was to blame for allowing all this foolishness to get this far or if perhaps Fate simply enjoyed pranking her back for ever assuming she had “lived to see everything”.
In all honesty, Sothis could have stopped Byleth at any point in the last hour and told her to stop. But why would she when sitting back and watching was so so so much funnier?
After all, what better way was there to start ones morning than by watching Byleth tie herself to the ceiling rafters of her own lecture hall.
Slim to none.
Around them, Sothis could hear the telltale signs of Garreg Mach’s residents beginning to stir and rise. Dawn would chase away the flickering remnants of night at any moment now, but the natural beauty of it all would hardly compare to the real spectacle that was set to begin within the Black Eagles classroom.
A learning experience she reasoned to herself. That’s why she was letting Byleth do this. Yes, this would be a crucial learning experience for them both, one absolutely too good to be true.