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Chapter Text

Every year, twelve young initiates were selected from all the applicants at the temple: six male, six female, with no preference given based on their favorite gods and goddesses of the pantheon. Yeni had been chosen when she was five, a common age, and raised to understand the worship and rites of all the gods. She could sing to the goddess of music in all eighteen of her ceremonial songs and twelve of the common prayers, she could purify and pour out water ablutions to the goddess of the river, she knew all of the walking prayers and rituals of the god of travelers and the wayward paths and durations of travel required for offerings to the god of wanderers, and she knew every ceremony, rite, prayer, and favored story of the god of the sun.

Each morning, Yeni took to the ancient track around the temple and ran, the sun warming the bare skin of her shoulders, then sat beneath the sun clock to take her rest at the end.

Yeni loved the sun.

The sun clock stood on the eastern face of the temple. Its marvelous faces of intricately carved polished stones and gears marked seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, and years. Its mechanism was powered by the sun. It bathed in the sun's light like Yeni did, drinking it in each morning and turning through the passages of time, marking each holiday on one of its many faces, telling Yeni when to go inside again for the morning repast.

She sat waiting until the very last minute she could get away with most days and resented when rainy weather or thunder drove her inside early. Even on the days when the sun did not warm her shoulders, there was the clock, a manifestation of the power of the sun.

A priestess initiate could not choose which god or goddess she would be devoted to. Yeni knew that, as did her yearmates. But she could worship and hope the god of her choice would choose her in return and hold her sacred to his service.

"Just wear a watch," Bati would say, Yeni's yearmate and friend. Bati complained about the sunny days which kept her from a perfect worship of the rain and river goddesses. She complained about getting wet. Yet she always ran beside Yeni anyway.

Yeni shrugged, never admitting a simple watch would never do.

The senior priestess over the initiates of Yeni's year complained almost as much as Bati, only her complaints were about crusty old priests who didn't believe in allowing the temple to use modern technology like cell phones and coffee makers, leaving the senior priestess to handle more paper correspondence and old fashioned stovetop cooking than she would like.

"It's not even a modern stove," she groused as she brought in breakfast off the top of their old fire belly stove that supposedly gave honor to the god of fire.

Depriving a god of worship would be terrible, but sometimes the principle grew mighty inconvenient.

The citizens were under no such strictures and the nearby city was rife with modern conveniences and technology: tablets, computers, smartphones, and extremely capable coffee makers.

"Some day, I'll get one for the temple. You'll see," said their senior, making them laugh over their breakfast.

Yeni kept a phone in secret. She used the timer apps while she ran, the weather app to select appropriate tunics for the heat or rain, and she recorded and studied her pantheon dutifully with its aid. It was likely the senior priestess knew perfectly well which of the initiates had contraband and turned a kindly blind eye, as none of them had been sanctified yet.

Their training lasted from young childhood to early adulthood, and should a god accept them, it was Yeni's year who would pass from initiation to actual priesthood at the rites of dedication this year. After they were dedicated, they would be considered more accountable to render their sacrifices perfectly.

In the meantime, Yeni went out to run, tapped shoulders in a friendly manner with Bati, and turned on the stopwatch. She made her circuit at an easy pace, to allow Bati to keep up, then they settled down under the clock.

Yeni frowned when she saw her screen had frozen mid-timing her. She tapped it a few times then tried to restart the device, but it stubbornly stayed frozen.

Bati poked her head over Yeni's shoulder. "Do you think it's judgment?"

Yeni choked on a laugh. "No!" She tried a few more times.

A voice came quietly from behind her. "I can fix that for you."

Yeni whirled around to see a young man with dark hair and eyes sitting on the top step under the clock. He was small, thin, but graceful, and not dressed like an initiate at all in his dark pants and button up shirt.

"Are you allowed to be here?"

He looked puzzled and tilted his head slightly.

Bati poked Yeni's shoulder, but Yeni kept her eyes on the stranger.

"I can fix it if you like," he repeated, not answering her question at all.

Yeni frowned then held it out. It was worth a shot.

He took it from her and suddenly he seemed almost a blur, hands moving in a bit of a rushed glow. He handed the device back.

"Thank you," Yeni said, already leaning over to verify it was working correctly. "How did you—?" She stopped midsentence when she looked up and didn't see him.

Bati poked her shoulder again. "What was that? Who did you see?"

Yeni stared wide-eyed at the empty space in front of the clock. No one could see a god who was not sacred to him, but that hadn't seemed at all like the sun god, nor any god or goddess she'd been taught of. "I don't know."

The temple was in a bit of a quiet uproar behind closed doors. Oracles were consulted. Bride priestesses and groom priests were asked to inquire of their spouses where oracles were not sufficiently forthcoming. It was the oracle of the sun god in the end that said simply, "She is chosen of the god of modern technology."

The high priest who'd spent the last ten years forbidding modern technology reportedly ended the night on the receiving end of a rather heated discussion with certain unidentified parties. Yeni ended the night in conference with an apologetic senior priestess who told her they did not know the appropriate rites for a newly recognized god, and she'd have to ask him how to complete her rites of dedication.

The initiates found out in the morning.

"A new god?!" Bati's eyes were wide enough to match the sun and moon.

Yeni groaned and tried stuffing her mouth with lettuce so she didn't have to answer.

"Newly recognized," a voice said right behind her.

Yeni froze, startled.

"I'm not a baby." The god sat down beside her and put his chin on his hand, glaring at Bati in a way that reminded Yeni of a grumpy cat.

She set down her fork and dipped her head in a light bow. "Do you know how I should dedicate myself?" she decided to ask, since he'd duly appeared.

Bati gaped at the cushion he was sitting on.

He blinked at her for a long moment, looking utterly caught out. "No?"

Yeni stared back long enough to make her feel how awkward it ought to be getting, but he didn't change his expression at all. She picked up her fork again. "Very new," she said to Bati.

Every day, the other initiates were meeting their gods and goddesses for the first time and learning the appropriate rites, and Yeni was asking a god how to worship him that didn't have a single clue.

But "Not like that. Don't treat me like you do the sun."

"Maybe if you did something worthy of worship, I'd know how to treat you," she snapped at last.

He sighed, clearly exasperated but not impatient. "What do you want me to do? Aren't you supposed to tell me what's needed?"

Yeni really hadn't thought through her complaint before she'd made it. She was annoyed at this god she'd never chosen who didn't even know what he wanted from her. So she thought about it. "Why modern technology?" she asked curiously.

"Because the god of art and language isn't giving up his claim to text and books and all the technologies that were around before I was," he rattled off easily. "And the goddess of spiders and weaving is keeping the loom, and forges and farming implements and a million other things really have more to do with other gods."

"I see."

She thought about Bati's running list of complaints. "The river goddess won't help purify the lake water, as it's in the lake. Could you do something about that?"

He looked thoughtful.

"Also," Yeni added, "we could use a temple coffeemaker in the third kitchen."

He blinked, then broke into a sunny smile and laughed softly under his breath, eyes crinkling at the corners.

Yeni stared at him for a long time, not certain why she wanted to see that again.

"Was this what you had in mind?" A warm voice in her ear. Close. Too close. It was a terrible habit of his.

The purification plant at the edge of the lake was absolutely magnificent.

She wasn't sure whether to sing a song of praise or make offerings. "How should I thank you?" she asked and turned to him, quite in earnest.

He frowned, looked vaguely unhappy at the question. "I don't know." Then he disappeared.

The senior priestess over Yeni's year knew exactly how to thank him. She put on a pot of coffee and declared, "We thank the god of modern technology!" And that was that.

"When did you decide to make me sacred? Why did you choose me?" Yeni finally asked.

It was night out. Stars bright, but more distant than their own sun.

He looked at her, chin on his hand, like he was drinking in the sight of her. "The way you love the clock."

Yeni stared back, startled and suddenly warm to her cheeks under his regard. The clock. She'd always associated it with the sun, but in fact, it had always been technology.

A soft blooming of color over her shoulder startled Yeni when she looked in the mirror in the communal baths of the initiate priestesses.

"Lilies," Bati said matter-of-factly. "Pretty." Then she grinned. "Satyaang is seething with jealousy. The harvest, rain, and river gods won't need anyone higher than a novice or regular priest for years."

Yeni swallowed, examined the lilies closely, and the inconvenient blush across her skin beneath them, all too obvious in the morning light.

Flower markings bloomed like ink on a person invited to become the next bride or groom of the god they served. It was an invitation that could be rejected, carefully, by a vow of a different service, but—

Yeni had been annoyed with her new god from the day she met him. She'd never once thought he would ask her to be his bride-priestess. She had no idea why she wasn't immediately put off.

"Bati—"

But she never got out the rest of the thought, some expression of her uncertainty and discomfort.

She caught the eye of Satyaang, one of her yearmates, staring at her dark-eyed and seething, as described. Among the initiates, only Yeni was sacred to a brand new god, required to lay out his rites, slated to be a high priestess by default.

Yeni fell silent in the face of that, shook her head, and dressed.

"Why do you always look to the sun?" a now familiar voice asked right against Yeni's ear.

Yeni stifled a gasp and made herself draw to a slow stop and turn toward her god. She'd gone for her morning run, Bati's complaints about the lack of rain as incessant as ever. He'd caught her in the atrium of the temple.

"The sun is warm and lovely," she said, smiling gently. "I've always liked that."

He listened for a moment, and she thought she could sense a frisson of tension in his body, in the way he suddenly stepped forward into her space and stared at her intently, as if he could read her inward soul if he just looked hard enough.

"I don't want you to look at him," he said, leaning in close enough she thought she couldn't breathe. "I want you to look at me."

Yeni's heart beat a little faster, the heat of his nearness as real as that of a human body. His eyes were dark and earnest and fixed on hers.

After a moment, she softened and said, "I never thought I would be the bride of the sun. Not even were I to be his priestess."

A moment, divine breath swirled between them, then he stepped back, no longer so tense. Jealous, she wanted to think, but it seemed unthinkable that a god would be jealous over her. "All right," he said and disappeared.

"Ah, youth!"

The exceedingly young god of modern technology shrugged grumpily and didn't look up at the god of the sun. The god of the sun loved to tease, when all was said and done.

"You've got it bad," he said with melodramatic sympathy.

The younger god's ears turned red and his cheeks went just a little pink. "Just give her a nice run."

The god of the sun laughed at him but agreed.

Yeni downloaded a music app and made a point of engaging with her phone in the mornings. At the end of her run, she stopped at the clock and prayed aloud and formally.

At the end of it, she saw him blinking down at her from the top step, a small smile taking his face by surprise.

First rite.

The rites of dedication took many forms, but the vows were largely the same based on the kind of service one chose to dedicate themself to. Yeni chose the vows of the bride.

Yeni stared in wonder at the gift in her hands—a perfect miniature of the sun clock on the eastern side of the temple. She read from its tiny faces all the times and seasons told on her beloved clock and felt her god's voice warm in her ear, his breath warm over her shoulders.

"Is this what you had in mind?"

She shook her head, voice soft as she answered with a small smile, "Not at all."

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, a baby god of technology saw his older sister's loom and stared at it with dark big eyes, wide with wonder. He reached out with a giggle to lay his hand on it.

She fluffed up her eight legs and all her silks and said, "Now hear this."

At the end of her lecture, the baby god wisely refrained from touching her loom again.

Once upon a time, a baby god of technology was playing near his grandfather's throne.

The great god of lightning mused aloud to himself, "All this electricity. Technically, I think it should fall it under my power."

The baby god looked up and blinked owlishly, then he peered through the powers he was playing with, shrugged, and tossed the contents of the entire internet toward his grandfather, accidentally hitting him directly in the head.

A stunned moment later, the god of lightning gently handed it back. The topic never came up again.