MISC: Correspondence With the Goddess #6: Slow Down, Take Your Time

[mrnelson007 at gmail.com]

Well, here we are, #6.  Again, http://goddesscorrespondence.tumblr.com for everything.  Also, here are the awards I'm eligible for, if you for some reason think I should have a RACCie for reasons unknown to me.

RACC1.  FAVORITE WRITER:
Aw, you shouldn't have. No really, you shouldn't.

RACC2.  FAVORITE ONGOING SERIES:
Goddess Correspondence

RACC3.  FAVORITE MINI-SERIES:
Well, it was less that 12 issues on here, at least.

RACC4.  FAVORITE ARC:
Goddess Correspondence again

RACC6.  FAVORITE HERO/PROTAGONIST:
Lydia Devin

RACC8.  FAVORITE SUPPORTING CHARACTER:
Elana Devin

RACC9.  FAVORITE NEW CHARACTER:
Lydia and Elana

RACC11.  FAVORITE ACTION/ADVENTURE:
I'd call this an adventure, probably.

RACC14.  FAVORITE STORY UNIVERSE:
Well, I think it's good, anyway.

RACC19.  FAVORITE NEW WRITER:
2012 was my first year here, so...

RACC20.  FAVORITE NEW TITLE:
Goddess Correspondence, obviously.

Anyway, back to the actual story.



You know, this is getting to me, just a little. It’s not that I don’t appreciate being able to help my sister and all.  Far from it.  I just, well… I miss the days when people other than her paid attention to me.  Now everyone is all “Lydia” this and “Lydia” that.  I can understand why, and I don’t really blame you, but it’s a little frustrating.  Oh well. I’m sure I’ll feel better soon.

- Elana

So like I said, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The point, I mean. It’s not unusual, at least not anymore. I’ve got all this time on my hands, and thinking about the time I have in front of me - or I guess the timelessness I have in front of me, I suppose - is a weird situation. I’m not even sure if that much is true. The timelessness, I mean. Am I really immortal? For all I know, all this power is just going to fry me a year from now. Infinite power on a very finite scale. I’ve seen these movies before. I know how it ends. Some massively powerful villain will come along, and I’ll kill it, just barely, and then pass out and die as a symbol of the fleeting nature of existence or man’s ability to persevere beyond the impossible before giving in, or whatever the fuck it means. I’m not really any good with symbolism. Or, even worse, maybe I am the villain. I’d make an awesome villain, but that’s really not what I want to do here. Lucky for you all.

Anyway. Back to the point. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Why did I do this? Why do I keep doing this? I kind of touched on it last time, but I think I have a better answer now than I did. It certainly isn’t to make you all worship me or something. The thought of that is just completely repulsive. I honestly don’t feel like we as a species need to be worshipping anything. Gets in the way of what really matters, as far as I’m concerned. So, I want to make this as clear as I possibly can. I do not want, need, or deserve your worship.

Well, then what do I want? I’ve thought about this for a while, and honestly, all I want is for you all to understand. Not forgive, or anything like that. I just want to feel like, for once since this all happened, that I am not completely alone in this fucking universe, that at the end of the day, maybe at least one person can appreciate that it’s not as easy as it looks. Just one. I just want you to see things from my point of view. That’s it. Nothing sinister, no ulterior motives. I’m not “The Monster” anymore. At least, I’m really hoping we can put that all behind us.

Anyway. Things were somewhat uneventful for the next month or so. I spent most of my time laying around and healing up, watching TV, eating junk food. So basically, it was exactly like before, except now I had an excuse. Elana got back to work on her degree, and life returned to some basic level of normalcy. Spoiler alert: That didn’t last very long, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

It was a few weeks after I had gotten home, mid-October or so. I woke up, performing my morning ritual of late. Generally, this consisted of stumbling out of bed and looking at myself in the mirror before heading in to get a shower. So that wasn’t really much of a ritual, but oh well.

I mused over this for a bit as I gazed at my reflection. I looked like a human again. I still had some light scarring along my right side, but that was definitely minimal. Compared to what I had been before, I was actually basically normal. It was a nice feeling, though it occurred to me that something was off about that. It was too easy. Wasn’t scarring like this supposed to take years to recover from? I certainly wasn’t a doctor, but I was pretty sure that that was unusual.

Further, I seemed to have lost some weight. I was never exactly obese, but I definitely had the telltale chub of someone who spent too much time, well, sitting around watching soaps and eating Twinkies instead of exercising. But much of that seemed to have gone, leaving me looking thin. Not unhealthily thin, mind you. I didn’t look like I had an eating disorder. I just looked like I was in decent shape. Still, that was probably just from the extra work my body was doing repairing itself, right?

I spent some time turning around and checking myself from different angles, musing over my seeming good fortune. Well, no. I reminded myself with a frown. It wasn’t really good fortune at all. I healed quickly from MYSTERIOUSLY BEING ON FIRE after being comatose after having the world’s worst headache - twice. Rapid recovery seems like the bare minimum of what I deserve at this point…

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Elana’s voice greeted me from the other side. “Morning. I heard you moving around in there… ready for breakfast?”

Oh man, I love weekends… I smiled. I tended to sleep in even later while I was recovering, so during the week Elana was already long gone for class by the time I managed to rouse myself. Weekends were a different story, though. She always seemed ready to help, and we seemed to be getting along better than ever, bonded by the crisis we I had gone through. In spite of her personality, Elana had never been very social either. She much preferred to spend time with a book than she did with people. So that was one thing we had in common. “Yeah, sure, be right there, let me get dressed.”

A few minutes later, I headed out into the hall, toward the source of the delicious bacon scent.

“Morning sleepyhead.”

“Mrphgle.”

“Oh, come on, it’s a little late for that, you were already talking just fine.” Elana smiled as she slid the plate over to me, sitting down and sipping on the tea she was holding. “So, you’re looking pretty good today. How do you feel?”

“Also pretty good.” I smiled, one of the few genuine smiles I had had since this whole thing started.

“Got some bacon dangling there…” Elana said, giving me a smirk as she sipped her beverage again.

“Meh. Dessert.”

“Who has bacon for dessert?”

“Everyone who’s not a moron, obviously.”

“I’ll just go ahead and pretend you said something reasonable,” she replied.

“That was perfectly reasonable.” I smirked back, picking up my cup of juice and taking a healthy gulp before returning it to the table. “Did I ever tell you about this idea I had? So, how’s this sound? Chocolate-covered-bacon-chip cookies.”

“I’m pretty sure those already exist, actually…”Elana made a face of displeasure, sticking her tongue out and shaking her head. “And it sounds incredibly gross. I’ll just stick with my boring old eggs, thanks.”

“That’s because you have no taste, and furthermore, if you knew they existed and didn’t tell me…”I was moving my arm for emphasis. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. Sadly, my exuberance resulted in a collision with my glass. The back of my hand bumped into it, and as my motion continued I felt it lose contact with the hand and begin its descent. Dammit, it’s gonna spi-

“Wwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-“

I heard Elana speak, but it came out all wrong. The sound was distorted. Lower pitched, and stretched out. Holy fuck… It was like in the movies when something suddenly goes into slow motion. Wait, slow motion? No fucking way… I turned, looking over at the glass to confirm my crazy impossible thought.

And there it was. Slowly moving to the ground. It was still falling over, but it was certainly taking its sweet time to get there. I didn’t really know what to do. My brain was still functioning at normal speed, but all of its processing power was devoted to just processing what it was witnessing. Aside from me, the whole world was moving at a rate of… well, really fucking slow. It was like watching a movie, except each individual frame was stretched out. Wow, this is really cool, I can’t- oh shit!

My reflections were interrupted as the cup collided with the table. Time suddenly started to resume flowing like normal, the juice pouring out of it and dripping onto the floor. “-tch out!”

“Fuck! Dammit, let me get a paper towel…” I stood up, but the juice was the furthest thing from my mind. I moved on autopilot as I started to clean up the juice, my thoughts focused on what had just happened. Right, so, I guess that was an adrenaline rush or something? Although I thought you mostly just ran on autopilot for something like that. Hm. I guess I could have caught that glass though, easy. Although really, that wasn’t dangerous to me or anything… Maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive to that stuff suddenly? Would have been nice if it had happened during the fucking fire.

Hmm… wonder if I can do it again?

- Lydia