Garret sat in stunned silence, looking slowly between my face and the hands he still held outstretched before him. Light was still coalesced around his fingers, though it was gently fading into nothingness and even when it finally finished receding, his eyes remained glued to his fingertips, face a mask of confusion, wonder, and shock. My own fingers were gently exploring my nose, unable to find any sign that I had been injured what so ever except for a slight strange numbness to my skin when I gave the flesh a press. It was so subtle that I might not have even realized it was there if I wasn't so tuned into trying to find any sign that anything had ever been amiss in the first place.

"I can't believe it," Garret uttered with a low whisper, far too low for it to have actually been for me to hear. "After all these years..."

He went quiet again and he turned his hands over, studied the back for a brief moment, then a look of recognition crossed his features and he hurriedly stood from the bed and rushed to the chest in the room and threw open the top. Digging through the extra blankets and rags in the chest, he made an annoyed, humming sound in his throat as he looked for something he thought should be there. A ball of light flared near his right shoulder and brightened, illuminating the room around him and, most importantly, chased away the shadows from inside the chest so that he could search for whatever he was so desperate to find more easily.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

He did not look up or make any indication that he had heard me what so ever, instead he made a sound of triumph and held a pendant on a thin gold chain above his head. The pendant was about half the size of my palm, though from my position on the bed it was hard to make out what exactly the symbol was. Garret rose to his feet and pulled the chain over his head, settling the pendent on his chest and covering it with his hand protectively. A smile graced his features and tugged up the corners of his lips as warm, bright light emanated from between his fingers. His eyes met mine again and he gestured towards the glowing hand covering the pendant on his chest.

"They are not dead," he said with warm contentment in his voice, "we were so sure..." A look of distant sadness passed over his features and his eyebrows knotted together. "This does not make much sense. Their light faded, none of use were blessed anymore, how could it suddenly return? We were disbanded, the temple closed, and everyone scattered to the far corners of the realm, there should be no one worshiping to even give them power, there was no reason to, dead gods don't just revive."

"It looks like they do."

"It does," he admitted with a shake of his head, "it is truly a miracle."

The hand covering the pendant reluctantly released, revealing a image of two golden cats sat side by side, tails entwined. I was not very family with any gods or goddesses outside of a few nature deities and the symbol did not look like any I had seen before, though I supposed I would not have had a chance to with the temple disbanded and practitioners led to believe the divine spark had been quenched.

"I have never heard of any instance where a... vanquished... god has been restored and my brothers and sisters at the temple researched tirelessly for months and months, often without rest for days at a time, looking for anything that might have provided some kind of hope." He shook his head like he was trying to use physical motion to help make sense of the situation. "We had all come to the sobering conclusion that there had been no avenue that offered hope, but this cannot be denied, there is some divine spark left."

Garret looked back down to his hands and the warm, divine glow softly faded back into existence, swirled out from the tips of his fingers, and slowly flowed to swirl around the entirety of his hands. The magic seemed as tangible as any other part of the natural world now that it had manifested, like fine gold powder wafting along an unfelt breeze. I had never seen anything look so delicate, yet powerful, even though I could not physically feel anything emanating from his hands it tugged at something deep in my chest, like it was pulling me towards it and there was a deep desire to be drenched in the gold light over my entire body. I had never been one to care much about the divine nor had ever felt any sort of pull towards their temples, but perhaps I had just never been close enough to experience the power they wield and the warm magical glow of the powers their gods confer. If this was what their devotees experienced, then it was understandable that people would gravitate towards wanting to feel time and time again.

"I see you feel their pull as well," he said with a soft warmth in his voice.

I glanced away from the magical glow and up to his face and found that there were tears pooling in the corner of his eyes. Wordlessly, he reached his hands forward and placed them on my shoulders, letting the magic sink into my body and suffuse me with warmth and a dawning sense of awe. The sigh that escaped my lips could not be helped as the divine magic swirled away from his hands and deep into my chest, seeking out something within me. After a moment, a rush of exhilaration began to course through my newly discovered magical pathways and the divine magic swirled through my body, illuminating me from within. The novel and intoxicating feeling was made all the more strange by the distant, but deep purring that also rumbled from the darkest recesses of my mind.

"They believe you to be a worthy vessel, Rose." His voice sounded so far away though he was still touching my shoulders. "You have no idea how much this pleases me and I could think of no better person to return to the powers of my divine with."

After just another agonizingly short moment, he pulled his hands away and the golden magic retreated, leaving me feeling warm and cozy, but also empty. A deep sigh escaped me that belied that I was not only contented and comforted, but frustrated that the warmth of divinity had been removed.

"Now you see what I have been dealing with," he said with a soft chuckle, "I have felt that clawing emptiness for years now. It has been torture at times to think back and remember the feeling of the warm embrace of my divine and think that I would never experience it again." He went quiet for a long moment and a sad smile graced his lips briefly before his eyes met mine. "I have a lot of contacting to do, there were many of us scattered to the wind, but if I'm experiencing their glory once more, surely some of the others must as well. Then there will be decisions to be made, plans to make... this changes much."

I wanted to ask a thousand questions about what this all meant and what it was like to work with such interesting and powerful magic, but his face was already fading into deep thought and for the first time since I'd known him, all his attention and devotion was not solely on me. There was obviously a lot that he was thinking about and process, even if I didn't know exactly what he meant about there being a lot of changes to consider I could respect having your life completely change in an instant. Been there, done that, wouldn't necessarily recommend it to many.

Garret leaned forward and kissed my forehead gently, then pulled the blankets up around me. "Get some sleep, you will rest well with the lingering divinity within you and you had quite an evening."

I nodded my agreement, the warmth that had flowed through me was tugging at my consciousness for rest. My entire body felt relaxed and comforted, like I had just taken a long, hot bath and crawled with freshly scrubbed skin into warm blankets. Within moments of closing my eyes I was fast asleep, the kind of sleep where when you wake up you feel as if you merely blinked, yet you feel deliciously rested.

The overwhelming smell of fish smacked me in the face as soon as I woke up and I scrunched up my nose, pulling the blanket up to cover it against the smell. Fish had been an essential part of our diet as druids and I was perhaps more comfortable than many inland city dwellers with the smell, but this smell gave away that the aquatic creature in question had taken its last gulp of water far, far too long ago. Sitting up and focusing the last of the fog of sleep from my senses, I spotted Garret seated at the table with his nose wrinkled up as he cut a large fish into pieces. The creature was far too slimy with the eyes cloudy and dull, not something you would look at on display at the fish monger and decide was still good enough to eat unless you were very desperate for a meal.

"What is that for?" I asked with a gag. "I sincerely hope you're not planning on eating that."

"I need to send out some messages," he said and coughed with disgust. "The smellier the fish, the easier it is."

For a moment I tried to piece together what exactly a rotting fish might have to do with sending a message to someone, but it seemed far too illogical for me to figure out on my own.

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Come with me and I'll show you."

While I pulled the blanket from me and stretched, he finished chopping and put the rancid pieces onto a plate, arranging them in a way that exposed as much of the cut flesh as he could. I followed him over to the door that connected to the back of his shop, then out to a side door that let out into an alley. A few feet from the door, Garret set the plate down, then came back to the door, stood next to me and we waited. It did not take long for a cat to appear from between the piles of refuse in the alleyway. It was cautious and trying to keep itself hidden, but the smell was too alluring and with only a minor amount of hesitation, it padded forward towards the meal. The ginger female gave us a look of distrust and cold indifference, but approached the plate and began to tear at the smelly flesh with her teeth. Glowing magic coalesced around Garret's golden pendant, then traveled down his arms to his fingertips, where he directed the golden haze to drift through the air towards the cat. When the magic brushed against the cat it began to purr deeply and briefly stopped eating to focus her eyes on Garret's. He stared back meaningfully and for a long, drawn out moment there was silence, but I got the sense that there was some sort of communication happening between their meaningful stares. With a nod of his head, the eye contact was broken and the magic lifted from the cat, flowing back to the pendant, light slowly fading from existence. The cat went back to eating, scoffing everything it could comfortably hold in its stomach before looking back up to Garret as if to confirm it had understood, then ran off back down the alleyway, purpose in its steps.