Liana stared at the evening sky from out of her hiding place, somewhere behind her parents' house. They hadn't come home yet, and they probably wouldn't be home at all tonight, yet again. Barely a muscle moved as she watched the sun set and give way to twilight. The colours in the sky changed abruptly when the sun disappeared behind the row of poplars. A few quasi-immobile clouds hovering high in the atmosphere first went from white to orange, before slowly dissolving into the dark blue of the then completely open night sky. She took it all in, without showing anything of what was going on inside herself.

She was just letting time slip away passively because it was the best thing she could do now. Both despair and hope were both useless anyway at this point, or even meaningless; the only thing she needed now was being alone, far away from other people like parents and classmates and brothers and other idiotic human beings that sucked out her energy.. Far away from all the noise and all the nonsense. At least the stars that slowly appeared in the night sky were reliable, as long as you didn't ask them anything anyway.

She sighed. Why was everything so futile and meaningless? Why was it supposed to be? Being human just sucked. TV, internet, social media, people in real life, whatever… It was all so fake, wasn’t it? The whole human world seemed like a huge, drowsy monster, bent on draining her energy without ever giving anything back, and all of that without even noticing her.. And it seemed that the older she got, the worse it got. As a child, she'd kind of thought that adults were, well, at least a little adult. Responsible and sensible and stuff like that. How naive had she been? The older she got, the more she saw that it was all nonsense and bullshit.

A brief alarm that indicated she had a message on her phone brought her back to the human world for a moment, but she didn't even look. She didn't care for now. Whoever it was, she would simply be cheated or used again, or otherwise completely ignored. No news here, all she had now was herself, her gloomy thoughts, and the darkness around her. More and more stars appeared one by one in the evening sky. They gave her a strange sense of home, these little points of light that were actually distant worlds of scorching fire, so much bigger than the planet she lived on. They almost felt like her friends, and it gave a different perspective if you looked at it all from a cosmic point of view. People things suddenly became much less important….

Somewhere far away a bird was screaming, and the human world had sunk into darkness now. All she could see were dark silhouettes of gardens and houses with factory chimneys in the distance, and at the moment there seemed to be no people around. Liana slowly came to herself, and she calmed as her soul filled herself up with stars and with the cold darkness.

*

A presence that was invisible to most people hovered over the landscape. The creature in question was deeply annoyed at just almost everything, including existence itself. Lately he'd been in a constant rage, and it didn't seem to get any better, but how could it be otherwise? Imagine that one day you suddenly realise that you exist, and then you realise that your whole existence is more absurd than fiction.

Luigi was the name he had once given himself, but that didn't change the fact that he was actually known to most people as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, pretty much the patron deity of atheists. And even for a conscious thoughtform entity that idea was psychologically hard to accept. The others that he had encountered in his short conscious existence did not make it any better. Both the other so-called gods and the humans were painfully irritating, and none of them hadn't helped him much. One side told him to improve his relationship with his believers by instilling fear and demanding sacrifices from them, doing the whole god thing in the old-fashioned way and all, which was impossible with his kind of believers. The other side couldn't handle it if he even showed them that he even existed. So much for interacting with believers as part of his job… Neither species seemed the least bit logical in their responses, and he was getting so tired of all it…

And so Luigi wandered aimlessly through the slowly darkening night sky. The stars that came up one by one gave him a sense of nostalgia, although he really had no idea what for. His conscious existence hadn’t been very long yet, and he hadn't experienced many things that he remembered fondly yet either. He knew he had been accidentally created out of the excess thought energy of idiotic atheists, in an attempt to ridicule believers in creator deities. In the end, so many of them had used the Noodly Name that something had been created that could respond to them as a thoughtform entity. Even Luigi himself couldn't understand how something so irrational could have happened, but it had happened, a fact that he had to reckon with and try to make the best of. Existing as the god of anti-believers was tedious, so in the end he'd given himself another name he'd picked up from "Luigi's spaghetti place," a spaghetti restaurant he'd come across along the way somewhere. His target audience made his relationship with his believers a lot more complicated than it was with his older colleagues, although of course those had their own problems now in this modern age.

The few wretched mortals who had invoked his Noodly Name with enough faith to contact it, had usually gone mad when he made himself known effectively, and some had drugged themselves so much that they had retreated into a completely sterile world where no one was and where spirit, god or man could reach them. Others had abandoned atheism altogether and opened up their world to more interesting deities and religions, abandoning him in the process. For example, his first believer, Tom, had gone all New Age, and was now setting up all sorts of magical barriers through strange rituals, and was summoning spiritual help in all sorts of different directions, which of course only made things worse. To simultaneously ask for help from archangels, the ancient gods, ancestors and haphazard demons from a grimoire PDF from the internet is simply a stupid idea, no matter from which worldview you look at it! At best it didn't work, at worst you invited a cosmic battle between primal powers into your living room. And so Luigi had lost his best believer and point of contact!

Deep in thought, Luigi passed rows of trees and a few houses on the edge of some West-European hamlet, flying further away from the metropolis. It was much quieter here, with more nature and less obvious human presence below. Even the gods get philosophical sometimes, so seeing the beauty of this night almost left him wondering if there was a greater Deity behind all Existence. Or was he becoming superstitious? Maybe he was going too far now, even for the god of atheism his thoughts were becoming a bit weird if he was starting to fear superstitions himself.

Luigi stopped for a moment to survey a row of trees, and that was when his philosophising was interrupted by a fierce voice aimed at him. Completely surprised, he scanned the area for whoever it was who was speaking to him.

"I know you're there!" She said. Luigi looked down to discover that the "she" in question was a young human sitting motionless on an old couch, looking up at the stars, just as he was doing too himself.

"Go to hell!" she said with astonishing authority in her voice. “I have to warn you that I have no energy right now for some invisible energy-sucking idiot right now. The human world is bad enough without your kind sneaking around here too. Leave me alone!"

Liana didn't seem to be more troubled by invisible nighttime entities than by humans, but considering the way people had treated her, that probably didn't mean much. Unfortunately her words had the exact opposite effect on the invisible presence in question: Luigi grew curious and moved closer to investigate this strange life form more closely. He'd had a lot of human contact already, but he hadn't come across many specimens that could see him without his initiative. He also wasn't used to being commanded, which was rather amusing in itself, but potentially problematic too. Was he not supposed to be the god here, and she a mere mortal? What had happened to the old rules? Who was this frail creature in the pale moonlight even? What was she?

Most of the creatures Luigi had encountered in his short conscious life had proved worthless, but perhaps this one could still be useful for something. Frankly, it was vague for what even, but someone like that in the human world that he could communicate with could always come in handy, not? If only he hadn’t been the flying spaghetti monster, but a more normal deity, and such a human might even have been a potential prophet: the bearer of his message for mankind or something. But alas, none of his followers would fall for that, atheism is a non-prophet organisation… And actually she didn't look very susceptible to his simple manipulation techniques. It was still worth trying though.

"Can you really see me, little one?"

“No, I just feel your presence. And I already said I have no energy for your kind right now! Sod off!” The night was dark as ink now, with many stars and a very pale crescent moon just above the horizon. The city was sending its usual light pollution into the air as was common in much of the so-called developed world. Luigi was fascinated by this little mortal on the one hand, but on the other he felt like he was going to be offended if he continued the conversation. And somehow he knew he wouldn't care this time. To be treated more or less as an equal by a tiny creature like this was a whole new experience for him, but ironically it almost felt like a compliment. "What kind do you mean?" She shrugged as she continued to look vaguely in the direction of Orion's belt. “Ghosts, spirits, poltergeists, third-rate demons, it doesn't matter… Things that sppok out that you can't see and that want to take my energy away. I know you are not a human ghost, certainly not an angel of light or a demon, and probably not a nature spirit either. But frankly, I have no idea what you are.”

Luigi grinned invisibly. “Wrong answer, funny little mortal. But I'll let you guess twice…” She didn't even respond. This little one was indeed tougher than she looked, and not easily impressed. "What else is there? We humans probably don't even have a name for what you are. Only the effect matters, and I don’t need it. People are bad enough right now.” She was a tough nut to crack, Luigi had to admit. He had to take a different approach. “Why worry about ordinary people, when you're standing before a god?” Luigi said in a deep voice, but that didn't have the desired effect, and she just shrugged again. “Yeah, whatever… Gods in this day and age? What has your type ever done except the same stupid things as humans, but then with more superpowers, so more damage. I've read all the myths, you know: Zeus, Poseidon, Odin, Loki, Horus and Osiris,… Not impressed, sorry…”

He looked at her better now, in the dim light. A teenage girl, almost a child, with a pale face, a mess of dark brown curls and hazel eyes. So vulnerable, and already so hurt by life. And yet she barely reacted to him, he who was supposed to be a god, and who should have the respect of a tiny mortal like her. There was something wrong with this scene. But on the other hand, he felt like she would probably be equally unimpressed with Zeus himself and all his thunderbolts. It took much more to instil awe in this one than humans or gods at this point. “Shouldn't you be surprised that I appear to you? My believers went completely mad when I appeared to them.”

She kept staring at the constellation of Orion and only answered after a while. “That's not exactly what they call a healthy relationship, is it? Admit it, all of you gods and ghosts and whatever floats around are as much a confused hopeless bunch as we humans are. So why should I care?” She remained silent for a long time.

Suddenly she said "Oh, look, a shooting star!" And indeed, a meteorite shot through the constellation of Orion. “Or are you playing with your divine powers?” Luigi didn't answer, but she could feel what he would say. He could give people illusions if he wanted to, and had certain hypnotic powers, but summoning real meteorites was far beyond his capabilities. He even wondered if his old colleagues would pull that off just like that. He was well aware that pulling space dust into the atmosphere was not as simple as it seemed, practically speaking. “But we gods have powers that you don't.” he finally said. “And what do you do with it? Does it help you? Are you better off than me as a god? Why should I be jealous?”

He remained silent because even he had no answer.