As one can probably imagine, that was a lot to take in. It would have been easy to forget that much of this is past recollection, up to a certain point. It was a long conversation that spanned the course of a few days, generally on off days for Aya. On one of those days, in a post-afternoon overcast sky at a nearby Cafe, they finally had time for a proper date. Logically, her first question was about her status as a deity.

“You know, it’s actually in the news about how no gods have really revealed themselves after… the whole Emergence Day thing,” Aya inquired.

The Matriarch specified, “Most of them refrain from dealing with mortal worlds overall, largely having their own battles to fight. The story about Tiwa is a good example of that. Generally, mortals come to them and not the other way around.”

Aya sighed in deep thought, asking, “I guess I have to ask the obvious question. Is God real? Like, uh, the God?”

The Matriarch chuckled, “Other gods would probably be offended that they’re omitted from the pantheons of the new age. I hope this doesn’t hurt you, but it's possible that such an entity existed at one point in the dawn of the universe… Currently, no. Another interpretation is that the holy energy of the Judeo-Christian god just exists as part of the Aetherius, not really a conscious entity but just something that existed when time began. Beyond that, Angels are led by a hierarchy, a council.”

This gave Aya pause. The Matriarch chimed in with, “I know it’s a lot…”

Aya responded with a weak smile and a dismissive hand wave. Emergence Day helped a fair amount when it came to mortals' understanding of the world around them, but it’s still not every day that an entity outright tells you that your entire understanding of religion has been incorrect from the very start. Christianity was baked into culture, existing in the world for thousands of years. Even now there’s a fair amount of pushback against the use of magic from certain groups, under the logic of “Only God should have this Power”.

“When was the last time you saw them… uh, any of them? Matthias?”

The Matriarch responded quickly, “Oh it’s been a century or so. The last I heard, Tiwa was actually able to defeat him on her own, but not in battle…”

“Oh?” Aya inquired further.

“That’s a story for another time, or it would consume this adorable date!”

“Goddamn right, we’re on uh… Oh shit, is that offensive?”

The Matriarch chuckled, “Even deities still use the word ‘god’ in their common word. We still say ‘oh, gods’ sometimes.”

“Oh, cool. Well, date, right,” Aya sputtered nervously. “I guess I should talk more about myself, huh. But I have so many questions…”

“...And I’d love to answer them but let’s hold onto that for later, there’s still plenty more story to tell. You’ve told me a few things, your retail background. Let’s see… Where were you during Emergence Day? What do you remember about it?”

“Oh, goodness. Well, I was very young…”

This was referenced briefly when this recollection introduced Aya, but not by name. Emergence Day was called a few different things depending on who’s speaking or the formality of it. To the common public it was often shortened to E-Day, particularly when referenced in the news. Military organizations call it the Breach, when the skies tore open and the occasional creature came flooding out. There were many theories abound, some speak of parallel universes that essentially bumped into each other and started spawning breach portals. They settled down in recent years but it forced much of the underground (vampires, werewolves) to respond in defense of the planet they all live on, which of course had the added effect of revealing their nature.

More religious organizations called it the God-Tear, having a double meaning of when the skies tore as well as “God’s Tears”, as if the world got so decadent that God broke their world as a form of punishment. Those groups were not taken very seriously.

Aya was only about ten at the time, roughly twenty years ago. Her parents were divorced but still alive. She bounced between the two before settling and living with her mother. There was a bit less monetary stability in the household, but they were both generally happier for it. Later in life, Aya had more than a few people note that her beauty would have gotten her some incredible work in acting or otherwise, but ultimately it was always down to a lack of opportunity and networking. She had little means to go outside of her bubble and could never drop however many hundreds of dollars it would take for a bus ride out to audition for something she knew nothing about. Therefore, she was stuck all through her teens, even during the breaches. If anything they held her inside even further with the various lockdowns in place. All this would always end up being the response when she got the irritating and offhandedly sexist comment from customers that was ever along the lines of “You’re too pretty to be a cashier, sweetie!”

Beyond keeping her isolated from the world, E-Day didn’t mean too much to her in youth. It undoubtedly changed the world but she felt at a loss of what to actually tell The Matriarch about her experiences. She drew inward, spending a lot of time on social media and just absorbing the news and memes about the situation.

Aya did have one interesting story. She witnessed one breach when working at a grocery store in her twenties. It was nonstandard, no creatures came through but a toxious cloud of spores engulfed the block. This was seen before so everyone treated it like a power outage, but with key differences. There was one isle that sold some towels so they rushed to close any gaps in the doors to keep the spores from coming inside. There were even a handful of gas masks in the employee’s offices so the managers went outside briefly to take care of a few things and help people get away from them. The building was locked down with many customers stuck inside. Aya worked in produce at the time and with her work carts she set up a fruit buffet for those who were hungry, cutting up some watermelon and cantaloupe, with some bananas as such.

“You’d be surprised by how much we threw into compost on a daily basis. A few melons were just a drop in the bucket for that company. I freely sampled some strawberries almost every day and nobody took notice.”

The Matriarch gave her a feigned and playful gasp, putting a palm on her own chest, “Criminal!” They both shared a chuckle.

The ordeal lasted just a couple of hours, again comparing it to some power outages she had been through before. It wasn’t a bad time as chairs were passed out in a very campfire-like environment. Eventually the spores dispersed in the wind and individually, they weren’t too harmful but in higher doses. The event did however lead to eleven deaths, most being the extreme elderly (victims were over eighty) and one teenager who had some kind of allergic reaction. Everyone else who were affected had to spend a day or two in hospitals as they suffered from intense sneezing and coughing. Some had to be put on oxygen, but ultimately survived.

Emergences were not just creatures, just an alien entity of any kind coming through.

The Matriarch muses solemnly, “What worries me is that the man I told you about earlier may be able to find these breaches and enter this realm.”

Aya recalls Matthias, “I thought you said he only invades when undead populations are heavy?”

The Matriarch replies, “They are higher here than the reports imply. It’s actually part of my work at Snowcrag. I’m trying to introduce new laws that allow the undead to properly coexist with everyone else here, before this timeline becomes a target. It’s what I do across multiple timelines.”

Aya frowns, “Does that mean you’re going to leave some day?”

The Matriarch shakes her head, her mask still obscuring her smile. “No, no - I mean yes, I am. But you can come with me if you’d like, hoping that our relationship gets far enough for that.”

Aya inquired for details.

“You asked me before about the past but honestly, I’ve spent very few years in older timelines. My presence in them felt unnecessary and redundant, so I’m more familiar with modern days. So every timeline is typically in the same window, usually from the years 1900 to as far as 2300, where an incredible amount of cultural evolution happens at once across the world.”

That comforted Aya. “Oh good, I’m not sure I want that kind of adventure. Medieval times and such. Lot of the world isn’t great for those of our, uh, complexion.” Something else dawned on her, “Hey… do you mind a subject change?”

“Of course,” The Matriarch stated.

“So my aetherial infusion thing. I haven’t been able to find much information on it, nor any other subjects. I’ve gotten a fair amount of compliments on it and I was told that it would let me use magic more fluently but I don’t really notice any real change. I have to study as much as anyone else in class. Do you know anything about it?”

The Matriarch shuffled somewhat uncomfortably, which Aya just took as her thinking.

“I can, uhm, look into it dear. I don’t know much about it myself.”

This seemed odd to Aya, as The Matriarch is often so involved with Snowcrag and their various operations. She’s also always so calm and collected, so why the fidgeting now? At worst she thought it was a topic she didn’t want to broach for the time being. Or maybe she was being truthful about not knowing much about it. This was pretty much locked in the back cabinets of her mind and didn’t pay much thought.

The discussion was informative, as Aya was able to pinpoint specific questions. Magic and otherwise non-natural entities entering the world is still a hot topic in the world event two decades after introduction, so their conversations at a cafe was hardly uncommon. However, it was Matriarch’s turn to change the subject by diverting the questions back into a more date-like atmosphere. They had been dating for just a few months but The Matriarch’s work kept her from having meaningful conversations beyond outlining her background for Aya to absorb. They had arranged this date specifically to get into the more basics of what a couple of lovers should know about each other.

In terms of food, The Matriarch gravitates towards seafood in many forms. Shrimp is a particular highlight, one of her favorite dishes is Shrimp Scampi with some well cooked pasta and a good quality oil. For Aya, she prefers the more simple southern comfort foots. Corn, ham, and about anything fried. She has a particular love for anything involving potatoes. Mashed, or in chip form. They both share a preference for Indian cuisine as well, as those dishes tend to introduce spices you don’t really experience anywhere else.

The unavoidable topic of their sexual preferences came up. The Matriarch was never able to pinpoint why she preferred the feminine form, it always just was. She spoke of how she just kind of popped into existence with barely any comprehension of the universe but once she got into contact with the idea of gender, she just remained to her default feminine form and appreciated it in others as well. When she wasn’t learning about the universe she did come across the term ‘lesbian’ but almost never used the word herself in conversation. When introducing wives and lovers, she lets people come to their own conclusions, and trusts humans to make the deduction during conversations.

Aya always had an aesthetic appreciation for men but still preferred women for how easier they were to speak to. Conversations with men usually just ended abruptly and lacked details, which Aya was always interested in the specific nuances that men just often were not. In this way, Aya always had trouble utilizing labels to identify herself, even to this day. She uses conversational shorthand to combat inquiries, usually just defaulting to ‘lesbian’ until the conversation ever gets deeper (like the current one with the Matriarch is). Still, Aya wasn’t sure if she was just bisexual with a female preference, or just a lesbian with the ocassional bisexual tendency. Still, her sexual experience was near nil due to her previous lifestyle. The Matriarch broached the topic of polyamory, making a point that if she still feels the desire to explore men in the future, she would not shut that door on her. She had more to say on this matter but kept it for another occasion, merely dropping the fact that Hel and her are essentially wives.

“...Yeah, we’re going to put a pin in that,” Aya declared.

In terms of music, The Matriarch enjoys most things that lack lyrics. To her, lyrics either force a meaning upon what should be an emotional medium or they become too vague to lose meaning altogether. She respects the poetry aspect of it but generally prefers smoother beats like Trip-Hop, a genre of music that is reminiscent of Hip-Hop but mostly focuses on the music itself over the lyrics (which the genre still has plenty of). Aya has a strange soft spot for electronica, especially the emergence of electro-swing, a style of music that takes older 1960’s music but with more up to date musical instruments and a cleaner, electronic beat. Neither of them have a hefty overlap in musical preferences but The Matriarch tends to be indifferent on other genres and is unbothered when Aya takes control of their home stereos. As long as it’s not gospel.

Interestingly, Aya wishes she enjoyed jazz more than she does but it all just sounds the same to her.

In terms of hobbies, work often dominates much of The Matriarch’s day to day. As a self-proclaimed entity of knowledge, she finds comfort with books. Any and all kinds, down to cookbooks. As per her orders within her cult of Gnosis Genealogia, she’s not even picky as to what her acolytes are learning as long as there’s some kind of book with them at all times from cooking to bike repair. Always be learning. Aya of course tried to prod for more classic ‘fun’ things. She succeeded, The Matriarch admitted to taking some downtime to paint or draw. Nothing grandiose like landscapes or portraits, but her artistic style is more abstract with jagged edges and little white space to spare. It’s an interesting style to look upon which reflects her eclectic view of mortal life. Ultimately she lets others take on their own interpretations in the rare times she lets people view her work. Other than that, The Matriarch has spent precious little time on anything electronic, despite her knowledge of it. There’s no reason she can pinpoint as to why, beyond the centuries she spent in her own realm with her colossal library that didn’t host much in the way of electronics. Things like painting, gardening, cooking and journaling came more naturally to her.

Aya was very much the opposite, some of her earliest memories were that of technology. Her father was in computer networking and would have a room full of computers from work, so her exposure was set early. She gravitated towards video gaming, and attempted streaming when Let’s Plays started taking off in the 2000’s but she could never gain traction and gave up trying. Especially since it was in the earlier days of the medium where “girls” weren’t supposed to be playing video games, and her looks did nothing when she didn’t know the medium well enough to network or collaborate. This all fed into her more insular life, but always kept an upbeat composure when interacting with the public. Working in retail did help in that regard.

They spoke of friendships, and in this they actually had a fair amount in common. Both friendship circles were surprisingly low.

Aya mostly lamented on coworker friendships being rather one-note. She’s friendly with most of the building, having playful conversations in the back rooms and getting along with all of them. However it was always shallow, as she could never find enough traction to trust any of them to ask to move in with them when her family began dropping like flies. Or to move a couch. Or any real world problems, most were far too dug into their own lives to stop theirs to assist her with anything. All her online friendships were similarly shallow, any problems she came up with in her life could only be conversational as everyone was just in a different part of the world. How many could afford taking her in for a couple of months? She never bothered to ask.

Interestingly, The Matriarch had a similar problem. Gnosis was run by a council, a cabal of well trusted individuals that had been there since the beginning. Saved by The Matriarch from their deadly lives in times past, they owed her their life. They are trustworthy and dedicated to Gnosis but every conversation with any of them reeks with careful reverence, none of them speak to her like a person. They speak to her like a God, always picking their words so carefully. She expects that to a degree, as any employer would to some employees but she still laments the lack of real connection among her own organization. Even as her acolytes explode in laughter in the cafeteria, leading the conversations into joyful anecdotes, they all hush at her arrival. The conversation would always continue but she came to the conclusion they were censoring themselves on her behalf.

In that, they both found a fairly deep connection and hope they can avoid that problem with each other.

They spoke of ambitions, and there was a clear imbalance between the two. Aya was still unsure of herself, the whole reason she went to be infused with magic at all was to mix things up. In addition, there was the rather selfish reason in that it was free and came with a stipend program to pay for room and board at Snowcrag. To her it was like a college scholarship. Even with that, she still had precious little idea of what to do with her magic afterward. She still liked gaming, and living a simple life but had no idea of what to do otherwise. She was still hoping that such a goal would crop up during her time in Snowcrag but after a few months she’s just learning some of the basic building blocks of how things work. She found it incredibly interesting but it didn’t help her figure out what to do. Her best assumption was a sort of archivist, collecting information and shuffling it around organizations.

The Matriarch chimed in when that came up. “That could actually be very useful! You could even come work for me, keep it casual of course, but we could use some recordkeepers or editors.”

Aya found the idea interesting but was still unsure, but was quick to redirect the topic onto the Matriarch.

Her vision has always been fairly clear. In a multitude of universes, her ultimate goal is to end the demonization of various dark magics and even legalize them. With checks, balances, laws and oversight of course. It’s always a long road and not successful every time, as magic hierarchies are quick to pull the plug whenever something goes wrong. It’s why her Gnosis cult is always fairly downsized compared to other academies. Her students are always far beyond others in power given what they are capable of, but she makes sure to keep the numbers low because there’s been more than one occasion that a student or leader goes rogue with their newfound knowledge. It was mentioned before when The Matriarch outlined the inner workings of her cult, but she still repeats the fact that she tries to minimize the damage by screening potential acolytes for any trauma.

She cleverly added that Aya would likely pass the test, given her upbeat nature but there is still the question of her deceased family.

Aya was dismissive, “Oh I don’t think my mother would appreciate that.”

That was not the first time The Matriarch heard such a claim. When given the power to raise the dead, that knowledge is difficult to not use in practical means.

Regardless, it’s always an uphill battle but it’s a cause she truly believes in. The Matriarch’s pokes and prods about Aya’s potential in joining the cult did not go unnoticed by her.