Vell scrawled a few notes in his notebook, if only to have something to do. Today’s lecture covered a topic he’d already studied on his own quite a bit, so he had little need to pay attention. All he could do was jot down a few useful notes and try to come up with a better distraction. Some people as bored as Vell currently was would wish for something interesting to happen, but when “something interesting” happened to Vell, things usually went off the rails very quickly.

“Hey, Harlan.”

Case in point. The sudden intrusion of Quenay barely made Vell flinch at this point. The deity hovered in the air just to the left of his desk, in the aisle between seats, with her subtly mismatched eyes locked on him and a wry smile on her face. As he watched, Quenay rotated from on side to the other as if orbiting him. As she shifted, she changed the side of her that was facing Vell. Due to her asymmetrical hair, eyes, and even clothing, she appeared almost completely different from the opposite angle.

“What are you doing here?”

“Saying hello. Am I not allowed to chat?” Quenay said. “Also, you don’t need to whisper. I’m a God. I can make people not hear us.”

“Will you?”

“Of course I will,” Quenay said. The fact that nobody around seemed to acknowledge Quenay’s presence, or their conversation, implied she was telling the truth. It was also possible that everyone in this rune lecture was very good at minding their own business, but Vell assumed the former. Danil was only three seats away, and he could be nosy sometimes.

“You know, Vell, sometimes I get offended by all this skepticism and hostility towards me. I have literally never done anything but help you.”

“Excuse me for being cautious,” Vell said. “Zeus told us about Atlantis and Tunguska.”

“Atla- Oh come on, Vell, I didn’t do that stuff,” Quenay said, sounding genuinely offended. “Yes, I did test Atlantis, but they just lost my game and got all pissy about it. Think it was a civil war or something. I was long gone by the time they destroyed themselves.”

“And Tunguska?”

“They tried to experiment on the rune I gave them,” Quenay said. “I tried to warn them, they didn’t listen, and, well, you can guess how that ended.”

Vell tried to stop himself from cringing and failed. Thanks to Joan, he knew exactly how fatally badly that type of experiment could go.

“Full disclosure, I also did a test like this on Pompeii, but I promise it had nothing to do with the volcano,” Quenay said. “That was just like, really bad luck, I swear.”

“That still doesn’t inspire confidence,” Vell said. Quenay couldn’t argue with that.

“I know, but believe me, I don’t want this game of mine to have a bad ending either,” Quenay said. “That’s why I’m so glad you ended up here. Anything goes wrong here the time loop can clean it up.”

“You know about that?”

“Of course I know! I’m a God, Vell, I know things,” Quenay said. “I can’t control them at all, and I don’t keep my memories like you guys do, but I’m aware the loops are happening. Kind of like that Kraid guy.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

Quenay rolled through the air and came to a stop on the opposite side of Vell. With her asymmetrical outfit and hair, the change of position made her look like an entirely different person.

“You going to do anything about that, by the way?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Vell asked. It sounded rhetorical, but he sort of hoped Quenay would actually answer it. The fact that Kraid knew about the time loops and was actively trying to exploit them was just one more problem Vell had no idea how to deal with.

“I don’t know, you’re supposed to be the genius here,” Quenay said. “I’m just a God.”

“Just a God?” Vell said, stressing the last word as hard as he could.

“Okay, yeah, but the God of Life,” Quenay said. “I’m not the God of Answers.”

“Is there a god of that, and if so, do they have a phone number? Or do I just pray?”

“I don’t know, I’m not the God of Answers,” Quenay said. Vell wasn’t even looking at her, but he could feel the grin on her face. “I’ve only got one big question I know the answer to, and you’ve got to figure that out on your own.”

With a playful wink of one mismatched eye, Quenay winked out of existence, and left Vell alone to contemplate her grand game. After a moment of thought, he wrote “meaning of life?” on his notes, in the corner, the hopeful beginning of an intense contemplation of the mysteries of mortality.

One class period and an intense amount of thought later, Vell had added two question marks and a doodle of an octopus holding a gun to that note. He tore the paper out of his notebook and tossed it in the trash on his way out the door.

Vell found himself with some time to kill between classes, and no friends nearby to talk to, so he pulled out his phone to browse the internet for a bit. No sooner had he found a half-decent meme than a pair of mismatched eyes started staring at him from above the phone.

“Hi Quenay.”

“Hey Vell,” she said. She hovered up and around until she was hanging upside-down right behind Vell. Her jet black hair barely avoided brushing his shoulder as she peeked over it to spy on his phone. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“A little,” Vell said. He tilted his phone away so the Goddess couldn’t see it. Having someone spy on his phone never felt right, even if he was just browsing random bullshit.

“I don’t get you guys and your memes,” Quenay said. “As someone who’s witnessed all of human comedy, you guys really peaked at knock knock jokes. You should do more of that.”

“I don’t know any good knock knock jokes, sorry,” Vell said. “Are you here for a reason?”

“Well I was hoping to hear a knock knock joke, but now I’m just floating around disappointed,” Quenay said. “Sometimes I just want to chat, Vell, is that so strange?”

The levitating Goddess dangled upside-down in front of the young man she’d resurrected with an expectant look on her face.

“I mean, uh, a little bit,” Vell said. “Just given the circumstances.”

“Okay, I guess, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty,” Quenay said. “But really, I just want to chat sometimes.”

Vell stared at Quenay for a moment before tucking his phone away and putting his hands on his lap.

“Okay. Uh. Do you like...watch movies? Or TV?”

“Almost all of them, yes,” Quenay said. “Side benefit of being nigh-omniscient.”

“Almost all of them?” Vell said. “What’s the almost?”

“I can’t fucking stand Jared Leto, Vell,” Quenay said. “Just looking at him makes me so fucking mad. He’s been coasting along in Hollywood for decades by taking secondary roles in movies carried by better actors and directors, every time they try to make him a leading man it fails. Why does he still have a career, Vell? What do humans see in Jared Leto?”

As she spoke, Quenay starting floating closer and closer to Vell, and her voice grew increasingly more frantic. He tried to scoot back a little, and she just floated even closer.

“I, uh, don’t know,” Vell said. “I’m more of a comedy guy, he’s not really in those types of movies.”

“Can’t figure out the meaning of life, can’t explain the appeal of Jared Leto,” Quenay mumbled. “What good are you?”

In a puff of scathing disapproval, Quenay vanished once more, leaving Vell to question whether he should prioritize in-depth philosophy or watching a Jared Leto movie. He decided on philosophy.

“Morning Vell.”

“Morning Quenay,” Vell grunted, as he rapidly shuffled a bomb across the quad. “Kind of in the middle of something here. Can we talk later?”

“But I want to talk now.”

“Very time sensitive task here,” Vell said. There was a timer counting down and everything. “How about a quick knock knock joke and then I get back to this?”

Vell didn’t stop walking, and Quenay didn’t stop floating along side him, but she did nod.

“Okay, knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Eye oh.”

“Eye oh who?”

“I owe you a better punchline,” Vell said. He checked the timer on the bomb and found it was down to two minutes, and he was still a ways away from the looper lair, and his means to disarm it. “Got to go, bye!”

Vell broke into a dead sprint and hustled his way to the looper lair. By the time he arrived and deposited the bomb onto Harley’s waiting workbench, Quenay was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn, how’d you get this here so fast?”

“Less talking more defusing,” Vell said. By his count, they probably had about thirty seconds left. Harley looked at the timer and shrugged.

“It says we’ve got seven- huh. I think it stopped.”

“Please work on disarming it anyway, dear,” Lee said. One could never be too careful when it came to bombs, even bombs that had been built accidentally by people assembling a microwave very badly. A lukewarm burrito was still rattling around inside the “bomb” as Harley started disassembling it. As she tore it to pieces, Vell took a look at the timer. It read seven zero seven.

Or, if you flipped it upside-down, “LOL”.

Vell finished brushing his teeth, rinsed, and spat. He felt a moment of hesitation before lifting his head up and looking at himself in the mirror. Every time he did this, he expected Quenay to be lingering over his shoulder, ready to surprise him. She wasn’t there this time, just as she had not been the past few dozen times. He was starting to wonder if she’d ever appear -but also worried that the moment he let his guard down would be the moment she struck.

After a few seconds staring at his own reflection, Vell decided to try something dumb.

“Quenay?”

He received no response. He felt like an idiot, but no one was around to hear him be an idiot, so he went for double or nothing.

“Quenay?”

While this entire endeavor had been meant to summon someone, he was still surprised when someone knocked at his bathroom door.

“Who’s there?”

“The literal Goddess you were asking for,” Quenay said. “You’re welcome for not making you repeat my name three times, by the way. I’m not Bloody Mary.”

“Okay, great,” Vell said. He turned around and opened the bathroom door to find Quenay was, in fact, right in front of it. Standing this time, rather than hovering. She was also wearing a variation of her usual lopsided outfit that appeared to resemble pajamas. The Goddess stepped aside as Vell stepped into his dorm and then they both took a seat on his couch.

“Thank you for not just suddenly appearing in my bathroom, by the way,” Vell said.

“Oh, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s one of a few rules all Gods have to follow,” Quenay said. “Total bathroom privacy.”

“Good to know,” Vell said. “What about bedrooms?”

“If you’re asking if I could watch you fuck: yes, but I don’t,” Quenay said. “Just because I’m the Goddess of Life doesn’t mean I want to watch you try to make some, Vell, I’m not gross.”

“I don’t even- not the point,” Vell said. This was not a conversation he wanted to have and not a person he wanted to have it with. “You are surprisingly forthcoming, you know that?”

At some point Quenay had made a very hard pivot from being an enigmatic figure on the sidelines to aggressively inserting herself in Vell’s life. He still didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Not like I’m giving away the secrets of life, or anything,” Quenay said. “And come on, how many times do I have to say it, I really just want to make conversation!”

“It’s just a little hard to believe the only capital-G God wants to make late night small talk in her PJ’s,” Vell said. “Do you even sleep?”

“If I want to,” Quenay said. “And I’m not the only capital-G God, Vell. I’m the last capital-G God.”

Vell was just about to ask what the difference was when the very important distinction hit him.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Yeah, don’t be, I’ve had a few millenia to get over it,” Quenay said. “Never meshed well with most of my pantheon anyway. God like me doesn’t have a lot of common ground with gods of War, Stone, Lightning, et cetera.”

The pantheon to which Quenay had once belonged had been the first and greatest Gods at one point, until, like every other deity, the self-interested “worship” of humans had drained away all their power. Only Quenay had managed to persevere and maintain her power through to the modern day, though Vell could not begin to guess how. Such speculation was not his primary concern at the moment, however.

“Still. I guess that would get lonely.”

“I get by. Not like the old gang are the only cosmic entities around,” Quenay said. “There’s Death, who I get along with better than you would expect, Stareater Gamalxus, Bong-”

“Bong? There’s a cosmic entity named Bong?”

“He named himself before plants existed, much less weed, alright?” Quenay said. “And he doesn’t appreciate people making fun of his name.”

“Okay. Uh, if you’re listening, sorry Bong.”

IT’S COOL

Vell did not like that interaction one bit, and chose not to linger on it. He distracted himself by looking at a butterfly on his window. It fluttered purple, hourglass-shaped wings and looked at him right back. There had been five of them earlier in the day, but now there was just one.

“So, any chance your cosmic contact list has any gods of butterflies on it?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah! Butterfly Guy,” Quenay said. “He’s super boring and doesn’t talk much. Got that whole ‘impassive observer of the mortal plane’ schtick going on, you know the type. Only observe, never interfere, that kind of thing.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“I don’t know, maybe?”

“Maybe?”

“It’s complicated, Vell,” Quenay said. “I’m basically on the same level as him, so I can come and go whenever I please. Humans are a few rungs below, so you got to take some more complicated steps to get there.”

“Okay, fantastic,” Vell said. “At least I know I’m looking for...Butterfly Guy?”

“Yep. Like I said, doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t even introduce himself. Why we had to come up with the name Butterfly Guy.”

The last purple butterfly on the windowsill took flight and vanished into the darkness.

“Any chance you know what’s going on with those? Just make this real easy?”

“Sorry kid, still not the god of answers,” Quenay said. “The butterflies are his eyes, apparently. What he’s looking for, I don’t know.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s progress,” Vell said. He had to be happy about every breadcrumb he found on this long and winding trail. “Thank you, Quenay.”

“No problem.”

She flashed him a lopsided smile and settled onto his couch. Vell glanced at the empty window sill, then back at the lone Goddess sitting on his couch.

“So. I don’t want to be rude, but, I was, uh, getting ready to go to bed,” Vell said. “It’s a school night, y’know.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“So...Are you just going to vanish when I leave, or-”

“Can I crash on your couch?”

Vell looked down at his couch. Quenay’s mismatched eyes betrayed no hint of humor.

“I guess?”

“Okay, cool. Night!”

Vell stood up, to give Quenay plenty of room, and cautiously backed into his own bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him. When he woke up, Quenay was nowhere to be seen.