Voices echo down through the celestial ethers...
"Whose idea was it to get a storm goddess drunk, again?"
"Well, the others dared me to..."
"Others?"
"The other fire gods...in the chat room."
A puzzled and bewildered silence bounces about with the low frequency of someone opening their mouth to make a comment..then closing it. A few more gapings come into existence before one can hear... "Fire gods have chat rooms?"
"Oh yes! There's lots of us in my favorite one! I'm HotStuff1111 and there's this really cute volcano goddess there that I've had my eye on and I think I'm finally getting --"
"Wait a minute, back to the real topic. What does this have to do with the crisis?"
"Oh, well one of the others, from some pantheon, I dunno, sounded like a direction, west, north, something. Well, he said that one of his favorite things to do was to get the storm god in his family drunk and a lot of the others agreed that it was fun and I said I'd never done it and they dared me to and since everyone _else_ had done it..."
"And if everyone else was causing the end of the universe, would you join in too? I swear, for a fire god, you're not that bright..."
"Eldest Sister!!! How mean! I didn't think Big Sister would...would..."
"Regress when drunk?"
The day was bright and sunny and perfect. The blue of the sky was just the right shade to bring out the puffiness of the white clouds. It was the kind of day that made one look out the window and wonder why was one being inside. In the far distance, it looked like white raindrops were falling on an abandoned golf course.
Getting closer, you might upgrade that to hail the size of kumquats.
At ground zero, it was actually hail the size of big green apples. Only without the green and with far more damage.
And they were falling with the accompaniment of a high-pitched and cheerful voice yelling, "WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"
"I think I have found her. Come, we must manifest ourselves. And remember to speak the language of the dimension? She will not respond otherwise."
"All right, all right. I don't know why she has to speak the little mortal languages...they are just so..unimaginative. I mean, what kind of name is "Fire that sparks from the hearth and consumes the world in flames" for a fire god like me?"
"Let's just get going..Sparky."
"Lightning! Hey Lightning!" The speaker hmmphed, shading his eyes with one hand. He ran the other through his spiked hair in an annoyed manner, hail turning to steam around him. "Eldest Sister, I thought you said she was nearby." He turned to the woman in a black tanktop and blue jeans who was looking at the place from behind dark sunglasses. She neither dodged the hail nor converted the iceballs, but for some reason, they just didn't come near her.
She slowly looked around, tilting her sunglasses down. She finally pointed a long finger to the west where the hail had just changed to a torrential downpour, dropping down on marble and fake flowers. "There..."
As they got closer, the two saw a cemetery with a few rolling hills and a large mausoleum door connected into the side of one of the hills. Marble and sandstone dotted the grass where only the lack of weeds showed the presence of little copper plate markers. Boulders marking familial plots shimmered in the downpour.
A wave of rain water was just starting to jump down concrete steps as the ground could not soak up the offering fast enough. It followed the concrete for yards until the steps made a sharp turn away from the edge of one of the hillsides. The water continued on into the void, leaping like freeform lemmings over the side. The rain kept streaming from the heavens, clear droplets visible against the grey of the clouds. Other streams of gravedirt-water flowed through the cemetery, clinging to the ground, but this first riverlet persisted in flowing over the brink...and over the toes of a little girl in a sundress holding a stuffed sheep bigger than the lap he sat in.
She giggled at the feeling of the water over her bare toes, wiggling them this way and that. Static electricity crackled over the wool of the plushy sheep as she petted him, his eyes slightly bugged out and googling at the rest of the world. Droplets of the downpour sparkled in her hair as she cuddled the sheep closer to her and then let out a yawn that could have put lions to shame. She closed her eyes and laid her head down on the sheep's back, the deluge started to slow.
"Lightning!" the woman called as she and her brother walked upstream through the waterworks.
The little girl looked at them, blinking at the man and woman making their dry way through the now dying storm and the small creek that had formed. "Bi' Sis?" the little one lisped, another yawn cracking her jaw. "Wha you doin' here? And 'Fire tha...' 'Freer tha..' Sparky too!" She nuzzled her head further into the sheep. "Shleepy..."
The young man frowned at her. "Don't call me 'Sparky'! And do you know how much damage you've caused?"
"Come here, Lightning... No mortals were hurt at the golf course and nothing that has been damaged or waterlogged cannot be fixed, Sparky," the woman said as she pulled the tired little storm goddess into her arms. "And I believe that if any blame is to be assigned.." She gave her little brother a piercing look.
"Uh, well." Sparky ran a hand through his hair again. He looked down at the little girl in his sister's arms, her eyes closed and the crackling sheep dangling from a chubby hand. "You know, in all of the eons, I don't think I'd would have ever thought Lightning could ever be this...this..."
"Young looking? We all go through stages, Sparky."
"No, and dont' call me 'Sparky'," Sparky said as he crouched down in the manner of all adults when dealing with children and about to talk about them while they are still present. "I just never thought she'd be this..cute!"
Storm-grey eyes flashed open as Sparky received a sheep to the nose and an electrical charge that frizted his hair. "'m not _cute_," she growled. "Sheepy's cute, but 'm _not_. Not.." here she gave another face-splitting yawn and scrunched herself further into her big sister's arms. "T'red..." she mumbled, eyes drifting shut again.
"Owwww!" whined Sparky, rubbing his nose. "What's that sheep made of? And she messed up my _hair_!" He trotted after the other two as their big sister started to walk away, little sister asleep on one arm and the baa-llistic weapon in her free hand.
"Be thankful if that is all that you get for your mischief, Sparky," she said as they made their way back to when they had manifested. "She will be back to being herself soon enough...and with the hangover that it implies. And I am quite sure that she will have more...interesting methods of which to chastise you for your actions. You didn't think that she would just let you get away with getting her drunk, right?"
Sparky stopped, stock still. "I forgot about that. And the hangover...oh man, I'm... Eldest Sister, maybe I can stay in your domain for few months until she calms down? Or maybe you can talk to her, she likes you, everyone likes you..."
She shook her head, smiling. "Nope, these are the consequences of your actions. You must deal with them. Maybe this will keep you from accepting dares from your friends, yes?" Her form started to shimmer as they left that plane of existence.
"But Eldest Sister!!" He sighed. "Well, maybe I can crash with one of the others from the chat room, I'm sure they wouldn't mind..."
Laughter echoed from the celestial spheres.
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