All right, so, I hit 400 followers and as promised, here is Deorum! This is just the first part, obviously, because…uh…I’m me, so naturally this is pushing 30 pages. Also: Deorum is Latin for ‘of (the) gods,’ Jack is…not the Christian god, nor is he Jesus. I thought that was apparent, but there was much confusion in my writing class so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. And for once, the curtains are not just blue, everything has a meaning, EVERYTHING. Feel free to hit me up if you want a detailed breakdown.
“A woman I don’t know is boiling tea the Indian way in my kitchen,” Jack Deorum hissed into his phone, keeping one eye on the red-lipped woman at his counter. He was as far away as he could manage while staying within visual range, taking care to keep his voice down, and the woman seemed unperturbed. Her hands were graceful, flashing quick and lovely about the white porcelain of his favorite mug and the black-brushed steel of his electric kettle. Her masses of coiling black hair spilled down her back, stark as paint against the drape of her rose and gold sari, cut in a South Indian style. Her feet were bare and delicate.
“Okay,” the voice on the other end said, bored. “Why are you telling me?”
“Dia,” he said, voice starting to crack under strain, “I don’t know who she is!”
“You get weird random visitors, like, every day. Ask for her name and let me get back to my break.”
“You know how temperamental her kind is,” he said, uncomfortably aware that there was something of a desperate whine in his whisper. “If she knows I don’t know who she is, I’m going to die in a blaze of fire and it’ll be all your fault, Dia, all your fault.”
Diane scoffed. “Please. They all love you. Not sure why,” she mused. “You’ll be fine.”
“Wait–”
“I’m going, Jack.”
“Diane, help!”
“Bye-bye, now.” And there was a click as she hung up.
Jack growled under his breath, muttering curses as he stuffed the phone into his pocket, and the woman in the kitchen waved one of her hands in his direction.
“Excuse me, Jack,” she called, voice touched with a lilting accent. “Where do you keep sugar?”
“Third cabinet to the right,” he said helplessly, and she smiled at him, all white teeth and red lips. She produced a second mug, apparently for him, and poured hot water into both with meticulous care. Steam curled up like the memory of fire as she picked up both mugs, the small container of sugar, and two saucers, and carried the whole lot into the small living room. All of her arms were lined with long, lean muscles. Jack took a seat when she gestured at the couch, and she folded herself neatly into the lone chair, the tea settling onto the coffee table with a quiet click.
They sat in silence for a long moment before Jack shuffled, cleared his throat, and, as scrupulously polite as he could manage, asked, “So, my lady, do you have a preference for what I should call you?”
“Kali is more than fine,” she said with another smile. Two hands rested languidly on her lap, and one of the others was raised to toy with a loose curl, as if she was anxious. “Athena recommended that I come speak to you.”
Jack blinked at her. “Athena? I thought she was busy with the school year. Isn’t she teaching…everything?”
“Of course,” Kali said, as though he was being dense. “So obviously she couldn’t be the one to help me. But you’re always helpful.”
“I’m always helpful,” he echoed, feeling very dense indeed. “I do my best, I guess.” He reached out and grabbed his mug for something to do, clutching it tightly. When he had his choices in the matter, he usually chose not to get involved in the businesses of gods and goddesses. It was largely hypothetical, though, as he couldn’t remember a single time where he had gotten to take that option. “What seems to be the problem, Kali?”
She huffed irritably, leaning forward to stir a small amount of sugar into her mug and pluck out the tea infuser. Two of her hands gestured broadly as she spoke, the other pair wrapped steadily around the hot porcelain. “I’ve had…a falling-out, shall we say? I think that should work. A falling-out with Ishtar, and we were told to resolve things. You know.” She waved an expressive hand at him. “In a civilized manner.”
“Politely,” Jack said, nodding along slowly. At least this was nominally familiar ground, he mused. He knew a reasonable amount of what qualified as ‘polite’ to goddesses with a destructive bent. “So I assume you challenged her to a fight.”
“Naturally,” Kali sniffed, taking a sip of her tea. “It would have resolved everything quite quickly. However, the lords of our respective pantheons have asked that we do this nonviolently.”
Jack scrubbed a hand back through his hair, feeling the first shadow of an oncoming headache. “I mean, I appreciate that. Speaking as a resident of the city with a vested interest in not being collateral damage. But it doesn’t really tell me why you’re here.”
She stared at him. “How am I supposed to do this nonviolently? I don’t do things nonviolently. Well,” she said, considering, “sometimes I do. But not with Ishtar. We’ve been solving arguments by fighting ever since we met.”
“If I help you, is she going to kill me?” Jack asked, already resigned.
“Of course not,” Kali scoffed. “She’d never hurt you.”
“She likes me that much?” he asked in surprise.
Kali frowned, a faint crease appearing in her brow. “Well, yes, but more to the point, none of us particularly want to deal with the backlash of causing you distress.”
“Then can you please tell Hugin and Munin to stop lurking? I’m sure Odin has better things for them to do,” Jack muttered, and she laughed, a bright and ringing sound like a bell being struck. “Okay. So, all right. Nonviolent conflict resolution. Have you tried talking with her about it? You know, telling her why you’re upset and letting her tell you why she’s upset?”
“I don’t believe shouting at each other counts, does it?”
“Well. No. But good job recognizing that,” he said brightly. The rules with unfamiliar gods were always the same: tread lightly, be generous with praise and careful with corrections, and above all show no fear. He was good at them by now. “So I’d say that would be a good place to start. Yay communication,” he added with a half-hearted raise of his mug. Kali smiled, somewhere between charmed and condescending, and raised her own in response. “And then once you both understand what the problem is, you can try to figure out what to do about it,” he said. “Peacefully,” he tacked on quickly. “If you wanted, you could ask someone to mediate. Frigga might be willing to help. Or Hestia, she’s pretty level-headed.”
Leaning forward to set her mug back on the table, she looked steadily at Jack. So close, he could see that her irises were utterly black, save for a slender rind of gold at the edges, a combination that gave the impression of staring into twin eclipses. “You’re as clever as I expected you to be.”
“It’s nothing,” he said automatically, burying his embarrassment in his mug. Taking a sip, he made a noise of inarticulate disgust and whipped the drink away from him, fishing out the trap-like infuser in alarm. The over-steeped tea was like ink, bitter and so strong it made his eyes water. “Gods, that’s vile,” he said, setting the drink down with a definitive clatter, and Kali laughed her struck-bell laugh again. Two hands reached out and she picked up his mug, doing something to it, and when it was returned to him, it was piping hot and about ten shades lighter. “Thanks,” Jack said, bemused. A sip revealed that, although it threatened to scald his taste buds beyond repair, the tea tasted much more like it was supposed to.
“It was nothing,” Kali said, eyes gleaming with amusement. “I appreciate your advice, Jack.”
“Sure. But I should probably mention that I’m not exactly qualified for this or anything. So if it all blows up in your face—which I really hope it doesn’t, because that would probably lead to things actually blowing up—just. I’m a barista, not a psychologist, if you follow. And I don’t even work at Idunn’s, I work at Starbucks for shit’s sake.”
Kali chuckled as she reached out a hand to give him a pat on the knee. “If everything goes horribly awry, I give you my word that I will ensure that your apartment and place of work are left untouched.”
She stood up, a smooth movement of rose silk and black hair and many hands, and carried her empty mug and saucer back into his kitchen, leaving him sitting alone in the living room.
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Jack muttered to himself, and sank further down on the couch.