Sasha was shaking slightly as she grabbed her vomit stained tunic off the road. She pulled the soiled garment over her head, not even noticing the filth that clung to it. She was focused on something else entirely.

  The crystal her Goddess had given her. And she was her Goddess, wasn’t she? She had been chosen, and even if she hadn’t verbally accepted… she did accept the gifts. But back to the crystal, it’s soft green glow lit up the street for several feet in each direction.

  And that could be dangerous, Sasha had no doubt that none had seen her rebirth, but afterwards… this part of the city was not well off, and many would pay for a crystal this perfect, even if none knew what it really was.

  So, she made a decision. She picked her oil cloak off the ground, and wrapped it around the artifact. It smothered the glow, and she was already soaked, so the cloak wouldn’t do her any good. All she had to do now, was make it home.

  And was easy enough, the inn was just a few hundred feet away, and her family’s house was just beside it. So, she began walking. Her boots splashed some water as she walked, but it hardly mattered. The cold that she knew should be getting to her by now, was absent.

  A fire in her stomach churned and roiled, but was somehow not unpleasant. It radiated a warmth throughout her entire body, and kept her thoughts away from things that she would rather not think about yet.

  The sensory overload had died down to a manageable level already. Light was still a bit too bright, but simply touching things didn’t make her want to tear her skin off anymore.

  So she tried to put it out of her mind, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. It was simple, methodical, it let her not think for a moment, simply exist. It was good.

  The stray dogs and cats the frequented the alley behind the inn, fled in disarray as she came closer. But she didn’t notice, not consciously at least. Just watching the ripples in the puddles as she passed through them, clutching the oil cloak to her chest.

  “Honey! I see her! It’s Sasha dear, come outside, she looks like a mess!”

  That was her mother’s voice, it was a nice voice, not as nice as the Goddess’s voice. Thinking about that voice made heat rise to her cheeks, she didn’t really know why, but she liked the feeling.

  “What happened to her? Sasha honey, what happened to you, why are you home so late?”

  Her father’s voice, not a very nice voice, but not a bad one either. She was stepping up the front steps on her family’s house now, her eyes tracing the lines of the wood grain. There were hands on her back, pushing her forward, she didn’t resist, letting it happen.

  “She’s freezing! We have to get her out of these wet clothes! Dear, go restart the fire, she needs heat.”

  Her mother again, but she was wrong, Sasha wasn’t cold, she was warmer than she’d ever been. But she didn’t say anything, not until her mother tried to take the cloak out of her hands.

  “Honey, please let go, we need to get you out of those clothes, and into something dry”

  “No”

  It was the first thing she’d said to her mother since she’d been rushed inside. She clutched the cloak tighter to her chest, her breath quickening. She had to protect it. That’s what she’d been told. It was important, but not to be used yet.

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  Her parents didn’t listen though, her father grabbed the cloak, and started to pull it from her, saying that she needed to let go, so they could get her warm. They didn’t understand, but eventually, she relented. It wasn’t a conscious thing, just a certainty that she got, that they would take care of it.

  “Wha- what is this. Sasha, honey, what is this?”

  Her father again, he had unwrapped the cloak while her mother peeled her out of her wet clothes. She wasn’t shivering, which was apparently surprising to her mother.

  “Dear, forget about that for a moment, our daughter is sick. She’ll barely talk, and you think she’ll answer your questions? This is not the time.”

  Her father, Archibald, finally sat the crystal down. It rolled slightly on the little table in one of the three rooms in the first floor, but it came to a stop, and settled in between three plates, two almost finished, and one that hadn’t been touched.

  “Go grab her other set of clothes, and if she doesn’t snap out of this by the morning, go to the temple, and get a priest.”

  Her mother rarely talked like that to her father. She was usually meek and timid around him, but not tonight. It was surprising to the part of her that wasn’t numb. She knew what was happening with herself, but the Sasha that was at the forefront just didn’t seem to care.

  She’d made a mistake in the walk back from her rebirth. Her mind was changed, not who she was, but in how it functioned. She was no longer human. And that meant changes in how it functioned. She had let instinct take over completely, let her conscious mind fall to the back, so she could recover emotionally.

  And she didn’t know how to get her conscious mind back to the forefront. As it was now, she was a passenger in her own body. Clinically, she was surprised she wasn’t panicking right now. If this had happened only a few days ago, she would be completely panicked.

  But she wasn’t, she was calm and clinical, figuring out the problem, and attempting to find a solution. Outside her body, her parents were still running around, her mother had pulled her out of her wet clothes, and helped her get into a new set of dry clothes.

  New was rather a poor description, most were old, some older that she was, sewn by hand by her grandparents for her mother, and then saved by her mother for once she had a child of her own.

  Her parents had helped her sit by the fire, on an old bench her father had made from two broken chairs he’d found in the alleyway between their home and the inn. Her mother was brushing her hair, getting the knots out that had formed in it throughout the day, and during the encounter earlier.

  She leaned into the brushing. The first conscious thing she had done since beginning the walk home. It was not the brushing in an of itself that helped her draw her mind out of the depths she had put it in. It was the humming.

  Her mother was humming, it was soft, and caught slightly on some notes, her mother obviously still incredibly worried about her. But it was a song she had known from the moment she had been born.

  Of course she couldn’t remember back that far, but according to her mother, it was the song she had sung to her when she held her for the first time. And as far back as she could remember, her mother always hummed it to her as she drifted off to sleep. And then, when she brushed her hair every morning, and sometimes night.

  And then, when she got older, and she had started getting her cramps, her mother would hum to her during the worst of them. It was a song that she had always had with her, and that she would always have with her.

  Her mother had never told her if the song had a name, or if there were even words that went with it, her mother had never been much of a singer, so she had never asked.

  She blinked tears out her eyes, and took a deep breath. It was not the gasp of someone who hadn’t been breathing, no, her instincts had kept that in check, but the gasp of a sleepwalker walking up after being shaken awake.

  “Mother—“

  It was the only thing she got out of her mouth before her mother wrapped her arms around her, and started sobbing.

  “Please tell me your awake, and please tell us what happened. Please.”

  The last please was barely a whisper, her mother’s face pressed into her neck, tears rolling down her cheeks freely.

  “I am mother, and I don’t think I can tell you, not yet at least.”

  Her mother looked up at her, the wet streaks of the tears reflecting in the fire light. Her mother frowned at her in only the way that a mother could at her daughter. It was full of grief, and guilt, and sorrow, and so many other emotions mixed into a single expression, that the end result was both indescribable, and completely mundane.

  “Please dear, tell us what happened. It… it’s wasn’t some man was it. That didn’t happen to, please tell me it didn’t. I— I don’t know what me or you father could do. But please, at least tell us.”

  Sasha opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. Not like before, when she simply wasn’t in control of her body enough to speak. No, this lack of words was entirely human in nature. It was born of fear, the sudden dread of what her mother had feared had happened, and the knowledge that her parents couldn’t truly do anything if it had.

  Her heart was beating faster, and a sudden heat was building in the back of her throat. But in the time it took to blink an eye, there was a weight around her neck, and a whisper in her ear.

  “You are alright child, you are safe in your home. And if you ever find yourself in that situation, you now have the power to stop it.”

  The pendant rested around her neck, the gear icon of the gift itself resting between her breasts, bare under her new tunic thanks to her mother. And speaking of her mother, she had not heard the voice, not noticed the pendant reappearing, if it had even vanished in the first place.

  “I… no, no mother, it wasn’t that thankfully. It was something good. But it was a lot to take in at the time, and… my body knew I needed time to think, so it gave me that time.”

  That was the easiest way to describe it. Something so subtly unhuman, yet human all the same. She waited for what her mother had to say, or her father, setting in what passed for their kitchen. Neither spoke for a moment, her mother wiping her tears, her father rapping his fingers on the table, the constant tap tap tap tap repeat the only noise in the house, save for the crackle of the fire.

  “If that is so, I wish to know what it is you brought into our house at least. I will let your story rest as it is, since you seem not to wish to speak further on it, but we have to know what this is.”

  It was her father who broke the silence, gesturing at the crystal in the center of the table. It was glowing ever so slightly brighter.