The Old Gods...

Deadre played cards with her sisters. She was a very good card player. The problem was so were her sisters. It wasn't surprising considering they had been playing cards with each other for thousands and thousands of years.

There wasn't much else to do.

When they were younger they had been very busy. There were prayers to answer. Festivals to attend. Temples to inhabit. Miracles to perform. But as fewer and fewer people believed in them there wasn't much to do. Eventually they had fallen completely out of favor and memory.

So cards it was.

Years and years of cards.

She supposed they could stop. Just stop. A few of their brothers had made that choice. To just wander away and become islands, or trees, or mountains. She asked her older brother why he would do such a thing. Why would he want to become just a giant rock on the landscape. He was a god! And he told her that without worshippers it was a terrible existence. If he was a mountain, a giant mountain, with trees and grasses and maybe a few goats, then at least he could be looked upon with awe again.

He didn't realize that even the grandest mountains become background images to the people around them. Sure, sometimes they might notice and think what an amazing mountain that was, but usually they looked at it without seeing it. It was just a mountain afterall.

Another one of her brothers became a convert to a newer god. Moved to where the power was as it were. But being an acolyte after being your own god was a frustrating experience. Especially when the new god didn't seem all that interested in the people who followed them. A god who took prayer without giving boon was not the sort of god they had been taught to be. But still, for her brother it was better than nothing.

She'd rather play cards with her sisters.

She laid down her last pair and one of her younger sisters started to add up the scores. Then she stopped and cocked her head.

"Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Listen. Do you hear that?"

Her sisters all stopped fidgeting with their cards and held very still, listening.

Soft words filtered through. Murmurs more than anything else.

"Are they...are they praying to us?"

They all listened closer.

"No. Not us."

The sounds faded away again.

"Do you think that..."

"Would it be within the rules to..."

"I mean if their god doesn't listen..."

"Sisters, we are not allowed to intervene unless asked. And they did not ask for us."

Deadre knew her older sister was correct but her younger sisters had a point. They were asking for help and their god was not listening. And if they could hear it didn't that mean it could be for them? Who was to say it wasn't? They were gods afterall. Maybe long forgotten but still gods. They made their own rules.

"Lets just listen for a moment."

The sisters sat and listened. And as they listened the calls became clearer. A group of women in a forest, near a great mountain that they loved and always stood in awe of, called to the old gods for help. And their brother had heard the call and sent it on to them to hear.

And so the sisters listened.