Goddess Unravelled

Breakfast for the Gods

She was tired in the morning. It had been hard to sleep, even though the bed was soft and the sheets were silky. Alice had ended up tossing and turning for most of the night.

                Still, she got out of bed almost immediately when the first rays of sun began to slip through the window curtains. She’d just worn her t-shirt to bed, even though it still had dust on it from the building collapse. Now she slid quickly back into her jeans and went over to the window.

 The curtains seemed to draw her there. What did this place look like outside? She hadn’t even thought about that yet, she’d just appeared in the middle of this place. This…palace, or whatever it was. Cautiously, she approached the window, not really sure she was ready to know what lay beyond it. What if she opened the curtain and an alien landscape lay before her? What if it was something she’d never seen before?

                Her fingers were trembling a little as she reached for the red velvet curtains, but there was no way she was going to walk away. She needed to know what was out there. What was the afterlife made of?

                She gripped the curtains and ripped them back, a little harder than she’d intended to. The curtain rings jingled on the bar overhead, and sunlight suddenly blazed in, bathing Alice’s face in a wash of light. She blinked, a little stunned, and then her vision cleared.

                Beyond the glass lay a garden.  The most colourful garden she’d ever seen.

                Pink and white-blossomed trees bent their heads over the garden, softly nodding in the wind. Purple flowers burst from patches of deep green vines, and bunches of shiny red berries drooped from the branches of a bush that Alice had never seen before. In fact, many of the plants looked exotic. Like they’d been whisked away from some kind of tropical rain forest and planted here. Alice couldn’t identify half of them.

  All around the garden, a clear blue river wound itself like a ribbon, so deep blue that it had to have been fed by some sort of glacier.

                She found herself pressing her face to the glass. Her chest was aching, she realized. That was how badly she wanted to go out there, to walk between the trees. To have the wind blow through her hair and wrap her in the scents and sounds of the garden.

                A gentle tap on the door made her pull her face away, suddenly mortified that she’d left a smudge on the glass. Hurriedly, she pulled the curtains back in place.

                “Uh, come in.”

                The man who opened her door was tall and thin. He was dressed in white robes and sandals, and he had very blonde hair. Definitely a god, or at least a half god. He gave her an awkward bow and cleared his throat.

                “My mistress requests that you take breakfast with her.”

                “Oh.” Alice’s hands flew to her clothing. “I...I’m afraid I’m rather dishevelled.”

                “Not to worry.” The servant, Alice guessed that’s what he was, turned around and picked something up from the ground behind him. He offered it to her, a small wooden chest with silver handles.

                Alice hesitated, then took it. “Um, thank you.”

                “Clothing,” he explained. “And a towel. My mistress says she expects you will be here for a few days.”

                “Oh, but my friends—”

                “Time doesn’t work the same way here.” His dark eyes went narrow. “And you have a very important choice to make.”