“Your Majesty, no.” So soft, so frail her entreaty. How she loathes its mealiness on her tongue. But she cannot help the noise that whimpers free.

“He will serve in the armies as stallion and stud, obedient to Guan Yu. He—”

“You can’t. This is not fair. Your Majesty, what it—” It. Not he. She will not gild her monster. “—did was a violation.”

“—will be evaluated for a position in heaven after a suitable duration. As for you—”

“No. No. No.”

But the Jade Emperor is inexorable. “—we will grant you your heart’s desire. Find Meng Po and she will prepare you for travel into your next—”

“Your Majesty,” Dry, her mouth. Dry of words, her throat. How dare they? How dare they? How dare they? After all this, after everything that had happened, this is the judgment that they fit into her hands?

“I refuse.”

A ripple of answering noise.

“What?” The Jade Emperor, brows knitting together.

“Your Majesty, I appreciate your generosity but I have changed my mind. I will remain here. I will be a goddess.” She shivers, but she is not afraid. She is done being afraid.  “I ask that you give me jurisdiction over the small and the hurt, the ones with no voices, the forgotten. I ask to rule the quiet places where the frightened weep, to be the ones who answer their prayers.”

“That is simple enough. But I must know, why the change of heart?”

She laps at her upper lip, trailing blood like warpaint. “Because if I do not do it, no one in this forsaken court of bastards will.”

Three facts:

One: The system is unjust.

Two: The system is rigged.

Three: The system is broken, but you are not.

Hurt is a pale, dark language, full of new words for fear. But it is also a communion, a dialect of knowledge, a thousand ways of saying I understand and hold on.

They gave her no temple, no priest. But she does not care. Hers is, was always meant to be, a religion passed from tongue to tongue, whispered over bruises and shouted over the crash of fist-on-flesh. Bright with fury, yes, but also bright with hope, with faith in tomorrow and faith that it gets better.

“Who are you?” The girl is small and matchstick-thin, hair snarled over a sweat-slick face, knees pushed against her chest.

They are all the same, the goddess thinks. Young, old, pale, dark. Not broken, never broken, but worn and whetted, stronger than they’d ever imagined.

“A friend,” she whispers before she calls the light.

a priest of vast and distant places

You are on a plane again.