There it was right away on the v first page a daguerreotype picture of Heaven/Mount Olympia and in it a group of the old Gods standing together in some magical glade in sunlight turned dappled by the leaves, one of them playing a Lyre and the others making such gentle gestures of the arms, with the hands raised or turning this way and that, as if they’d been caught in the mist of some kind of dance. The picture looked like it was from way ages ago, from like the time at the very beginning of the world or even before the beginning of the world, but Valiant could still recognise quite a few of the Gods in the scene – like Apollo 12 who looked very handsome and Greenfingers who’d hardly changed she thought, and Penelope who looked softer somehow all those years ago and even Helen who looked so very very young as they had pictured her back then.

Plaster turned a page. And then another page. And then another. And Valiant drank down the sights in the pictures, swiftly mouthing the words she could read for more information. There were chapters for all the old classical stories – the tale of Vostok and the Russian Fish Farmer, the rivalry between Hermes and Diagonal, the long war between the faction of the gods led by Turpentine and the rival faction led by K-Pop and Ganesha, the love affair of Theseuses and Kali, the quests of Mr Stretchy, Lady Soros and Tesco, the labours of Heracles, the adventures of Shiva and Rama, the tragedies of Gogol and Marathon Man etc. It made her feel stronger in some ways to read it but deep down it made her feel pretty homesick too, so after a short time she asked the book off of Plaster, took it, closed it and shoved it in the waist band of her skirt, getting back to work and intenting to examine the tome again in some moment more suited to reverie. She had no sense of cause – how could she – of how quickly and with what high cost and ‘true peril’ ©, that such a moment would come.

*

Before the meeting of all the Gods about death of Meth Head and Artemis was even over Codswallop went back to the pool in the heavens that looks down towards Earth. Something in her had changed, had long been changing and was still changing now and she knew she had to act quickly and alone. Entering the exclusion zone what surrounded the pool, avoiding Robocop and his latest sidekick’s patrol, she dumped her shoes and her jacket by the waters’ edge and plunged in, the reflection of the sky and the dark trees all around again disturbed for some minutes into a festival of ripples, slowly calming to reprise the stillness in which she (now departed) had arrived.