In the middle of the night, when no more ordinary people roamed the streets, silence ruled for most of the time. Sometimes someone dared to walk around at night, but only the fools and the very brave would try to approach that ragged man of unpleasant look. Faugon, god of the candles, loved that, for he didn’t like people.
People had forgotten him, and that was why he disliked them all. For thousands of years he had pleased humanity with marvelous candlelight, but no one now prayed to him, not even a single soul. “Ungrateful bastards!” he said to no one.
With a wooden club in his hands, Faugon approached a lamppost. He hated something even more than he hated people, and that was electricity: that discovery, so important to humanity, was the beginning of his decay. As nobody prayed to him anymore, he wasn’t strong enough to destroy a power plant, but, just like many young mortals (as he had read in the newspapers), he could destroy the public illumination to protest.
That, of course, never had any significant result (just like the younglings acts). However, the sound of the glass breaking and the light fading out always gave him good feels. “Die, piece of human technology!” he shouted while crushing the lamp. “How could they change my adorable candles for you? Die! Die! DIE!”
In the end, there were only pieces of the lamp scattered through the ground. “I will destroy all of your kind in this land!” he shouted at the pieces, and continued to the next one.
But Faugon didn’t believe that words anymore. Even destroying lamps all night long, humans always replaced them very fast (that country had a very good governor, and was indeed a good place to live if you were a normal person). How would he destroy every electric lamp in the world? Only a very powerful god could do that.
He once tried to convince people that he was the god of candles and that they should pray to him. Some laughed saying he was crazy, some laughed saying that candles were very insignificant and some other actually seemed to believe him, but said that relying in candlelight for too long wasn’t good for eyesight. He came back home insulted and frustrated.
Remembering that day made him sad again, and Faugon was already going to cry under his blankets when he felt a little spark of power: someone was praying. That happened sometimes, when someone accidentally misspelled the name of his sister, Fauganne, goddess of fire-but-not-the-fire-of-candles, while praying to her, and then he just waited for the sensation to go away as the usual.
However, it didn’t. Someone was REALLY praying to him!
Every god was able to feel where their prayers were, and then could help them in their mortal issues (or just laugh on their face when they wanted something stupid). Faugon, although as disabled as an old and sick mosquito, still had that capacity, and took his way in the direction of his prayer.
During the whole time of his journey, the god only thought about one thing: convince the prayer to pray harder, and spread his or her belief to the ones around. Faugon’s imagination thrived with pictures of him destroying all the power plants of the world. All the lights would be turned off, and everyone would have to use candles again, making him powerful as he never had been.
Many and many days and miles after that, after getting lost, being robbed, bitten by wolves, struck by a lightning, burning his feet in hot lava, ripped by a shark family (gods are immortal, so they always get a way to collect their pieces and keep going on), possessed by the ghost of a capybara, getting kidnapped by the Italian Mafia, being arrested, escaping the prison, kissing a beautiful lady (hey, sometimes good things happened), being struck by a lightning again and stepping on an ant nest, Faugon finally found the prayer.
She lived in a small village in the middle of a forest (a village where there was no sign of electricity, what a pleasant fact!), and, when the god got there, he realized the prayer was a child. He met her even before entering the village: she was sitting in a short wall near the entrance, with a large book in her hands.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I… mmm… I’m a traveler,” he said.
“Bad place to come to”, she said with an expression that looked like the girl in the donut shop when one day Faugon asked for Pizza.
“Mmm, why?”
“There are some bad spirits that haunt us at night.”
“Spirits?” he asked. Faugon knew something about supernatural things. He was a god, after all. “How are them?”
“They kind of have the body of a monkey and the head of a llama. They come each three nights when there isn’t moonlight, and spit at us all night long if there isn’t any fire nearby.“
That was a pretty good description of them, and Faugon already knew what she was talking about.
“Lammonkers”, he said. “That’s how they are called. Well, that’s actually a popular name, the real name is bishomasfedorentoeinutile”.
“Bishomas what? How do you now that?” asked the girl with disbelief.
“They are common where I come from,” Faugon lied.
“And why do they spit at us?”
“It’s their way to communicate. They are probably asking you guys to light fire or something like that.”
“Because…?”
“Well, lammonkers are invisible when there is light and visible when there isn’t. The thing is that they don’t like to see each other on third days, it’s a kind of a superstition of them. So they ask you to light fires, making them invisible again.”
“Well, that explain why they appear only when the fire dies,” she said and then sighed. “If we at least had some electricity, these spirits could be easily kept away.”
“Oh, don’t think like that,” Faugon said. “Electricity, mmm… gives you, mmm… cancer. You should never have it in your house. Never.”
“But what about all the other people in the world? Will they get sick?” asked the girl.
“They are all already sick and don’t know it yet, because, mmm… the government is hiding the truth from them. They will then make billions selling medicines,” said Faugon.
“Oh, that’s terrible!” said the girl. “I will ask my mom to never let a single spark of electricity enter our house!”
Faugon thought that he might finally be liking a human.
“Well, then I suppose I’m doing the right thing,” the girl said.
“Oh, are you?” Faugon got very interested. She would possibly say something about the prayers. “And what is it?”
“I’m praying to Faugon,” she said, making Faugon so happy he even smiled, “the goddess of fire.”
“What? Goddess?” Faugon couldn’t avoid a confused expression.
“Yeah,” the girl said. “Goddess. Just like in this book. Look here.”
The girl then opened the big book, which title was “The most important gods” in a page with a very old picture of Faugon’s sister, Fauganne.
“Faugon, goddess of fire-but-not-the-fire-of-candles,” she read. “She can control and create fire, except for the fore of candles, whose controller is… well, his name is blurred, who appears in ‘The less important gods and gods not important at all’, page 415.”
Appearing as a mere relative of his sister almost made Faugon take that book from the hands of the girl and burn it, but he didn’t do it for some reasons. One: burning the book would imply the superiority of his sister; two: the writing in the book was clearly “Fauganne”, what meant the girl possibly didn’t read very well yet. And he could use that in his favor.
“Well, it’s your lucky day,” he said, trying to make the most feminine pose he could do. “You are looking right at her, darling. I am Faugon.”
“But… Faugon is a woman,” the girl said.
“It’s my… mmm… mortal form,” Faugon said. “Every god has one.”
“And why aren’t you a woman in your mortal form?” the girl asked.
“Well… mmm… women have some… mmm… extra… work, that is really annoying. Mmm… how old are you?”
“I’m 7.”
“In maybe 4 or 5 years you will know what I’m talking about.”
“Couldn’t you be a child?”, the girl said.
“Well, of course I could, but… children… well, nobody takes them seriously. I bet no grown-up person listens to you, do them?”
“No, you are right,” the girl said, “they always say I am too small and know nothing.”
“Well, I listened to your prayers, my little piece of cake, and will help you to get rid of these damn annoying spirits.”
“Oh, thank you so much goddess!” the girls’ eyes glowed in admiration.
“But,” Faugon couldn’t let that chance escape. “You will have to help me. I’m in a mission to destroy all the power plants of the world, and free the people from… getting cancer. You will have to become my sorceress in this place, and expand my influence the most you can.”
“I will do everything, Ms. Faugon!”
In that moment Faugon knew that, although humiliating, that was the beginning of a new age for him. He could see again, in his imagination, a very big power plant under a sea of melt candle wax, and smiled thinking about a future with no more electricity, lightbulbs and lampposts.
[I was going to make it longer, but something happened and that will not be possible anymore. But if you liked the story, please tell me, I can continue it later. Thanks for reading!]
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