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Home is a piece of flash fiction set on Ishveos, the world of More Gods Than Stars. I... don't usually write flash fiction, it's not a form I'm particularly fond of, but this one just kind of popped into my head one day while I was feeling down. It's definitely not a grand story, just a little snippet of life on Ishveos. It's also only part of this month's offering- I absolutely don't consider flash fiction worth the subscription cost. Currently working on answering more Mage Errant What If questions for the rest of October's offering.

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Gennison left his home a few hours after his wife died, before the goddess rose from the ashes of her soul.

The goddess immediately settled into Gennison and Adla’s cottage, just as everyone had expected. They had built the little house with their own hands, had raised their children there, had lived a happy life there. The two woodcarvers had never stopped carving and adding to their home over the years, turning it into a marvel of the village, a work of art there on the bluff overlooking the river valley. A common topic of speculation for the villagers, as well as the couple themselves, was which specific carvings in the cottage would be inhabited by the gods born from them when they died. So it was no surprise whatsoever that the goddess born from Adla’s soul promptly settled in the carved mantlepiece.

Even the goddess’ godgifts were fairly unsurprising. She offered the ability to subtly alter the grain of wood to better fit a plan for decorative carvings during the carving process, as well as the ability to more easily clean dust out of tiny crevices in carvings. They could have come from a theological textbook as examples of woodcarving gifts.

Adla’s actual death, on the other hand, had absolutely been a surprise. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination. She and Gennison had married and had children early, and barely had any grey in her hair, even as a fresh grandmother. She just… got sick one day, and was gone less than a week later.

And likewise, Gennison’s departure was a great surprise. He hadn’t, to anyone’s knowledge, spent a single night under another roof in decades.

And yet he left the instant he felt the goddess born from his wife’s soul taking shape in the Firmament.

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The action might have been surprising, but the reason wasn’t mysterious.

Gennison simply wasn’t ready.

Like he told his friends and family, if he’d had more warning, if Adla’s sickness had lasted longer, if they’d simply been older, he might have felt more prepared— but as it was, he simply couldn’t come to grips with things.

So he moved in with his oldest daughter and her family, while one of Adla’s many sisters moved into his old cottage to tend to the new goddess.

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The village gossiped about it for a while, like it gossiped about everything, but soon enough other matters presented themselves for distraction— most notably, the son of the village’s most powerful Saint running off with the cooper’s boy, when their parents had forbidden the match. Not due to reasons of position or the like, but simply due to a childhood grudge between the cooper and the Saint. Which in turn brought up all the gossip about those old events.

Outside of daily life, there wasn’t much for the gods and people of the village to do but gossip.

Gennison paid little mind to the chatter, for once. His friends and family were all gentle and supportive, and no one judged him in anything but the mildest terms.

He would stop in front of the old cottage, every now and then, and just stare at it for minutes at a time.

No one interrupted him, no one asked what he was thinking as he did— they could all tell he wanted to work something out for himself.

Three months after he left, one day he simply walked back into the cottage, and introduced himself to the goddess born from Adla’s soul. Within a week, he was living in the cottage once more.

He’d just needed time.