My teeth found purchase in the soft slip of god I held between them. Its flesh was tender and gamey, and as the fat of milleniums melted on my tongue, I was blessed with the understanding that this was what it was like to be adored. I felt, for the first time, an unfathomable awareness of my place in the world, and I was in that moment content. My eyes pricked with tears, and I set aside my meal, resting my face in my hands.
“First time, huh?” One of the other deckhands smiled at me, doing nothing to take from the biting amusement in his eyes. He slapped me on the back. “It gets easier after the first couple of times. Loses some of that punch. Don’t even worry about it.”
I said nothing. The taste of the divine felt obscene mixed in with the sickening sweet of my soda.
“If you’re not gonna finish that, you mind if I have it? I’m still starving.”
“Knock yourself out.” I pushed the plate over without a glance, and heard him promptly descend upon it like a vulture.
It would be easier if we were vultures too. The first Hunters were: they happened upon the fresh corpse of the god of Things That Were Lost, descended upon it, and carved everything up into little bits and pieces. Back in those days, nothing went to waste. Everything was studied and revered and, yes, worshipped. Though the god could no longer grant prayers, in their remains countless scientists, politicians, and even clergy found them anyway.
There’s still bits of the first fallen god’s bones scattered across museums. Revered, as they should be.
Now we just let them sink.
I jerked as the alarm screamed to life above me. “We got another one!” The captain shouted through the intercom. “Everyone to their stations! This one’s feisty!”
We obediently rushed out of the dining hall, some of us grabbing our coats as we went, others leaving them where they lay. As we ascended to the deck, I saw it: tangled in the nets of our entire fleet, crying out in a voice like all of earth’s orchestras, was a fledgling god.
And oh, it was truly beautiful, even in its anguish. Its thousands of eyes rolled helplessly in its sockets. Its limbs pressed taut against their bindings as it thrashed, drowning out the great vastness of the sky with its boundless presence. I let out a low moan in spite of myself, but went to work. This was still my job, after all, and it paid well.
We fire sin-laded harpoons, one after the other, into its body. Iridescent blood came down like rainfall. My clothes were soaked in it.
After a few more well-placed harpoons, it came down, too.
What always managed to be worse than the murder was the defilement. We leapt overboard onto a carcass still warm and twitching with life, and took to it with hatchets and machetes. We carved away bits and pieces to fit into our bright yellow boxes, and, hundreds of miles away from here, they would be cleaned for meat and medicine, refined into pet food. We drilled piping into its veins to draw its blood into our barrels. We’d keep a few to fuel our ships, and send the rest back home.
It would be months before we’d taken all the body could give, and then we would leave it to be picked upon by whatever else lived here in the space between stars. Another deckhand saw me staring down at my soaked gloves, and smiled as he clapped me on the shoulder.
“It gets easier after the first couple of times,” he said. ”Don’t even worry about it.”
I had to believe him. It was my job, and it paid well, and it was us or them, at the end of the day.
The taste of the divine was still bitter on my tongue, but when dinner came, fresh from our hard day of labor, I left nothing on my plate.
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