Shutting the door behind myself, I left to the store to get groceries. I made sure I had everything one last time, as I tend to be absent minded and forget things I need. Phone? Check. hand sanitizer, keys, bag? Check. Mask? Check. With a silent sigh after the last one, I headed towards to the staircase. Wallet? Shit.
Recently, I'd been leaving things around and forgetting where I put them. I often blamed it on the state of my mental health or old age, who could expect me to remember where I left some artifacts after millenia?
I was barely a thought at first, someone looking for something they lost. When people try to organize chaos, it is inevitable that some things will go array. When order is estabilished, so is entropy, an inevitable side effect of the former. The more people organized, the more they lost. My friend and I were created from these concepts, she kept the things people knew and I kept the things they forgot.
Her library was glorious, books in neat order, everything could be easily found. Her collection grew fast at first, I only occasionally "borrowed" some scrolls and objects that I forgot to return. But the more books she had, the more difficult it was to keep track of them all. So I took a few here and there, to lessen her responsibilites. As my collection of things lost started growing, it was moe difficult to keep track of them - or it would have been if I actually cared to do so.
Over time, we had taken many forms and been called many names by different people in different places. The titles stayed similar mostly, though. Her, the goddess of knowledge and order, and me, the god of lost and forgotten.
Our everyday acts were entertaining for the both of us. She would ask me if I'd seen a small toy car, the one that rolled behind the wardrobe in the little kids room. I'd say that I would check and then I'd forget. We would agree to meet in Rome for a coffee only for me to arrive a few minutes late, out of breath, explaining that I thought we had agreed to meet in Nanjing for some tea.
One day, as I was on my daily walk to look around for things that will not be found again to take home with me, I saw smoke coming from a major library at the time. I immediately knew something was off and I arrived to see her weeping in the middle of hall connecting all divine domains. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and started crying even harder.
Occiasionally, when important paintings or knowledge were lost or destroyed without recovery, there was a black thread running from her library through the divine hall to my "room" - we called it a room but it was just a vast space with random things everywhere. However, this time, there were more threads than I'd ever seen before.
There was a story about the god of agriculture and trade and the goddess of storms and winter. They were born around the same time, when people started praying for a better harvest and more gentle winters. They were close friends at first, just like her and I, until one day, black threads flooded the main hall, leading from the domain of agriculture to the hall of winter. I only heard this story, as it happened before we ascended, but I could never imagine so many threads appearing at once, not until today.
As much as I wanted to stay and console my oldest friend, even the gods have to fulfill their duties. The double doors to greatest library of the world were befitting in design and size to the title of the estabilishment, yet I could barely squeeze past the threads coming out. Once I finally managed to figure out a way inside, it was time to get to work.
I picked one of the hundreds of thousands of threads and followed it to a scroll. It was hot the touch and smelled of smoke as I picked it from the shelf. I walked back, once again squeezing past the entrance, taking the scroll back to my domain.
As I walked through the divine hall, I saw her consoled by the god of agriculture and trade. It gave me some relief to know that she was being consoled by someone who understood the pain of losing something one nurtured for long. I threw the scroll in my room, turning to track back to the library once again.
Every time I walked through the hall, I saw more and more dieties helping her. They brought her tissues, got her to sit on the sofa, something to drink. All while I was stuck moving artifacts and books and notes from one room to another.
When I finally yote the last carving in my room, I informed her that the clean up was ready, submitting the paper work as usual. Usually, she'd say that she wanted it back and I'd joke about not forgetting to return this one. This time, however, she took the files without a single word and slammed the door of the libraries, echoing though the hall of gods, in which I now stood alone.
"When you are created together, you grow up together, you have a chance to form a friendship like no other. But you two, just like us two, were born opposites." I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. "Give her time, she might come around." I stood there silently appreciating the comforting lies before I heard her leaving footsteps.
At first, I gave her space, hoping that it would help. We only met when I had to take something away and we barely talked. I tried apologizing, even if I had nothing to do with it, but she didn't seem to care. After a while, I realized that she made new friends with other gods that created and preserved things.
So I made other friends too, friends that were "my kind", gods who destroyed and took things. One of them, the god of souls and renessaince, helped me see things from her perspective. It was no surprise from someone who understood both birth and death as a cycle, part of each other.
One day, I saw a blue thread, a request for visit coming from her library to my domain. I was hoping that maybe she had also talked to them and finally understood my point of view just as I understood hers.
When I arrived, she was standing with a book in her hands. She had recovered mostly after centuries had passed, except for a gray strand in her otherwise dark hair. I asked if I could borrow something, just as I had done a long time ago, but her reply came in the form of her holding out the book towards me.
As I carried it back to my domain, I couldn't help but flip through the book. As I read the pages and saw the illustrations, I saw that the stories were all about us, about our adventures together. I closed it, only to see my own face staring back from the cover. It wasn't about us, this wasn't even just about me. It was the memory of me.
What does one do when even the goddess of knowledge decides to forget about him? Go to the store and get groceries, apparently.
