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Hamiathes's Gift Exchange 2025
Stats:
Published:
2025-09-19
Words:
405
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
16
Kudos:
20
Bookmarks:
1
Hits:
69

all in a day's work

Summary:

Dima's job has been to clean the Sky god's temple since she was a girl. Sometimes, she hears things.

Notes:

Thank you for the prompt! I felt so captivated by the idea of seeing other temple servants and this idea really gripped me.

Work Text:

Dima’s job at the temple had been the same since she was a girl. She arrived with the rising sun, and tended to the temple. It was an old structure because the Sky was an old god, and the people of Attolia had worshipped here since long before the Invaders had built their new temples to their new gods, their comings and goings etched into the marble as grooves from so many footsteps. The worshipers were fewer now, to an old god on the edge of the city, but the Sky had devotees enough that Dima had coin for her bed and her bread.

Her duties were more difficult during the rainy season. The overnight storm had brought with it water and debris, and the supple twigs of her broom swooshed against the well-worn marble as she swept old rain and leaves off the porch of the temple. The porch was wide, and wrapped around three sides of the structure, and so she was still cleaning when the first supplicant of the day arrived, bag heavy with coins, slipping through the pronaos and into the naos to speak to the high priest of the temple.

The minutes passed, Dima pushing water off the porch into the ferns below. The visitor must have had a question on his mind, and asked it of the Sky.

The thunderous voice that responded was preceded by no lightning. Dima hunched over her broom, stilled mid-sweep, paused as if the goddess of time herself had willed it. It was not the first time she had heard the Sky god’s reply, but it would be impossible for a mortal person to feel anything but awestruck each and every time.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the voice passed. Dima resumed her sweeping.

The supplicant hurried past Dima with haste, eager, she imagined, to be as far from the voice of a god as he could, as if there were any distance he could travel that would not be beneath the Sky's blanket. Into the mines, she supposed.

The priest stepped outside, his once deep blue robes as faded with age as he was. 

“Rare that he replies,” she murmured, leaning against her broom.

He turned to her, confused. “Hmm?” He gestured with his chin to the man disappearing down the road. "He did not say a word." 

“My mistake,” she said, and resumed sweeping the leaves from the porch.