Doug stared down at himse- at herself in confusion. The strange colors, the strange feelings...she swore she could feel different textures from the different patches of color on her skin - like the blue was wet, like the white was cold - and of course the unfamiliar, very clearly female shape of the whole thing...it was so utterly strange...so why wasn't she panicking? It was like there was a part of her that knew these feelings, that understood them, but it wasn't part of her conscious mind...she looked up at the girl - at the other girl - again. "I...I don't understand," she said. "I...why did you call me that? What happened? What is this? This...this isn't what I wished for!"
Artemis blinked. Wished? She wondered...did this young woman really mean that she had become this through...through a wish? She knew about the Keystones, but they were all accounted for and in the hands of their keepers...then again, what else could have the power to awaken one of the gods? She herself had only awoken to her divine self under the influence of the Iridescent Sun, as had her divine mother...but she could figure this out later; it was clear that there was a lot of explaining that needed to be done.
"I called you that because that's who you are," she said. "Gaia, Earth-goddess, Lady of the Fertile Soil, Mistress of Growing Things." She bowed her head slightly; there wasn't a lot of emphasis on formality among the gods, but it seemed appropriate when greeting one who had just awakened.
"But...but I'm not!" Doug protested. "I'm...I'm..." She couldn't deny having a nagging suspicion that the girl knew what she was talking about, but she couldn't for the life of her explain why she felt that way.
Artemis sighed and nodded. "It's...complicated," she said. "It was confusing for me, too...for most of my life I was Harriet, and only Harriet, and then the Sun changed, and I was Artemis, goddess of the Hunt, Lady of the Wild, Moon-Virgin, and I was Harriet as well, and I was...well, I could remember being all my previous mortal selves...not all at once, mind you. But as I became accustomed to it, I began to understand more of what I was. It takes time to adjust..."
"But...but I don't want to adjust!" Doug protested. "I just want to go back! This isn't what I wished for..."
Artemis frowned. "When you say you wished...how did that happen?"
Doug bit her lip. "I...I was at work, and...a package came through...there was a bottle, and a note saying I was invited...and then I wished that I had a job I couldn't be replaced in...I don't know why I said that, it was just...they kicked me out of my old position to put someone else there, was all. And...and then I was here..."
Artemis drew a deep breath. So the Keystones weren't involved...but what of this "invitation?" There were so many strange things going on now... "Well," she said, "it seems like you got what you wished for - just not how you expected."
"H-how do you mean?"
She shrugged. "You're the Earth-goddess," she said. "There's nobody who can replace you in that role. Nobody can fire or transfer you - at least, nobody within this level of reality, and unless you start really abusing your power or neglecting your responsibilities, you don't have to worry about anybody Higher."
"But...this isn't a job!" Doug said. "It's...it's...I don't even know what it is, but it's not a...a job...I think...?"
"Only because you don't understand it yet," Artemis said. "But think about it this way - you are the Earth, Gaia. You have so many who depend on you for so much even just in the immediate, physical world, and on a deeper level you embody and define certain things in a fundamental way. So do I...so does my mother, and Venus and Mars and all the rest. It's power, purpose, and responsibility all in one; that's what being a god is about - at least, that's how mother Selene puts it."
Doug blinked. "...wait, your mother is...is a god too?" She felt the tiniest tickling of familiarity at the back of her mind, as if memories she hadn't had before were back there trying to become known to her...
Artemis smiled. "Yes. Not...not Harriet's mother, but Artemis's mother. She is also the Moon, but in different ways than me, though we share some aspects. It's...on our level of existence, the lines are a bit blurry. We are women as well, but we are not the Woman the way Venus is...it's complex. You'll understand, when you begin to adjust."
"You...you keep saying that," Doug said. "But...I don't think I want to adjust. This isn't what I wanted...can't I just go back to how I was? I never asked for this..."
The moon-girl sighed and put her arm around the older girl. "I understand," she said. "None of us asked for this, when we were only our mortal selves...it took time for me to understand why I became Artemis when I awoke, too. But...it wasn't for no reason, trust me. I...I don't even think I fully understand, yet, but I don't think we were ever not our divine selves...we just hadn't awakened yet..."
Doug balked. "You...n-no!" she stammered. "I...I'm me, I wasn't just...just some kind of larval form of someone else!"
Artemis shook her head emphatically. "No, of course not!" she said. "You were important, you always were. Everyone is, and the more you grow to understand things on a higher level, the more clearly you can see that. But...I think that's part of why you were important. Having a mortal self allows us to relate more fully to mortals. You're not just Gaia, you're one of her children; you can understand things from both perspectives. That's really important, especially when you're so directly responsible for them."
Children? Doug didn't even know how to respond to that, but part of her, somewhere down in her subconscious, responded with a kind of affection she'd never felt before. "I...I don't have any children!" she said. "I...I didn't ask for this..."
"Of course you have children," Artemis said. "Billions of them, even counting only the creatures - humans and changed - that are fully sentient people."
Doug shivered. She was still so confused...she couldn't think of how she should be reacting...but she felt her consciousness begin to expand, involuntarily; she could feel it, feel them - creatures, countless multitudes, people and plants and animals and organisms, Life itself in teeming hordes, covering every square inch of nearly two hundred million square miles of surface, filling every nook and cranny, every acre of soil and every single cubic inch of massive oceans, creatures utterly innumerable and yet distinctly individual and...and...
She flinched, shutting out the thoughts. "This can't be real," she whispered, staring off into the space-that-wasn't, wrapping her arms around herself and trying not to have a nervous breakdown. Artemis nodded and wrapped her arms around her; even though the moon-girl was a good deal younger than Doug - even Doug's current form - and consequently smaller, it felt like she was assaying the role of the big sister here. "I know," she said. "I know how you feel. You're only just discovering that you're so much bigger than you could ever have imagined, and you don't know how to react to it. That's normal. You just need time to adjust, that's all."
"I don't want to adjust!" Doug stammered, wondering how many times she needed to say this, even while a part of her back somewhere didn't fully agree. "I...I can't live like this! There's...you're making me feel things I never felt, and know things I never knew, and you're telling me I need to get used to all this and then I'll be...be this Gaia you tell me I am, but I don't want to be someone else! I'm me!" She felt herself start to tear up, and she could tell that somewhere it was beginning to rain.
Artemis hugged her tighter, shaking her head. "It's not like that," she said gently. "It's not like that at all. I promise you, you will never stop being you, any more than I-" She paused for a moment, concentrated, and suddenly wore a slightly different shape - a little more plain, in a comforting sort of way, and evidently an ordinary human... "...any more than I've stopped being Harriet," she said. "Even when you relinquish your life as Doug, even when you take on another mortal existence, you will remember being the you that was Doug, just as I remember being Hermione the fisherman's daughter in Ephesus, twenty-five hundred years ago. You are not less yourself for also being Gaia. Don't be afraid. You'll understand in time."
Doug frowned. "...relinquish?" she mused. "You...you mean I can just do that? Pass it on to...to someone else?"
Artemis shook her head, looking a little alarmed. "It's...it's not like that," she said. "Not for that. It's...when one life is ready to end. Mortals aren't made to continue on forever in this life, not even the mortal selves of the gods."
"...oh." Doug frowned, staring down at where the ground would have been if she were on Earth. "Then...then I can't...? Isn't there any way?"
"I don't know, but...I don't think there is," Artemis said, keeping an arm around her. "Doug is real, and Doug is important, but Doug is also the mortal self of Gaia, and Doug will continue to have been one of Gaia's mortal selves even after Doug is gone. Given that, how could Doug ever not be Gaia?"
Doug felt herself starting to tremble, and tried to stop it. "What...what am I supposed to do?" she asked. "I never asked for this..."
Artemis shook her head. "No, you didn't," she said. "But it's what you've been given. Power, purpose, and responsibility. There's a reason for that, even if you don't understand it yet. You can't expect to understand everything right away. I still don't understand everything myself. Even mama Selene doesn't know everything. There's whole other levels of reality above us, as far above us as we are above insects; maybe even farther. But you'll grow to understand more as you adjust. And...and I'll be here for you, okay? I know how you feel...I'll be here for you."
They stood there for a while, Artemis holding the older girl close, and Doug hugging her back. Doug tried to process everything that had happened to her, everything she'd been told...could this really be real? Could it really be true that...that she was a goddess? Was she really stuck being a goddess? Artemis had said she didn't know...said she herself didn't understand everything...could there possibly be a way for her to go back to her old life? Even just to...to...
"H-hey," she stammered. "You...when you changed shapes...that was how you looked as a human, wasn't it? H-how did you do that?"
Artemis looked up at her. "I just did," she said. "It's not a question of how."
Doug blinked. "Then...could I...?" Even if it just meant only wearing her old shape, even if she couldn't shed this new nature, it would be something...
Artemis frowned. "Well, yes," she said. "But, um...you're the first I've ever heard of a goddess having a mortal self who's...well, a man." She hesitated for a moment. "You...now that you've awakened, you might find it a bit...difficult to...to wear your human shape exactly."
Doug wasn't listening very closely to anything that came after "Well, yes." She tried to focus, tried to think of Doug the human, Doug the man, Doug who wasn't some weird Earth-goddess...
"H-hey, wait a minute!" Artemis said, catching on. But as she said it, Doug was human again.
And Doug the human was standing on the surface of another world, across a vast gulf in space.
