God

This post does not, in fact, have anything to do with religion.

It is, rather, another exercise excerpt - 13 - where the assignment is to write something from the omniscient POV of God, or something like it. I chose to do this in the world of Butterfly's Poison (my most recent novel project). Technically the POV is "Goddess" as most of the "civilized" human nations believe in a monotheistic deity named Aline:


The people of this world are on the verge of discovering chaos theory. When they do, they may find they understand the order around them much better: elements of randomness, choice, will against whim, all normalize into a gorgeous pattern when studied at a distance. These people are like the islands they inhabit, a countless number adrift in a sea, close enough to touch but never doing so.

A professional astronomer on royal retainer studies her subject through a lens ground by diligent Pirie craftsmen. She watches the heavens dance and dances with them, luminous with that fleeting brush with infinity. Her apprentice is pocketing one of her measuring devices while she cannot see and wondering how much a fence will pay him for it – not a third of its value, it turns out, because the man is constitutionally designed to cheat callow young merchant’s sons who have never felt the fire of wonder.

She will notice it is missing in a few days, and that only because she needs it. He will be filled with a sudden – and to him, inexplicable – urge to tell the truth as those myopic blue eyes blink in worry. She’s too old for him, but impossible not to love.

“Must have been thrown out by accident,” he’ll say, squelching it.