Gods die. Just like everything else. Perhaps the live longer than the rest of us, and perhaps that makes them more special. Perhaps. They still die and those of us who spend our lives revering them mourn them as would our own family.
There is one god in particular who died recently. They werent one who took any particular interest in us. They just sat there. They watched us, that most common of godly endeavours, but they didnt interact. Didnt interfere. Even when inundated with prayers or supplicants, they said and did nothing for us. We should be used to that, but when our people are being slaughtered in their thousands, clearly visible to these beings, its hard to believe they could sit there and do nothing.
This god, who we had named Anya for reason I never learned was an icon for my people. They werent specific to us, of course. Everyone in the world knew of them but they had their own name, their own stories. For us, Anya was the one who sent us our royalty. They knew which in the royal line of succession, unbroken for many generations, would be fit to rule and which ones wouldnt. So when someone met an early death, or one of the Queens failed to produce a child, that meant that Anya had decided who our next monarch would be.
It was rare for Anya to come to the planet. They spent most of their time on one of our moons. We dont know why. The myths, or history, paint that moon as a terrible place. Where sinners are sent upon death to account for their actions; it isnt a place of punishment – that comes later. Its a place of explanation. Anya sits in judgement. If you are able to explain to them the reasons behind your actions, you move on to a new life. If you cannot, you are sent to a place of punishment. A place of eternal pain. With Anya, after your death, you only get one shot at moving on. Once youve been judged as needing punishment, you arent able to try again.
So what happens when a god dies? Who do they sit before? Who judges their explanations?
No one replaced Anya. At least, not that we have noticed. That moon sits empty. Some people have decided that we should go up there ourselves. See if Anya left anything behind. To some this is heresy. Looting a corpse. A divine corpse. We believe that another god will not take those actions lightly and will punish us all for those peoples actions. Fortunately their attempts have not yet borne fruit, but they keep trying despite the protestations.
But that is another story and isnt relevant to Anya. Anya died when I was a small child. Before I had even learned their name. Before I started taking an interest. Lots of people my age, or around my age, have similar stories.
Anya died when I was seven, and was the first god to die for many hundreds of years. In fact, for much of that time, Anya was the only god any of us ever knew. The death of the god named Kirtuk was the most recent before that and, so the story goes, there were many others who surrounded that one. After that death, they all left and Anya arrived soon after.
Others have come and gone, staying for short periods, but only Anya has stayed. Only Anya became our god.
But, of course, even gods die and it was that death, and their fall towards our planet, that dragged me and everyone I knew into a frenzy. Anya was our god. They divined our history, even by doing nothing. Sitting on the moon, watching from afar, acting in ways we fail to understand. If they were to land anywhere else, it would ignite all kinds of animosity – not only between us and whoever they landed on, but between ourselves too. Could we have been wrong this entire time? At least, thats the argument.
We watched that corpse as we grew up. First as it slowly teetered off the throne they had been sitting on, a throne carved even before the days of Kirtuk. Before records even started. Then as it slowly fell away from the moon, tumbling end over end heading towards our planet, their final resting place.
It took fifteen years before Anya finally landed. Crashed. We had been preparing the whole time, of course. A grave had been dug, the ceremony had been planned out. By the time I was 20, the only thing that was left to do – and I had been employed to help with it – was to find a way to bring the body from wherever it landed to the grave site.
The main issue we had with this was trying to estimate just how big Anya was. Not just their height and width, but how heavy as well. We had vehicles which could carry houses, and were able to reinforce several of them but we wouldnt know until the body actually landed whether it would be enough. And that was assuming Anya would land somewhere in our territory. As the body got closer, the number people assured us that it was more and more likely, but they couldnt tell us for sure until the body was actually here.
I remember watching at night as Anyas moon circled overhead, seeing the black smudge that was their body floating in space. There was a time when the corpse couldnt be seen at all. As it drifted away from the moon, it got lost in the blackness of space, and it was only in those rare orbits where one of the moons was directly behind the corpse when it was visible again. The younger me loved trying to guess how big it would look against the moon and I would have ink marks on my windows where I thought it would show up.
I grew up watching Anya fall from their throne. Tumble through the sky towards us. I wasnt the only one, and my ideals about Anya and what their death meant were also not the only ones. Many other people, from our nation and others, saw this as an omen. A dire prediction of bad things bound for us. For a lot of people, Anya was the only god we knew. They were a steady, stable part of our lives, our parents lives. My parents told me once that they remembered their grandparents talk about stories told to them from their own grandparents about the days when more than one god sat in our skies, or even on our planet. Gods who would interact with us. Who would help us, or help our enemies. Gods who would plunder our crops and take our wealth. Or who would protect us through storms, shelter us from earthquakes.
I cant imagine days like that. The idea that gods would spend their time busying themselves with our petty pursuits seems unreasonable and farfetched. Anya was the ideal god. They sat above us. They watched us and when the time came, they judged us. We cant escape Anyas gaze while they sit in the sky. They can see all of us all the time. If they came to earth they couldnt see all of us all the time. They could miss things.
But now no one sat on that throne. No one could see us. Judge us. We were alone.
There is a second sun in the sky. Anyas body is on fire as they careen through the atmosphere. The people who know these things said that this would happen and it was normal. It wasnt an omen, or a judgement. We listened to those words. Took them as the commentary they were. I, and a few others, even believed them. I admit, it took some effort, but since I was there, on the ground, I didnt have a choice.
Other people did not believe them. Theyre behind us somewhere, but theyre getting closer with each minute. They arent just protesting anymore. Theyve become violent. The governments – not just ours – are calling them terrorists. Condemning the deaths theyve already caused and the damage theyve done. The grave site was bombed not too long ago. Now it will bury more than just Anya. The pit that had been dug is almost a kilometer deep. At the bottom of it are a dozen heroes who sacrificed themselves so that the pit wasnt caved in. My belief is that they will join Anya in whatever awaits them on the other side. They will live on, in some form, in the afterlife presented to the gods.
Its funny how things change. The terrorists are now an army fighting the terrorists of our neighouring nation. The latter had also taken comments about Anya being on fire as an omen and were coming to destroy the body. They didnt know what to do – as we didnt either – when the corpse landed straddling our borders. The terrorists on our side of the border werent going to let the body of our divine god be desecrated by those others, so they started fighting while we loaded the body onto the vehicles we had prepared. It was a close call, but our over preparations had been enough and we were able to move the corpse with just what we had come with.
Despite everything else happening around us, our Anya has been laid to rest. The eulogy was delivered from a separate location to the grave, just in case someone decided that it was a better idea to remove our religious leaders.
The war is not escalating, thankfully. Both armies have been disavowed by their respective nations and those who have been left alive have been scattered to the winds. The moon is still empty and Anyas grave has become a place of pilgrimage. I dont live far from the site. I see people all the time come through town on their way to see the final resting place of a god. People from all over the world, in fact. Some, even, who were born after the funeral. Who never saw Anya sit on their throne.
So what happens to us now? Anya would know some of us. Can they still pass judgement after their own death? What about the people who were born after? Are they still judged? Our religious leaders are saying that, in the absence of a god, that we get to judge each other. Maybe that is the way to go. After all, there are no gods anymore. Its only us.