A Meeting With the Goddess Who Keeps Asking You to Save the World by Lara Eiffe (16, Ireland)*

she finds you in the empty movie theatre, the hazy one that’s left you stumbling more than once.  

“you can be more than a story locked away,” she says, face ghosting before yours like a moth pressed up against the inside of a lightbulb. there’s a shroud between these worlds, some barrier dividing the slurry of magic in hers from the fresh air of yours. you hum a pathetic note, something, (anything) to get her off your back.  

she always did turn to the heaven-scorched ones.

“you could meet the end of the world and look it in the eye and smile.” ​

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you study her; the gossamer hair framing the sides of her face, the delicate way in which she flexes her hands as if trying to choke the air. you study her, and you say, “my hands are still scarred from that time i gripped the sword the wrong way around.” 

you study her and you make up excuses only she doesn’t want to hear it so it’s like you’ve said nothing at all. 

she takes a second to look at the sticky-sweet floor, the greyness of it bouncing off her vision like a loose penny. “the clouds are heavy-eyed now,” she says, voice picked apart by all those things you can’t bear to think of saving anymore. “the clouds are heavy-eyed now and the townspeople bruise too easily.” 

your hand comes up to ghost at the side of your head. “the townspeople have dragged me through the streets by the hair and done their best to burn me at the stake. they will survive.” 

“they did not mean it,” the goddess says, green eyes liquid, dip of her neck into her collarbone quixotic. “the light of you can be blinding.” 

you scrape a nail up your thigh, (pallid flesh, have you always been so cold?) only to make sure your skin still feels soft to the touch. you’re scared they’ll immortalize you in a statue for good one of these days, stone hands, stone eyes, stone mouth. “but, i never asked for that,” you half-gasp out, throat raw and aching “you’re the one who made me like that. it’s your fault.” 

the goddess sits back, tip of her head sea-tossed. “oh everything’s your fault when you’re trying to save the world. have you ever thought of the children?” 

“have you ever thought of me? i was a child too.” 

you both stop when the movie starts to play. it’s something to do with dragons and you smile your whole way through it, even if it’s only so you don’t cry.

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