Athena makes the other gods jealous with her ingenious new invention Athena was bored of the other gods. All they cared about was gossip and entertainment; none of them wanted to sit and listen to her talk wisely or play Trivial Pursuit Architecture Edition. All the nymphs and spirits were all so boring, ghosting around the woods to play lighthearted games of tag. Athena would spend the day up in her godly workshop. This workshop was nothing like Hephaestus’s forge, full of loud noises, fire, and white hot metal—no, not at all. Athena liked to call her neat, air-conditioned space The Laboratory. And so Athena would spend all the time she could working on blueprints or writings or solving Mount Olympus Times crossword puzzles in The Laboratory. But she was not motivated by anything lately. Designing the machine that wrote the Mount Olympus Times had been a challenge, but that had been millennia ago, and she felt that her brain had not been fully stimulated for some time. She would simply sip her hot ambrosia and do the crossword, then pace around, making a 3-D model of this and extracting the DNA of that. Of course she was not lonely. No, what a silly idea. She enjoyed her time in The Laboratory. And she didn’t care what the other gods posted about her on social media, or that in the game Battle of Godz she was portrayed as a little freckled girl in pigtails and a school uniform. But sometimes, late at night, she knew she did care, and she would wish that there were beings out there somewhere that understood what it was like to always need to know why. People who would play Trivial Pursuit Architecture Edition and admire her work up in The Laboratory. People who would think of her as a great, wise being. People who would name cities after her. People who would ask for her architectural advice. People who would design a giant statue of her in a temple and put it in a great, prominent spot overlooking the city. They would worship her too. Set a new standard for intelligent life, and make gods look like, well, gods. And so the idea of the human was born. The Oracle always told the truth, and the Oracle was kind of freaky, and the Oracle didn’t make satyr ears behind the other gods’ heads when they took a family picture. One day, while in her workshop, Athena decided to make a diagram of what this “human” would look like. And how it would function. And so on and so forth. Athena got caught up in this idea, working late into the night, her mind racing, designing the complexities of her ideal being. Of course she would never show this idea of a “human” to the other gods. They would laugh, even make fun of her, and Athena was the god of wisdom. She would never stand for being ridiculed and would avoid this at all costs. *          *          * Apollo wore sunglasses, the lenses a cool, reflective gold, and a thick gold chain around his neck. His hair was long and blond, stirring slightly in the breeze. He wore a deep black T-shirt that read MUSE ROCK in gold letters. For pants he wore long, shiny gold bell-bottomed jeans and elevated black shoes with a solid block of gold on the bottom. Since Apollo’s shoes were god size, the gold blocks weighed about 400 pounds. You couldn’t tell this by the easy way he strode over to a door of fire with a lopsided sign above it that read Apollo’s Place. The door did not send out tendrils of flame like normal fire but rather was contained by some invisible force. The door was set into a giant dome of gold that reflected the sun so strongly that if you were a mere nymph or ungodly being, you would disintegrate upon such a sight. Apollo liked the way the lopsided sign looked in contrast to the symmetry of the dome. He also liked how gold it all looked. In case you have not yet noticed, Apollo liked all things gold. Apollo thrust each door of fire open with both hands and entered into a cavernous space with green mist swirling all around, “Eye of the Oracle” blasting. Apollo was in a good mood, sauntering over to the edge of what seemed to be a bottomless pit. He flipped off the rim of the chasm, landing perfectly on a circular yoga mat that was positioned on a solid gold column rising up from the gloom. He snatched a remote that seemed to have just appeared in thin air and turned on a huge flatscreen TV. He went to his godly yoga profile and selected his favorite video. After he finished his yoga, he decided to ask the Oracle something. Of course, Apollo was the Oracle, but everyone referred to the Oracle as if it were someone else, for Apollo and the Oracle were just so different. For instance, the Oracle always told the truth, and the Oracle was kind of freaky, and the Oracle didn’t make satyr ears behind the other gods’ heads when they took a family picture. But anyway, back to the story. Apollo took off his sunglasses, closed his eyes, inhaled some volcanic gas, and passed out. As he passed out, he had decided to ask how to get his newest music video to one million views. At the time, when there were so few beings on the earth, and the majority of the population was nature spirits who shunned anything that involved electronics, such a number was huge. Almost instantaneously his eyelids shot open, and with bright green eyes, he recited, “Go to The Laboratory. Bring the other gods.” Of course this was before it became popular for oracles to tell the future in the form of insanely complicated rhymes. Apollo eventually woke

The narrator has a close call on the thin ice of a forest stream I rubbed my mittens together to bring some warmth to my cold hands. The temperature had dropped below what the thermometer could read. But I still loved the winter wonderland of the forest; no blizzard could deter me from the great and gorgeous nature that surrounded my warm, wooden home. For this reason, on this icy dusk, I had ventured outside, bundled in a cozy yarn-knit scarf (which barely deterred the swirling snow) instead of curling up next to the fire with a good book and a steaming cup of hot chocolate. I caught the snowflakes that floated down from the infinite, navy midnight sky. I felt free as nature engulfed me. Some caribou nibbled at a small olive-colored clump of moss near the stream; others pranced around in the distance. A vivid aurora colored the sky behind them. Bright, shiny stars twinkled across the transparent, frozen streams. I stepped in pure white snow. Icicles hung on shivering pine-tree branches, reflecting the pale moon, and I walked slowly and carefully to the bank of the river that winds around the area. Wanting to test the ice, I tugged a branch from a dying bush and poked it. It seemed hard enough. I felt a quiver of fear, being at the banks of where my brother died. The dark sky did nothing to comfort me, only frightened me. I gingerly stepped on the slippery ice, one foot after the other. I squinted to try and make out how solid the ice in front of me was, but it was too dark. I stepped once. Twice. Three times. No ice had fallen. I started to skate through the frozen stream, humming and gliding on the ice, until there was a small rock in the way. I tried to avoid it, but I wobbled over the slippery ice and my body weight crashed into the already fragile ice. My hands groped into the frigid air for something, but I found a branch too late as my feet touched cold, frigid water. With a splash, half of my body was submerged in the icy river. My gut nagged to me: I told you so. Death by this river has happened before. Oh my poor brother, is this how he felt, floating away in the water? I thought again, Well, how are you going to get out of this one? I held onto the branch with all my might, my mind racing through old memories. A fading picture of my mother and father holding me and my brother tightly next to a fire, telling us something. I thought harder. “Don’t panic if you ever fall in the stream.” “Grab something and push yourself out if you can. If you can’t . . .” The ending evaded my memory, but it didn’t matter much. I knew what I had to do. Remembering my mother’s warning, I slowly pulled myself a bit closer to land. Holding the branch in one hand, I hoisted myself up, never letting go of the branch. I rested my elbows on a rock, my lower body out of the water, except for my feet. I felt only two things. Pain and cold. I pushed myself up against the tree trunk, my legs numb. The less pain I feel, the better, I thought. So I took a step towards the west of the moon, where my home lay. Another step. I felt a strange dull pain go through my weary body. The entire sky had blackened into the abyss, only lit by the pure moon, so light and fair. I took a few more steps, not sure whether I could go on. A few more. I crumbled onto the same snow I had walked on as I had gone out to see the wilderness. Now, it seemed that my destiny was to die in my beloved forest. I sighed as I crept away from the fox, her ears twitching. I grabbed the tree trunk and pulled myself to my feet. I realized that I needed to take off my pants and socks, and wrap the scarf around my legs. I hobbled toward home, the moon guiding me to safety. The fox followed me until I left the region of her home. Seeing my cabin in the distance, I ran my last few steps. More, a few more! A few more is so much. I grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it open, the warmth radiating to me the moment I stepped in.