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too easy. Gods are never simple. ( He will not be simple.) Apathy? If that was his nature, he would be the most powerful godling in all creation. He tries on each of these anyway, placing himself in test scenarios. He picks a fight with a stronger godling and loses badly. Takes him several years to recover. Then he visits a number of hells, deliberately spending a few days in each of the ones he finds most distasteful. Alas, they are nothing compared to Sky’s worst, and just knowing he can leave whenever he wants dulls their sting. He visits the Maelstrom, and oh yes, it’s frightening, not the least because it may not actually kill him. Fall into it and suffer eternal joy, maybe, or eternal bad jokes told by a wooden-eared comedian. But the greatest likelihood of being swallowed by it is instant death, and that is something he’s craved too long to fear now.
    All this tells him one thing, though: not just any fear will harm him. Only a particular sort of fear does the trick. He feels discomfort whenever he fears actions that could have the effect of making him closer to others. It is the fear of intimacy that counteracts his nature. So he travels back to the mortal realm and becomes a whore.
    That does not go well. He stops because he detests cleaning up bodies.
    Still, he learns from the experience. Users of any kind will always be in danger from him. Too much like his old life, parasites gnawing at sore spots in his scarred vitals, but he is not Yeine; he will not abide such filth. Anyway, he’s not a nautilus; gods do not evolve through their children. He must develop his own immunity to what hurts him.
    He finds that other whores are safe from him. He does not accidentally kill them, even when he couples with them. This is because they know what it is to be used, and they share the loathing of users with him; this becomes something they can bond over. An adjustment: he becomes a pimp instead, quietly driving away the other pimps, taking good care of his girls and his boys and his ask-me-firsts in ways that no mere mortal could.
    The ones who crave drugs or drink, he heals or satisfies as they wish. He kills those users who would do more than the usual harm—and he can be in many places at once to do so. The streets he works acquire a reputation. Other whores come begging him to take over their streets, and he expands his territory cautiously. But no other godlings are interested in this particular demesne of mortal life; he has no competition. A few times mortal criminals try to kill him. Mercilessly he obliterates their organizations’ leadership and takes over, mostly because he’s bored and partly because stupidity annoys him. Thus does he accidentally end up in control of nearly all the city’s organized crime.
    Well. That’s something new.
    It is fascinating. There are intimacies to be courted here, too, the bonds that keep hard people together in a hard business, and those bonds are strong—like family, like comrades in war, like love, though leavened with generous portions of resentment and ambition and greed. He mostly lets them do whatever they like so long as they don’t hurt too many people and don’t destroy the business. Despite such careless control, the organization thrives and grows wealthy and strong.
    There’s a problem one day. The lieutenants report it and he grows curious enough to go and investigate. In one area of town where he has found no pimps to kill, there are many whores. They run themselves and have fought hard for their independence. When he approaches their spokeswoman, she curses him, tells him they would rather die than be owned. “Yes,” he says admiringly, and feels the first surge of something that must be his nature. It is too unfocused for him to grasp.
    The passion of his response surprises her into silence. (It surprises him, too.) He asks the woman what she and her comrades want. She gives him a list of demands that would make most criminal lords laugh. Her hand