Traces of the Gods - 1
The elder who had stepped outside for a moment returned into the house, bringing a swarm of unidentified flying creatures with him.
What the hell are those?
At first I thought they were just oversized bugs. There was a big tree right beside the house, and insects near plants were ordinary enough.
A closer look proved me wrong. They were about the size of a thumb, winged, yet their appearance was unmistakably humanlike. I almost felt guilty for mistaking them for bugs even for a second. Something was flying around, so of course I assumed insects.
"Here—"
"God, god."
"There, over there."
The elder tried to say something as he led more than a dozen of the little flyers inside, but before he could finish they shot straight toward us.
More precisely, they shot straight toward Tanian and latched onto him in a chattering cluster.
"Haha. What unusual company."
Even Tanian, startled by the sudden assault, broke into a smile—this was clearly a first for him too. Where else would you get thumb-sized children clinging to your hair and shoulders? It belonged in a fairy tale.
So what exactly are these things? They didn’t seem hostile, so I left them alone, but I still needed to know what we were dealing with.
"Children, that is no way to treat a guest. Come off him at once."
"No, no."
"Uncle Enen’s energy… long time… missed it."
The elder sighed and scolded the swarm, yet the little creatures only shook their heads vigorously and burrowed deeper into Tanian. What had started as simple clinging had become full-scale nest-building inside his hair and clothes.
"I don’t mind. Curious children wanting to play—playing with children is a joy."
Tanian, stuck awkwardly between them and offering a gentle smile, spoke so softly that the elder sighed again and stepped back. He could hardly tear the tiny things off by force, and the person involved said it was fine, so there was nothing to do but let it go.
"Still, who are these children? Calling him ‘Uncle Enen’ suggests they are hardly ordinary."
Tanian voiced the question on all our minds. Thumb-sized bodies, wings, and Enen suddenly demoted to “uncle.” Even setting everything else aside, that particular address had to make Tanian flinch.
I couldn’t place them at all. They looked like some other race, yet I had never heard of one like this. Even dwarves—said to be smaller than humans—were nowhere near finger-sized. Dwarves didn’t have wings either, and they certainly weren’t this adorable.
"Have you ever heard of fairies?"
At the elder’s words Tanian’s eyes went wide.
Oh.
I don’t think I’d ever seen him look that astonished.
Before Enen’s Dawn Church achieved religious supremacy, countless gods and churches had proliferated across the continent.
Among the swarm of deities that rose and fell like warring states was a goddess named Constantina, worshipped as the deity of plants and trees. She was also the mother of the elven race and the one who gifted them the World Tree. A gentle goddess who preferred nurturing nature and the elves over expanding her own domain.
Because of that temperament she was among the first to bow her head as Enen’s church marched toward victory, and the peaceful surrender left the Dawn Church respectful of Constantina’s traditions and of the elves—a true win-win. The Dawn Church itself even treasured the World Tree as a divine legacy.
"The beings that communed with the elves through that World Tree were the spirits and the fairies."
The moment he heard the word “fairies,” Tanian launched into an excited torrent of explanation that left listeners breathless. Lucky for us the topic was actually interesting; if he had dumped something dull at that pace I would have fled.
"Spirits used the World Tree as a gate to cross from the spirit realm into the human world, while fairies were born from the World Tree’s branches and made the tree their home."
According to Tanian, the World Tree was a blessing of the gods, and the age when it stood was a beautiful era when creatures close to the divine lived side by side with humans.
To the clergy it must have sounded like a dream—being able to share the world with beings near the gods simply by means of a tree the gods had left behind. Living proof of the divine, right before their eyes.
But—
"Didn’t the World Tree burn long ago?"
"……."
Later’s quiet remark made Tanian, who had been speaking with such joy, hang his head in heavy silence.
The World Tree that burned so spectacularly at the end of the Apels Empire. Even though it was the legacy of a different god, to the Dawn Church it was still the gift of a deity who had gracefully accepted defeat.
In other words it also symbolized the Dawn Church’s victory and its clemency—until the Apels Empire set it ablaze. That was why the pope of the day excommunicated the Apels emperor, and one of the reasons the Holy Kingdom stayed friendly with the Kpelleofen Empire that later destroyed Apels.
"Because of that atrocity the spirits could no longer appear in the human world, and the fairies lost their home and were said to have gone extinct…"
Tanian finished softly and carefully stroked the fairy clinging to his shoulder. The little creature seized his finger and nuzzled its cheek against it.
The saint’s expression melted instantly under the affectionate display of a legendary being. Small as they were, they really were cute.
"You know the history well."
The elder, who had been listening quietly, nodded.
"When the World Tree burned, the spirits vanished and the fairies lost their home. No new fairies have been born since that day."
The way he looked at them was the look of someone watching orphans left homeless by a natural disaster—full of pity and sorrow.
"Ordinarily these children should have perished as well, but thankfully we were able to fashion a temporary refuge."
"You recreated the World Tree?"
Tanian, still playing with the fairies on his fingers, brightened at once. If a new World Tree had truly appeared, that would be astonishing—
"It is far too meager to call a recreation. Spirits cannot use it as a gate, and no new fairies are born from it. It is just enough for the surviving fairies to live."
The firm answer brought the heavy look back to Tanian’s face.
Of course. Mortals cannot remake a gift from the gods. That much was obvious.
"We attached the sacred relics the goddess left behind to a tree and forced it to mimic the World Tree. These children have been barely hanging on with what little divine power remains, so of course they would rejoice at someone steeped in a god’s presence."
Hearing the concrete story made the fairies clinging to Tanian look different. It was like hungry orphans in an orphanage welcoming an adult who had come to donate food.
Poor little things.
All of this was Apels’s fault. Why burn a perfectly innocent World Tree?
Once Tanian and the elder finished their explanations, the party’s gazes toward the fairies turned abruptly gentle. They were already small and cute enough to win people over; add a tragic past and they were tailor-made to tug at the heartstrings.
Yet the fairies did not grant their touch to just anyone. They went wild for the saint Tanian’s hands, but they dodged the hands of ordinary people who possessed no holy power as if those hands were poison.
"I guess they don’t like me."
Luise, rejected by a fairy, wilted, but what could anyone do? Considering the harm humans had done them, it was only natural.
—or so I was about to console her.
"Hm? Hmmm?"
Until one fairy started hovering near me.
The same fairy that had primly avoided Luise’s hand suddenly tilted its head and drifted closer. Yet the moment I reached out it darted away; the moment I pulled my hand back it edged near again. I had no idea what it was doing. It wasn’t as if we were playing hard to get.
"Does Big Brother like them?"
"Doesn’t seem that way."
I shook my head slightly at Luise’s envious murmur. If it liked me it would have glued itself on like it did with Tanian, not kept measuring the distance.
After circling me for quite a while the fairy finally pointed and cried out.
"Sky Auntie! Sky Auntie!"
?
Auntie?
Confusion. Did fairies have a habit of swapping genders when they addressed people?
Before I could resolve the puzzle, every fairy’s gaze locked onto me.
"Auntie? Auntie?"
"Really? Really?"
"Me, Auntie, long time!"
They locked on hard.
Even the ones that had been circling Tanian—or sitting right on him—came flying at me. Suddenly more than a dozen of them diving in was genuinely startling. So this was how Tanian had felt earlier.
"Auntie, yes. Real Auntie energy, yes."
And the fairy that had first called me Sky Auntie had already latched onto my clothes.
"Popular with the children, aren’t you? You’ll make a wonderful father."
"Haha…"
No one had seen this coming, so Margeta offered an awkward joke. She, like Luise, had tried and failed to touch a fairy; I wondered if the faint note of jealousy I thought I heard was just my imagination.
"Here, on body, here. Auntie energy, here!"
Regardless, the fairy kept patting my chest and fretting. Only then did I understand why.
Unlike Tanian, whose entire body had become a playground, these fairies were interested only in my torso. Creatures sensitive to divine power mentioning “sky” could only mean—
Eternal Blue Sky.
No matter how I turned it over, that was the only divine connection I had.
Auntie…
So Eternal Blue Sky was a goddess. A female sky deity was a little unexpected. I had vaguely pictured something like Uranus or Zeus; that was pure prejudice.
"Auntie energy, not stuck. Can take off."
"Lingering energy, lingering energy."
"Take it? Take it?"
Meanwhile a rather ominous conversation was unfolding among the fairies.
They could remove a god’s power? Something professional priests had tried only to end up coughing blood?
For real?
Unexpected fortune from the most unlikely place made my chest swell.
Fairies were beings intimately tied to the gods, after all. On a completely different level from mere mortals; they might casually accomplish what mortals could not.
"Children, what are you suddenly talking about?"
The sight of fairies who normally avoided humans clinging to someone who was clearly no priest left the elder staring blankly. He finally recovered his wits and hurried over to question them.
"This person, has Sky Auntie energy, we, can take it."
They chattered at the elder like children throwing a tantrum.
"But, we, nothing to give. Mama said, if you want something, you must pay a price."
"We, nothing left, all burned."
"Mama, can’t keep Mama’s word. Mama, miss Mama…"
"Mama, Mama…"
"Ch-children?"
The complaints turned into tears calling for their mother, and even the elder was at a loss. If a fairy’s mother meant either the World Tree or the goddess Constantina, neither was someone they could meet easily.
"Hey."
I spoke up to the fairies who had suddenly burst into tears. I might not be able to give them their mother, but I could give them something else.
"If you can take it, go ahead and take it."
The fairies who had been weeping so bitterly rounded their eyes and fluttered their wings.
"Really? Really?"
"Can take? All of it? All?"
"Yes."
I meant every word. If anything I was the one who should be paying them; please just take it.
Better to owe the fairies than sit around waiting for Eternal Blue Sky’s forgiveness.