Novel Thoughts: What Work Brought You to Tears? - Part 2
Welcome back to Novel Thoughts. This week, our newest Assistant Editor, Lu Humbug, shares a creative work and the effect it still has on him to this day…
What is a god? Since the beginning of stories, this has been a constant question. Is a god an infallible metaphysical creature? Is it a very flawed and very powerful physical creature? Is it just a force, indiscernible from the wind caressing your cheek on a spring day? It all depends on the story, the world, the belief system you’re engaging with. However, especially when we talk of fabulist settings where gods are provably real, there’s one question I have become obsessed with: what do gods and believers owe each other?
The God of Arepo is a story whose telling first started on Tumblr in January of 2018. This is not the most portentous of beginnings, considering it was living on the same site as Superwholock and The Lorax Sexyman, but we do not get to choose the nature of our births. A writing prompt account, writing-prompt-s, posted a simple seed:
Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.
I’m sure many people wrote flash fiction based on this prompt, and I am sure many of those stories are also good, perhaps even soul-refracting; but they are not The God of Arepo. That came first from user sadoeuphemist, who met the writing prompt by gifting us the story of Arepo, a farmer who decides to build a small stone cairn for a god to inhabit. And it works! A god arrives, and mourns that it can do nothing to help Arepo, for it is the god of small beauties and ephemeral joys. Arepo doesn’t care; he tends the temple in tandem with his fields. He improves the temple, makes it just big enough that he can duck inside. This is where Arepo crawls to after being wounded by a passing-through war, to die in the arms of the god that came to stay. Our god is left despondent; what have they done to deserve this attention. They did not help.
Then, ciiriianan arrives to drop a second movement in: years after Arepo has died, a woman named Sora is passing by and notices the overgrown and underloved roadside temple. She takes time to pull away the weeds, cut off the climbing ivy, and then notices the skeleton of Arepo. Sora asks how she can help honor this final, dead priest. The god asks her to bury him beneath their altar, but then balks, saying they cannot do anything for this woman. They despair, for they were not able to help Arepo during the storms, the famines, the wars. This does not stop Sora, who upon hearing the god say they were unimportant, disagrees. Her final words to the god were “I think you’re the god of something very useful. You are the god of Arepo.”
Finally, stu-pot adds our final movement. Generations pass and the god is left alone, in their little temple, contemplating the cruelty of the world. They are confused by attending to things for the sake of doing them, that there is no profit or benefit in cleaning up an unknown temple, burying an unknown believer, believing at all. If the gods let famines, wars, floods, droughts happen, what’s the point?
“Humans. Foolish. Bizarre. Virtuous. Senseless. Wonderful. Hopeless.”
And then Arepo shows back up, and greets the God of Every Humble Beauty in the World as the old friend they are. In the time that has passed, Arepo has ascended to being a god himself: of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust. When Arepo’s old friend grows excited for him needing a big temple, with many worshippers, in the city far away, Arepo denies. He is content, in all things, to stay here, in the little temple he built for this god.
“Why would you want to live here?” the God of Every Humble Beauty asks.
“I’m the god of unbreakable bonds and everlasting friendships. And you--” says Arepo, settling into the shade of his friend, “--are the god of Arepo.”
You can go and read this whole post still, and also the award-winning comic adaption of it by Reimena Yee. It ended up as my contribution for this topic both because it did make me cry when I read it first, but that it continues to unlock something in me that makes me break into a weeping mess. It is not about the godliness, though that is a draw to me. It isn’t even just the devotion and kindness offered freely, though that is a big part. It isn’t even that random acts of kindness keep being done for this little house god, though I am always susceptible to kindness given freely.
What always shoots a bolt through my heart when I read The God of Arepo is its insistence that the ephemeral and transient are not just important, but beautiful aspects of our lives. The god-guest doesn’t understand why anyone would love its domain, a domain of small things changing in small ways. Yet, that is exactly what keeps Arepo, Sora, and anyone we do not see coming to this little altar, keeping this house god alive even when they aren’t being visited. We are those small things that change in small ways.
Our individual time on Earth may be short, may be filled with rotten people doing rotten things at scopes we cannot fathom changing. So many of us are victims of circumstance because we weren’t born powerful, or rich, or otherwise silverspooned. There is an acceptance that must be made, that our ephemerality is inevitable, that we must do what we can while we are here. Our kindnesses, our acts of charity, our joyous muscles of progress keep working far beyond us.
Arepo’s unwavering kindness may allow him to transcend, but he was already numinous when the story began. With what limited time and resources were available, Arepo gave of himself without losing himself. He let a god live with him not because he needed faith in his life, not because he was directionless, but because if gods are real they deserve kindnesses, too. Not devotional kindnesses, but interpersonal ones. Even the strangest, seemingly untouchable creatures need connection. That is what makes me cry, every time. Together, with kindness, is the only way forward.
