New short story

So this is a new thing I bashed out today. It's a riff on an idea my and I were talking about, based on how gods seem to work in Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

The god sits alone, unseen, his head in his hands. He believes his time is finally over; perhaps he’ll be able to join his beloved wife in oblivion soon. She’s the reason anyone remembered him after his mortal death. She is how he came to be a god in the first place. His powers have dwindled to almost nothing over the centuries; nobody remembers him except historians. To the common people, the people he worked so tirelessly for, he is just another face in a portrait. Even now, powers unknown to him work to remove the commonly known portrait of him from its place. It would revoke the last bit of worship he gets from the people.

He looks up. He’s haggard, starved. It doesn’t matter. He starved as a child, starved as a man. He can starve as a god. He hates that he will go out like this, his voice silenced, his restless pen stilled. He sits, waiting, not knowing what he’s waiting for.

A man passes him, and the god feels a sudden burst of energy, like he hasn’t felt since his wife’s passing. He jumps to his feet and follows the man, still unseen, through the streets. The man is a writer, not unlike the god in his mortal life, but this man specializes in song. The burst of energy the god felt is still continuing, flowing from the man like water from a spring, and the god realizes the songwriter is thinking about him. The god follows his new wellspring of energy home, and waits patiently for the man to fall asleep.

When the songwriter, whom the god thinks of as “the Poet”, falls asleep, the god sits by his bed and tells his story. He tells of his childhood: rough and unforgiving. He tells of the war in his early manhood. He tells the Poet everything, good and bad. The memories have the quality of dreams upon waking. He isn’t sure they’re his memories or not, but he talks nevertheless.

The telling takes several nights, but the god gets stronger with the telling and feels better afterward. He stays in the Poet’s home, using his meager powers to aid him whenever possible.

This is a tolerable existence for me, the god thinks. Perhaps I can stay like this, aiding the Poet and his offspring as I can.

Years pass. The god feels himself growing stronger, but is uncertain as to why. Then something new happens. The god feels the power of hundreds praising him, remembering and knowing his name. The power grows; hundreds, thousands, millions of people praising him. One day, the god looks at himself and sees the young man he was on his wedding day. Suddenly, the god finds himself anxious for the holiday he shares with his former friends.

The holiday sacred to the god and his kin, July 4, dawns. They gather together amidst the fireworks, so like the cannons the god “acquired” from the enemy during the war. He smiles at the memory. None of the others recognize him until the General arrives. The General approaches his old friend.

“About time, Tomcat.”

A pair of thrones appear, and the god assumes his old place at the General’s right hand.

Another god appears, a rival in life and in the afterlife. He stares at the General and his companion in disbelief. He’s been working for years to destroy the man before him.

The General smiles. “Mr. Jefferson? Is something wrong?”

Jefferson glares at his rival, sitting in the seat he’s been occupying every year for the past two centuries.

“I thought they forgot your name,” Jefferson says.

“They remembered,” the god says. “I remembered.”

And in the voice of the millions who’d praised him, the millions who’d sung along to the Poet’s songs, the millions who now knew his name, the god sang five words.

“My name is Alexander Hamilton.”