The Goddess rose to her feet, ushering Julia to step outside of the atrium's central circle, then began to dance. The rhythm was simple, a step, a clap, and a shuffle, and she did it several times along the edge. At the end of every other clap she would shuffle her foot onto one of the thirteen stars surrounding and Julia realized she was entering a code.
When the dance finished she'd pressed all thirteen stars with her foot in a specific order and they lit up. She then took a bag of red sand and smeared a letter 'E' into the center of the circle. She gestured for Julia to join her and Julia complied. The circle descended as the Goddess spoke.
"After the wolf killed our people, I encountered a place I had never been before. It was strange, full of life yet cold. I learned many things there, including the existence of this place. After accepting the name Hecate, I decided that this would be my temple."
They descended deeper and deeper, lit by long columns of light. Julia watched the Goddess. She was shorter than Julia, prematurely stooped at a young age by tribal life. The elevator stopped in front of a huge steel door. Julia felt a chill in her bones.
"Mama, what is this?" she whispered.
"God," Hecate replied.
She opened the huge steel doors with a wave of her hand. They receded to reveal rows upon rows of chemical storage barrels. An endless corridor of chemicals, all unlabeled and unsecured. Julia felt her blood go cold.
"Within this chamber and the chambers below it are the most deadly biological weapons the old world left us. Smallpox, malaria, the bubonic plague, anthracnose, agent orange," the Goddess turned to look Julia in the eyes as she spoke, pontificating warmly about the room full of death they had entered. "But this is not all that lies underneath Ouroboros. For every weapon there is a beneficial chemical. Pesticides. Insulin. Albuterol. I say this is God, because within these walls there is death but there is also life. Boundless life."
As Hecate gestured to drums and drums of what was likely DDT Julia looked at her, really, truly looked at her. Despite being years older than Julia and being hunched over like an old woman Hecate was actually vibrant and full of life. She seemed young and healthy. By a trick of her face she appeared to be younger than Julia, even. Her wide-set eyes and round cheeks gave her a childlike appearance, and as Julia studied her she came to the conclusion that if it weren't for her seemingly-immedicable stoop Hecate could easily be confused for Julia's younger sister. Despite her suffering she still had a deep-rooted innocence that she hid in her role as Goddess behind a thick curtain of dreadlocks.
"Half of it has soured, lost its capacity to kill or heal to the entropy of time, but half is more than enough. This is the source of my power, the well I draw from when I want to exercise control over the pitiable tribes of the wasteland," Hecate's words seemed hollow and staged. She sounded completely unlike herself. Julia realized that she had prepared this speech. She was trying to impress Julia! This woman who had the authority to poison the entire wasteland three times over was trying to look smart in front of her favorite daughter. Julia was humbled. She listened patiently to Hecate's description of the secret vault beneath Ouroboros, asking pertinent questions until she arrived at the most pertinent question of all.
"Mama, why did you bring me here?"
"Because, my child, as I have done, so will you," and with that Julia became the second most powerful person in Ouroboros.