So I was supposed to be working on the next bonus chapter for Surprise Guest, but I had another idea I wanted to get down quick. Then 'quick' turned into a fourish day event, using every available minute and some I stole from doing actual productive adult stuff (sorry to my husband and kids...)

'Quick' also turned into a story that's north of 18k words pre-editing so... yeah. It's much too long to add here, so I'm going to give you guys a bit of an appetizer, and if you're interested, keep an eye out for it in my stories. I'll be starting a new one titled 'Flawed Goddess' sometime soon where I will be posting it. I kept adding edits as I was going, so there's a lot of work I need to do on it, but hopefully it won't take long.

For now, here's a sneak peak!

As always, thanks for all the love and happy reading!

Lucy ignored the yelling happening nearby as she focused on her work. Why they had to argue so loudly she would never understand. It wasn't like they hadn't had problems with other pantheons in the past, so why were they getting so worked up? As one of them broke a table against the wall, again, Lucy wrapped up her cloth and thread and left the main hall to head for the garden.

It wasn't that she didn't care, but Lucy was lacking in a lot of areas when it came to her godhood. She was the youngest, for starters. She'd also been an orphan since she was a child, and she'd never had a proper teacher. Their pantheon was more cutthroat than most, so instead of helping her figure things out, the rest of the gods and goddesses had done just enough to make sure she could fend for herself without dying.

Her parents had died in the previous war. While she'd been visiting them near the battlefield in between fighting, they'd been killed with a sneak attack. The other gods had arrived in time to save her, but she'd already been hurt. During the scuffle, something had hit her across the face, cutting her below one eye and scarring her. Alone, and now damaged, the other gods had taken the opportunity to sway her parents' followers away from her instead of trying to help her. She'd grown up alone and learned only what she was able to teach herself, which hadn't been enough.

When she had come of age, she'd received a large black tapestry, a spool of golden thread, and been given the title Lucinda, goddess of the Stars and the Night Sky.

At first, she'd been thrilled. Her mother had been the former keeper of the stars, and she had thought that taking the position might bring her closer to her mother's followers so she might learn more about her. That was her goal, anyway, until she realized the true gravity of what the gods had done.

Without guidance, Lucy had matured too slowly. The humans that were alive by the time she was able to visit their world had no knowledge of her parents or her mother's role as keeper of the stars. Being in charge of the night sky was an honor to her, but to the humans, her role meant nothing. Her stars did glow, but not as much as the moon, and since they didn't help the humans in any significant way, it was hard for her to find followers. Why bother wasting offerings on a goddess who didn't provide anything useful or valuable to their lives?

No followers meant no power in the human world. No followers meant no way to interact with the human world. No followers meant she was limited in her emotions for anything outside of her family and her job. She often wondered if the gods had done it on purpose, so that she wouldn't be upset that she wasn't involved in their decisions. If they had, it had worked. They never asked for her input, and since she didn't care, she didn't offer any.

Instead, she spent her days working on her tapestry, perfecting the night sky.

Even if the others looked down on her work, or as was more likely the case, they didn't care, she did. Her constellations were the whole reason for her existence. They had personalities, and stories, and she cared for them with every little bit of her limited emotional energy.

She carefully unfurled her tapestry and worked on her newest star as the noise from the fountain and the surrounding birds drowned out the fighting behind her.

She was just finishing up her newest constellation when she heard voices.

"-you believe she said that?! As if my job is any less important than hers! It was my research that won us the last war!"

"Ye don't hafta tell me that, shrimp. I was on your side."

Levy rounded the corner and threw herself on the nearest bench, cracking the marble with the force of her anger."

"I just can't believe her," Levy continued.

"Ultear?" Lucy asked without looking up.

"Yep," Gajeel answered as he allowed gravity to pull him down into the grass with a thunk. "She's tryin' ta play off shrimp's work for the next war, like usual."

"So you're definitely going to war?" Lucy didn't include herself, as she rarely felt like part of their pantheon. Gajeel was part of the Fareetal pantheon, but had technically joined when he became Levy's husband.

"Yes, and that bimbo thinks they can do it without me!" As goddess of books and research, Levy was usually the first one consulted when it came to finding the other side's weaknesses and how to fight them.

"How was she going to lead our forces this time?" Lucy asked.

Gajeel answered. "She was just gonna freeze time so the soldiers could walk across the field and kill 'em all. 'cept-"

"-that's now how her magic works!" Levy yelled. "Her magic doesn't manipulate time at that scale, and there's no way she will ever be powerful enough to do it! Ever! Worst, Makarov seemed to be listening to her! I don't know what's going on with her but-"

Lucy's hands froze as she felt something she'd never felt before. Slowly, she got to her feet as she tried to see into the human world. Without any followers, she continued to only see black and white shapes, but they were enough to see that she had felt it correctly. Someone had entered her temple.

And they were leaving her an offering.

Gajeel cracked open an eye soon enough to see Lucy disappear in a flurry of gold dotted black. Levy was still going off, completely unaware her audience had shrunk. He closed his eyes as she continued, content for the moment to listen to her rant.

Lucy appeared silently, invisible, behind the small temple she'd built for herself.

Without anyone's guidance, her temple was admittedly unimpressive. It was created out of large flat black stones she'd collected from the bottom of a nearby lake. She'd used clay to create a paste to hold the stones together and formed an altar out of a long piece of black wood she had sanded down. At least, she hoped they were black. Since it was one of only two colors she could see, choosing her stones had been guess work. It wasn't very large, and with the clumsy craftsmanship, it looked like something a child might put together.

Perhaps that was why her first visitor was a child.

She slipped along the side to watch the small form kneel in front of her altar. They had something in their hand that they set down before bowing their head and beginning to pray.

"Dear goddess! Uh…" The human faltered. "Your altar is really nice. I like the colors. They're much nicer than the other ones. Theirs are white and boring. They're no fun to visit, so thank you for making yours pretty."

Lucy smiled as she listened to what she deciphered was a little boy. Usually there were scripted prayers the humans would say at each temple, but since she'd never had any visitors, she'd never had a reason to put one together. She decided that she liked his better, this one way conversation.

"Um, I don't know your prayer, since no one else comes here. I'm sorry for that. I brought you some flowers, though." His voice perked up. "I know it's not much, but I don't have much. It's just me and my brother, so we don't have anything really nice. The flowers match your rocks, though, so I brought those. I can keep picking them and bringing them if you like. So you get an offering."

He scratched at his head as he turned around, as though someone called him. "I have to go, but I'll be back later." Before he left, he skidded to a stop. "Oh, and thank you for.. whatever you do!"

With that he dashed outside.

Thoughts on who the little boy is?