“I just noticed! You didn’t say hello to those two mortal friends!” Thassallin gasped as he finished his fifth bowl of ice cream.
“That was hours ago…” Arkadin sighed. He loved ice cream almost as much as Thassallin, but all he had in his bowl was a small puddle of lemon sorbet that had melted a while back.
“Why? I thought they were your friends too.”
“I didn’t want to disturb them. They’re just two mortals. Long-lived ones, but mortals nonetheless. Having a death god hanging around all the time can be overbearing, especially since they kinda just got through a traumatic experience lately…” Arkadin sighed again, pushing the puddle of ice cream around with a spoon.
Thassallin licked his bowl clean, then got up and asked for several more scoops. This ice cream parlour was known for being open late into the night, mostly for the convenience of young, drunk Skyavok, so they had no problem serving Thassallin and Arkadin.
When he came back to the table, he noticed the Thantophor had slumped quite a bit. “You’re suddenly sad. Is it because you’re a god of suffering?”
“What?” Arkadin swiftly sat up straight. “I’m not a god of suffering!”
“You are not a god of suffering?” Thassallin shrugged then leaned forward, eating a whole scoop of ice cream in one go. “You look like one.”
“No I don’t!” Arkadin protested. “I’m small and cute and cuddly! Sort of…”
“You are a death god though. Gives mortals wrong ideas. They just assume.” Thassallin shuddered, then violently shook his head to get rid of the sudden ice cream headache.
“I’m not a god of suffering at all though. I just deal with decay and its aftermath. Decay is present when one is dying from ill health, I’m there when one is dying, but it’s not me who does the act of killing, it’s not me who murders people, makes them commit suicide or causes them to get run over by vehicles or anything like that!” Arkadin tried his best to explain. He’d had this conversation quite a few times in his long existence, but he never really managed to find a clear way to explain it.
“So you are both the process of a body decaying and of food being digested in one’s stomach?” Thassallin asked. He didn’t wait for an answer though. Now that his brief headache was gone, he’d gone back to scoffing down more ice cream.
“Uh, yeah. Basically.”
Thassallin finished his sixth bowl, then considered getting another. His stomach gurgled, but Thassallin decided to have a quick break.
“You alright there?” Arkadin asked.
“Sometimes the hunger gets to me.”
“I get that.”
The happy dragon grinned. “You though. You need a new you. Not to confuse your subjects.”
“You say that as if I want to be worshipped!” Arkadin looked confused. “I don’t want worshippers. Worshipping a negative deity like myself isn’t a good idea. Drives mortals into doing stupid things. Really, all worship does, but you get my point.”
“Then be a god of something positive too. And make yourself less gloomy. Not all forms of decay are bad, you said so yourself.”
Arkadin tutted. “I can’t just… change myself. That’s not how it works.
“How does it work then?”
“I…” Arkadin hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Thassallin shrugged. He got up and got ready to go and get more ice cream. But before he did so, he turned to Arkadin and grinned. “If you don’t know, what is stopping you from being a god of something else too? It is something worth considering.”
The Thantophor stared blankly at his bowl. “Yeah, maybe you’re right…”