Young Writers Society

Kellach scratched his head. "How are you so big?" he said. "Most snakes I know aren't that much taller than me."

He gave his snakes another round of pats on their tiny heads with the tip of his finger.

"On my world, gods are created by people's beliefs in them. Some of the stories told about us are true, while others just are part of the beliefs that led to our eventual creation. Our appearances usually represent what people believe us to look like - which does vary from person to person, but some of us are more set in stone."

He gestured at himself.

"I'm one of them. My religion said I was a giant serpent. I'm not nearly as big as they were probably imagining, but that's the reason I'm bigger than snakes like the ones in my pockets."

Wow, Kellach really did not feel qualified to make sense of any of that. "How come I can see you, then?" he said. "If you exist because people believe you exist, and what you look like depends on what people think you should look like, and I don't believe in you, how come you don't disappear or something? Or is that how it works?"

"It's not," he said with a shake of his head - though this was a question that frequently came up in situations like this, it was still an amusing one. "We're initially created by other people believing in us, but we remain even after our religions fall out of favor. And our appearance is only shaped by the original group that believed in us; it doesn't change over time."

He looked down at himself.

"This is just a collection of magic spells," he said. "Everyone still thinks of me as a giant serpent."

"Oh," Kellach said. He was a tad disappointed that Apophis didn't, say, realize he wasn't supposed to exist and disappear, but it did explain why that hadn't already happened to him. "That doesn't sound like great magic? Especially if it's squeezing you into a smaller body."

"It's great magic, actually," Apophis said. "I am smaller like this, but it doesn't hurt - it feels completely natural."

"Huh, that's neat," Kellach said. "How long does it last for?"

"As long as the caster wants it to. I unfortunately can't do that magic, so I can't show you what I really look like unless someone can do magic like that."

Kellach tilted his head. "Um, if you can't, who's doing it for you? And can they just, stop doing it at any time?"

"One of the Egyptian gods does it for me," Apophis explained. "His name is Heka, and he's the god of magic for our religion. He can stop doing the spell whenever he wants to, but there's no need to."

"And why doesn't he need to?" Kellach said, frowning slightly.

"Even if it's not my original form, I'm more comfortable like this," Apophis explained. He once again gave his baby snakes a little pat on their heads with the tip of his finger. "It's smaller. It also lets me communicate with regular people without them being afraid of me, which is always a good thing."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Kellach said. He looked back at the others - Aegeas had started to snore faintly (awww), Mal rested against Lunis's back and slowly took bites out of a piece of cactus, and Lunis had devoured his piece and scattered whatever was left on the ground. Ugh; the only person who made more of a mess than him was Lunis.

"If you're a god, do you need to eat?" said Kellach, looking back at Apophis. "Or is it just kinda pointless?"

Apophis shook his head. "I don't need to eat," he confirmed. "Our form of immortality heals our body - even if I did die of starvation, my body would just heal itself and work like nothing ever happened. Most of us eat for enjoyment. The ones of us who don't didn't always know they were gods, and they eat out of habit - that's what two of my friends do."

Kellach scratched his head. "How come they didn't know they're gods?" he said. "And how long does that healing thing take? Like, if I stabbed you, would the knife just pop out of your body in a minute or two, or would it heal everything else and then you could pull it out, and then it could heal the wound?" He paused, then took a step back, cheeks blazing out of embarrassment. The heat was making him talk a little too freely. "Not that I would stab you."