(AHH THANK YOU LUPIS)

COMPLICATED,, gods have always held a place of deep reverence in his community, all the more so by his mom being an extremely respected leader in the more religious parts of life. the feeling gods have, for them, is less fear of some ultimate smiting being and more the sense of a deeply beloved elder to be cared for and who cares in kind. It’s a twist in the brain for him to contrast this benevolent but dutifully respectful familiarity to the absolute bitterness of the god and how it’s separated the both of them from everything they both knew. Betrayal first and foremost, frustration and confusion; the initial part of their relationship was contested to say the least and the flavour still carries throughout.

The god always existed paired with an ancient hero (think an equivalent of what you see in ancient epic poems; Gilgamesh, Rama…) until eventually it slowly faded from retellings, not that the bond forged in the beginning ever went with it. Jen being slotted into the god’s empty space of mythical ancestral figure that it is always beside has made him a funny little extension of a limb to it, and it to him. (Which is also why he technically can’t be “enthralled” by it; it’s like trying to pin down your own shadow). So he’s tied to this thing that by all appearances hates him and wants them both to be forgotten, all while in the head spinning position of being shoved into the place of an impossible figure he could never fill. Purposeful on the gods part, he always suspects - self sabotage in trying to distance itself from part of its soul and make it lesser, file that connecting string down as much as it can, which is the funniest mistake on its part because Jen immediately takes it to the challenge of making the most of his humble little humanity being forced under the spotlight.

Trying to find a way around the god’s tempering of his home starts at first in a frantic scramble to seek out its forgiveness, and then failing that, wholly in spite. Carving a little (pointedly) humble wooden charm for the god to inhabit when there’s no murals and paintings for it to borrow for a body, taking it with him so it can see for itself every new person who he meets and remembers. Part to give the god a scathing refusal to give in, part in gripping this mutual binding string and pulling back because it goes both ways and he can drag it into remembering why it was a god, once. It’s a combo journey of grief, Jen travelling and trying to outrun his own funny little version of what I’m realizing is a lot like meteion attached to his soul LMAO and trying not to succumb to the same thing. I think it turns around in his head one day that the god is steeped in its own awful version of grief that it’s been sitting in for lifetimes of being forgotten, and while it’s hardly a 180 in attitude change it leads to little things. Bittersweet companionship that looks like a one-sided conversation when otherwise alone on the road. Paint on the charm, little beads embedded in, tiny additions to the smallest altar in the world; half for it, half for him, remembered reverence taught to him since he could talk. Repeat asking of the god what it itself remembers from ages past until it eventually replies unprompted late in the night. Sorrow for the both of them that this is what they have left to remember them, what they both used to be, quiet determination that the god will find itself and they’ll rediscover its name