He shuffled to one side, eyes on the phone as he waited.
“Hi. Can I get a dark roast with room for cream?”
“Sure thing, Delaney. How’s it going?”
“Good. Thanks. How about you?”
She poured my coffee while I tugged a few bucks out of my wallet.
“High Tea Tide Saturday,” she said. “I’m excited for that. Have a fancy dress picked out and everything. We have new desserts and drinks we want to try out.”
“Bertie has you on the vendor list, right?”
“We filled out the forms months ago.”
“Then I’ll see you there.”
“I’ll save you one of our new chai-pumpkin cream scones.”
“Sounds amazing. Thank you.” She dropped a vanilla-coated coffee bean on top of the lid and moved on to the pack of women who had filed into the room.
I popped the bean in my mouth and headed to the goddess.
“May I have a seat?” I wasn’t sure which goddess she was yet, but it was best to be polite when having coffee with beings of ultimate power.
“Please do.” Her voice was easy and kind, and I found myself wanting to sit across from her for hours just to hear it.
God power. I was not immune, but I was pretty resistant to it. I could only imagine what effect her voice would have on a regular mortal.
“I’m Delaney Reed, the Bridge to Ordinary, Oregon. As you might know, I come here every Thursday to pick up mail and messages. Did you have a message for a deity inside Ordinary?”
That wouldn’t be unusual, but it would be very old school. There was a time when my grands and great-grands had to memorize, word for word, every message some god wanted to pass along to the deities vacationing inside Ordinary.
Every one of them complained about it in their journals. Guess who got blamed if they got one word wrong?
The almost-war between Eirene and Živa had changed the oral tradition to pen and paper.
That was how it still worked today.
“No, not a message,” she said. “More curiosity about the place.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“How blue is the ocean from the shore?”
That was not what I expected, something so mundane.
“Ordinary’s ocean changes almost moment to moment along with our winds, weather, and seasons. Sometimes the water is as green as jade, other times as blue as sapphire. To be fair, it runs gray a lot of the time, storms whipping it into white foam edges.”
She picked up a glass that seemed to have water in it. But just like demons, gods could make a person see what they want them to see. For all I knew, she was drinking the cosmic honey from some planet in some universe I’d never heard of.
I took a drink out of my own cup. Just plain ol’ Earth coffee, which I’d put up against any drink in the heavens.
“You like it very much,” she said.
“Coffee?” I asked, wondering if she had read my mind.
“Ordinary. You love it.”
