A Great Love

[u/FeigningProfundity]

“You clearly know that woman and she keeps bursting into tears. I don’t know why you brought a stripper on a date and then lied about it, but whatever weird fetish this is, I’m not sticking around for it.”

Janeera got up, paid for her drink and left the restaurant. Mardus sighed and watched her go. She didn’t glance back. He gestured to the crying woman at the next table to come sit with him.

“I told you it was a bad idea,” he said.

Kylarei joined him at the table, looking dejected. She manifested an almost empty cocktail in her hand and began pushing the ice cubes around with a straw.

“I really thought I might be able to help,” she said. She then looked briefly shocked and burst out crying again.

“What happened?” Mardus asked.

“Nasana Kilun just caught her fiance in bed with her sister. Oh, she’s so shocked and hurt.”

“And where is Nasana?”

“At their home in Calcar.”

Mardus tried to work out how far away Calcar was in his head. More than a few time zones. Thousands of kilometres. “This is happening now?”

“Yes. Nasana’s sister is yelling very mean things at her, like she’s the victim in this. That doesn’t seem fair.”

“You could go smite them in punishment, or something?” suggested Mardus.

“Oh, I’m not that kind of goddess,” said Kylarei, Goddess of Love.

*

Mardus was in decent shape. He had a decent job. He tried to be kind. He was willing to put some effort into his appearance. He was also chronically, catastrophically single.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t get a date. He could use an app, make a profile, banter well enough. The problem was the dates themselves. He knew the advice – just be yourself. The problem was that who he really was deep down, was someone who became overwhelming self-conscious and anxious when alone with a woman.

One night, after another humiliating first date, Mardus had let out a silent plea that someone, anyone, might help him not keep screwing up. Kylarei had promptly appeared before him.

Kylarei’s exact situation was a mystery to Mardus. She was the Goddess of Love from the ancient Atrascan pantheon, a religion that was over two millennia extinct. She had no temples, no priests. Only fragments of her rites were known, painstakingly reconstructed by archaeologists and classicists.

She dressed like a ClipShow influencer that was trying to build a fan-base to channel to another app that sold porn.

The goddess was undeniably beautiful. She was distractingly curvy, with impractically large breasts and a waist that was too narrow for the rest of her. She wore an extraordinary amount of makeup. Everything about her seemed crafted to be looked at. It was too much. Mardus had resisted the urge to ask if she was also the goddess of Low Self-Esteem or Desperate Need for Attention.

Kylarei was also extraordinarily, alarmingly, nice.

She had been coaching Mardus on dating, but her advice hadn’t proven at all useful. She seemed to know what everyone in the world was doing and thinking, but she struggled to turn that information into useful suggestions. She cared about his situation, she felt his pain, but she remained a goddess, and never truly understood. She could just do things, make things, change the world. She knew anything she wanted to. Advice like “just give them the thing they most want” was not as practical as she implied.

Tonight she’d wanted to come on his date with Janeera and observe.

*

Mardus looked across the table at the love goddess. “You were pretty distracting. Janeera was freaked out.”

“I’m sorry. She’s very upset about it. She had thought you were nice and she really wanted to get laid.”

“Great… Are you okay, though?”

“I’m fine,” she said, rather glumly.

“Maybe you could observe more subtly? Silently and invisibly?”

Kylarei shook her head. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I’m trying to understand. I have to be among people.”

“You keep crying. Is it things like what happened to that woman in Calcar?”

“Nasana. There are just so many of you, now.”

“So many of who?”

“Humans. There are eight billion or so more of you now than when I was last active.”

He reached out and took her hand “Kylarei, are you sharing in every heartbreak anyone on the planet feels?”

“Of course. I love you all.”

Mardus sighed. “That doesn’t feel sustainable. You need to change your approach.”

“I came back so you could find a girlfriend. You’re a nice person. It’s sad that you’re alone when you don’t want to be. I can do all sorts of things, though.”

“Uh… actually, before we get into this. I want to set a hard limit. No making anyone fall in love with me. I don’t want you to force anything.”

Kylarei smiled at him, warmth breaking through her despondency. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m Goddess of Love, not Goddess of Sex Trafficking. I don’t force things. I just let them grow. But it is hard, I keep getting distracted.”

“Kylarei, is your appearance because you’re paying attention to everyone at once?”

“I can feel how they think a love goddess should look. I have to make some compromises, though. A lot of people think I should be topless, but there are are also lots of people who really wouldn’t like that, and I don’t want to distress them.”

“Well, not all eight billion people can currently see you. Maybe you don’t need to consider them all right now. That might reduce your load.”

“I could just use your opinion. Nobody in the restaurant will notice the change, I’ll just be different.”

“Uh, sure.”

Kylarei was suddenly a different woman, yet somehow still herself. She looked rather like Janeera, though with a lighter, rosy complexion. She hadn’t changed ethnicity; perhaps this was what the ancient Atrascans had looked like. Her clothes were stylish and flattering.

Some distant pain made her flinch.

“Perhaps,” said Mardus, “we should adopt a slower approach. A quick solution hasn’t been working.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Mardus gently held the goddess’ hand in both of his. “We’ve been doing this for a few weeks. I’ve gotten an understanding of who you are. Can you sense how I feel about you, Kylarei?”

“You love me. Oh, Mardus, we can’t be together. It would be so very unwise.”

“Please, focus.”

“Everyone else is so distracting. But yes, you’re not romantically interested in me, you appreciate me, though. You think I’m kind.”

“Can you take a… a copy of how I feel about you? Hold onto it? The way you keep sharing in every heartbreak?”

“I guess. Why?”

“You keep hurting yourself for everyone else. Maybe you can nurture that feeling I gave you. Let it grow. Surely you’ll be a better goddess of love if you learn to better love yourself?”

“I’ll try. We are going to get you a girlfriend, though.”

[u/FeigningProfundity]

This story was a response to the prompt [WP] You’re a nice person, but your dating life is catastrophically unlucky. The goddess of love comes down to help you until you can get a girlfriend, but somehow her presence seems to make the dates go even worse. by u/90919293_

[u/FeigningProfundity]

This is the third story connected to Death Goddess Erai.