“Wow! You carved that altar and alcove by hand?”
“Stone against stone. No metal tools. No powered tools. Just stone against stone and my hands.”
“You smug shit. You used your powers.”
“Actually, this time, I didn’t. I wanted to, oh I wanted to! Each pass took only a layer of dust off! But this one is special. It’s for Mom. So, completely by hand.”
“The background relief, the engravings on the surface, so many small details. Has she seen it?”
“Yea. She said nothing, of course. But she smiled. And that made it all worthwhile. Here, stand back, Weaver. I don’t want you to get splattered.”
“Should I be here when you’re making offerings?”
“Normally, no. But this isn’t an offering, it’s a fulfillment.”
“Those are testicles. And they look human.”
“As Mom requested. The nuts of the Spring Goddess!”
“… You sure you grabbed the right kind of nuts from the right person?”
“Yup. Mom said to forcibly remove the scrotum and testicles from the body of the Spring Goddess and place them on her altar. I guess the two are pissed at each other again.”
“Well, fuck!”
“I know, right! Doesn’t slow the Spring Goddess down any. Just means she can’t fertilize herself this year. A few dozen males are going to get lucky tonight. And a few dozen more tomorrow. She’ll have to have a lot of sex with mortal men to make up for the lack of her testicles.”
“…”
“You okay?”
“Yea. Just having a paradigm shattered to dust, that’s all. … What will your mom do with the testicles?”
“I have no idea. She said I’m too young to know. I’m over fifty thousand earth years old! And I’m too young!”
“Dude. You’re a stone elemental. Your fissures haven’t even sealed yet and your water content is still high. You keep hanging out with the basalt in the Atlantic seam instead of listening to the elders under the Australian plate. It’s not age, it’s maturity.”
“Yea, well at least I’m still limber enough to snatch nuts off a bitch!”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“Come on, I know you like stories. There is a shale deposit talking all kinds of stuff about the fossils it contains.”
“As long as it doesn’t try to sing.”