It’s been a while since I wrote a response to one of my Creative Writing Prompts, but this one amused me. The task here was: Create a deity. Describe its origin, its powers, how it looks – anything you want. Enjoy as you see fit.
Eddi, God of Patience and Potatoes, mostly sat in the corner during the Gathering of the Gods. He’d been the result of a brief liaison between Edora, Goddess of the Harvest, and Genora, God of Wisdom at time when (mercifully) the Gods had not been at war with each other, for such had normally been the case. Eddi was small for a God, having inherited his mother’s small frame, and he lacked a lot of the wide-ranging gusto that seemed to fill the bulk of the deities in the Hall of the Heavens. And yet he made himself known among mortals after his own fashion.
He appeared in classrooms, bringing a calm to unruly students and exasperated teachers alike. After wars were fought and the warriors reluctantly set down their swords and spears to hammer out treaties, it was Eddi who oversaw the scribes and viziers who were charged with making a palatable and equitable (if not amiable) peace. Eddi was a favorite of mothers of children, for the mortals bred at a startling rate, and their children were not often silent.
Eddi’s power came in the form of a soft wind or sometimes, when necessary, a cooling bucket of water, which would soothe the unsettled mortal mind.
His role of protector of potatoes and other tubers was a joke played by his uncle Eccri. Eccri, God of the Food Beasts, once declared a festival for the harvest. He brought forth Eddi as the perfect deity to watch over the plants because “They lack all flavor, all excitement, and suffice to fill a man without giving him much pleasure.”
Such was the destiny of a quiet and unappreciated deity. He took time to visit the goodwives among the mortals, offering suggestions of spices or different preparation methods to make his much-joked-about food plants more flavorful and interesting. Eccri, upon learning this, enjoyed a great deal of mirth at Eddi’s expense. He had Mokra, his great bull, stomp on a great pile of potatoes at the Gathering, spattering Eddi’s robes in soft, demolished potatoes. Eddi went forth to clean himself off at the Gods’ Bath House and, determined to turn the joke around on Eccri, created the potato masher and presented it to the first goodwife he met.
When he wasn’t overseeing treaties or spicing up potato recipes, he would spend his time among the Scrolls of the Gods, seeking wisdom, looking even into the future to see where his gift of patience might be of service. There was so much anger and war and death among the mortals, Eddi found that little he could do would stop it. Often all he could do was bring peace after the damage was already done.
Eddi was eventually wed to Nocti, Goddess of Sunset. She, too, was a quiet one and became flattered by Eddi’s quiet admiration of the colors she used to decorate the sky at the end of each day. He won her over, appropriately enough, by serving her a feast composed largely of dishes made from potatoes.
The Real Bart Leahy 