“Tonight will be our last sunset. You will never see me again.” The strange ethereal inky cloud of smoke said in an echoey underwater voice.

“What? Why do you say that? Why are you always so dramatic?” The small unusual girl sitting next to it asked, almost flippant, trying to hide her concern. Her white hair shone gold in the sunset, her large pupil-less eyes reflected pearlescent. Her desert tan skin glowed youthfully.

“I haven’t seen you in a century and that’s the first thing you say to me?” She said, irritated at her old friend.

“I don’t have anyone left.” It replied. “They’ve all gone.”

“How is that possible? It seemed like there were so many just last century.”

“You forget how short their lives are. My dear, it’s already 2022. Many of the new gods have been in power since the industrial revolution. And some who have already vanished again in the face of advancement, living hardly longer than a human. There are so few of us left and our people keep turning away from us, or dying before sharing our cultures. It was only a matter of time.”

The girl looked incredibly somber. Her age became entirely questionable. No little girl had the capacity to look that thread bare and tired and sad.

“Where do we go when we die? I’ve often asked myself, but do you ever wonder Aezo?” The little, but not young, girl asked.

Aezo was silent for a minute. “I’ve spoken with Anubis before. He believes we cannot be created or destroyed, not truly. We are beings of energy. He believes if a god ‘dies’, another god is ‘born’, or is gaining in influence. I saw my own brother blink out of existence suddenly. He had no more believers, his version of life once elevated to the point of worship and adoration was antiquated, while humans are born into the church of technology, and television, and instant gratification, I don’t even have enough power to take a physical form anymore. I’m old, I used to know all the gods. Now there are too many to count and many I knew are now divided into thousands of pointless and useless demi-gods, and I am almost with them. Let me pass on. I’m too tired to care anymore.”

“I forgot how depressing you death gods were.” Said the girl in mock disappointment. She looked incredibly forlorn. Her youthful skin had gained wrinkles and cracks like the dunes and dried mud of the desert the light tan color invoked.

“You asked me a serious question about death. You do know HOW old I am, right? I’m not like these new gods, or even like you. I’m more…singular. Death is all I think about.”

“So why, if death is still so prevalent, are you fading?”

“One of the core rituals surrounding my existence is now considered corpse defilement. It’s socially unacceptable to eat a human body, even if they are dead and consent is given. Also there’s a lot to do with blood and stuff, it was messy.” He said as if talking about sports, or a movie. Very nonchalant.

“I see.” The girl who was no longer a girl, but a withered old lady of girl height, her dulling eyes revealing the knowledge of many millennia.

“So what happens now?” She asked dejectedly, turning to Aezo, but he was already gone. Leaving an empty sadness in the space he once inhabited.