The old world had bards and poets and storytellers once long ago.

The old world used to tell stories about gods. There were two who lived below the ground, Hades and dread Persephone. They were of death and oft unnamed for fear that a name might gain their attention. Above the ground in a mountain lived twelve others. They were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Artemis, Athena, Ares, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephestus, and Hermes.

You may notice that above I only listed eleven when I said there were twelve and that was because the twelfth varied from telling to telling.

When I find books of the old world and they list the twelve gods they will either list Dionysus, a god of alcohol and madness and death in his own way, or Hestia of hearth and home.

I suppose in the old world they never prayed to her or any of the other gods as the old world only recorded them in storybooks telling of how they used to be worshiped.

I always had the feeling that Hestia of hearth and home knew that she had been forgotten. Do you think she was there as homes were destroyed and brought down to ashes like an act of the gods by the hands of man? Do you think she watched as the fire of her own design was harnessed for destruction and turned against the very humanity she had always protected?

Even today as I wander in a world of ruin with only the ashy echoes of what humanity used to be around me I feel that she watches. I wonder if she feels wrath, the divine kind, at a world of people without a home.

I remember waking up with a screaming siren in my ears and hearing the panicked scrambling of my parents outside of my room. I saw a light shine through my window, so bright it looked like day had come early. It looked like some divine act of wrath as the burning glow lit up my room. A rumble in the distance rang out as buildings fell, quickly followed by a deafening boom like the voice of a god. In an act of man looking like the act of god the world as I knew it ended.

I pray to Hestia often. A return to the world of hearths and homes would be most appreciated, but I mostly just pray for myself. For the goddess of hearth and home.