It was with a great burst of energy that Aomy began to type her speech, her fingers flying over the keyboard she had created mere moments ago. It was rare that a conversation ever gave her energy, usually the opposite was true and thus she vowed to not waste this moment and finish this speech as fast as she could.

Given that she more or less already knew what she planned to write, this endeavour went well, and soon, Aomy was looking at a grand script. She gave it a few once-overs, checking it for obvious mistakes or poor word choices which she could replace with something more persuasive.

She looked to the corner of the computers screen, noticed how little time left in the day there was, and feeling the pressure, decided that this was good enough. Using her divine omnipotence, she downloaded the speech directly into her brain, forgoing the need to practise or learn it. Then, she waved away her makeshift writing set-up and hesitantly turned towards the rows of seats that faced her stage.

She walked over to the stage’s centre and froze. Her heart beat faster and faster in her chest, and her breaths became shallow and short. She wasn’t ready for this! Images of the time flashed in her mind, reminding her of the need for urgency, as well as the faces of those villagers who had looked up to her with such admiration.

Steeling herself, she opened communication links to all the settlements of this world. It was the only way she could escape the procrastination, the only way to stop herself locking up with fear. Start talking to them all immediately and not give herself a way out.

Across the stage several images flickered into existence, each showing a scene from a settlement from all across this new universe. Likewise, her image was being projected back through these screens, and as people began to notice, she saw dozens, hundreds and then thousands of humans congregating in front of these portals, some curious, some in positions of worship, many expectant or nervous. But not as nervous as Aomy, oh god no. Seeing all these people gathered together, she had fully locked up, whole body insanely tense. There were so many people!

It was a long time before Aomy said anything, rationalising this action as a means for everyone to gather, but had she been honest with herself she would have known it was completely just because of nerves. She stared out across her hall, at each of the images she had conjured. All of them had been ringed with a glowing dark blue light, intended by Aomy to invoke a fantastical feel. She tried to see if she could spot the village she had encountered, but there were just so many screens that picking out one specific one in particular was nigh impossible. She gulped.

“Um. Greetings!” she hesitantly announced with an unrehearsed arm wave that looked awkward and stunted. “People of…” Shit! She was going off script, and she didn’t know what they were the people of.

“Come on Aomy” she mentally berated herself. “Get it together”

“Um. Yes, people of this new world! As you all know, I am Aomy, Goddess of Civilisations, and I am here to guide you!”

Internally, she was incredibly relieved for creating herself with a featureless face as this meant that no one could tell how out of depth she was from it. Unbeknownst to her several humans gossiped amongst themselves, remarking upon her hunched stance and insecure manner of speech.

“As you also know, I created you, as that is my role as civilisation goddess. But, I have another role. I have vowed to guide the civilisations of this world to prosperity and away from calamitous ruin.” She hesitantly paused as she appraised the scenes of the various villages. Many seemed unresponsive, which she supposed made sense, she hadn’t really said anything yet, but a limited number seemed to be laughing amongst themselves. She took a few seconds to scream inside her own mind before carrying on.

“W-with the powers I-I-I have as a goddess, I can foresee a great many tragedies that could befall you, humanity! Futures where lives are casually tossed aside for scant justification, futures where the needs of the few are prioritised above the needs of the many, and in the direst circumstances, futures where sapient life as we know it, is erased forever!”

These lines, after a brief hiccup, had been delivered surprisingly passionately and confidently. She glanced through the screens where people had been laughing and smugly noticed they had stopped. Yeah, that had shut them up!

“I implore you, my creations, to avoid these dark paths at any cost! To escape these fates, I have guidelines that may seem simple, but you would be surprised at how many would be tempted to ignore them for brief personal gain. First! Be kind. Not just to your friends, family or lovers, but be kind to all you meet, so long as they treat you well back.

You may meet a great variety of people in your lives. Many won’t think like you. Many will have superficial differences to you. Many may even not be human! But treat them as you wish to be treated. Treat them with kindness.”

A thought crossed her mind, that quickly disrupted her speech. “Er, but like, if you’re being attacked, you can, uh, situation depending, defend yourself. And um, like, animals and stuff, you can still, uh, farm, with all the information I gave you. You don’t have to stop that. But, um, obviously, don’t be cruel to animals, they still have feelings, but like, you get what I mean. Um. Basically, before immediately striking something, talk to them. If they respond, then don’t hurt them unless they hurt you.”

“I’m losing people!” her doubts screamed. “Back on script, back on script!”

“Um, yeah. S-s-second. Um.” She was mumbling now, and had she not amplified her voice before this speech she was sure the people in the back would not be able to hear her. “Value…er, value freedom. Let no one. Um. Let no person, be limited more by the rules of society, than anyone else. Er, unless they have themselves broken these rules. Like, ah, but even then, treat them with dignity and respect, value their lives, and aim to rehabilitate, not unduly punish. Yeah.”

All thoughts had fully left her head, replaced exclusively by her internal, panicked wails.

“Um. Third! You must understand complete equality. Do not let people hoard wealth or resources, even those who may become law makers, and do not give any one lawmaker, or any group of lawmakers complete control, each person should have a say in societies creation. In an ideal civilisation, all people must be as equal as possible.” The glow that was her faces equivalent to a smile began to shine slightly and the scream in her head died down slightly. That paragraph too, had been quite well delivered.

“Yes! Follow these three guidelines well, and I guarantee your civilisation will prosper. The specifics of your countries formation I leave to you. I, uh, eagerly await the payoff to your hard work, eagerly await the creation of your cities and towns and I can’t wait to see the society you produce. Um. Any questions?”

Aomy’s theatre was silent, but only for a brief moment.

“If the end result, is complete annihilation, why didn’t ya just create us unable to break yer guidelines!” cried one gruff voice from the crowd.

“Oh good, the kind of deep question that’s asked in philosophy and ethics classes. At least I do kinda have a response” Aomy thought.

Out loud, she replied. “Freedom, basically. If you were bent to my whims, you wouldn’t truly be free. Free will is one of the greatest gifts bestowed upon sapient life.”

That actually managed to elicit some appreciative mumblings from the crowd. Then another shriller voice spoke up. “You said “people of” at one point. Where are we the people of exactly?”

“Ah, shit, no answer for that one. Stall. Stall!”

“Um, well, the name of your country will be something for its people to decide.”

This didn’t satisfy the question asker. “Well, that’s all well and good for the country, but what’s the name of everything? You know, all countries? That sounds like something the gods would come up with.”

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“Oh, but it is! The planet you live upon is named…. Ex…celsior. Yes, Excelsior!” Aomy had desperately scanned her brain for a fantasy sounding name and that was the best she could think off. She was very certain it was stolen from something. A magic spell? A superhero catchphrase? Whatever, these people wouldn’t know, worst case scenario the other gods would rib her a bit.

“Are you sure? You don’t sound very certain” came the shrill voice before being loudly shushed by the people of her village.

Relative quiet descended upon the theatre. “Any more questions?” Aomy tentatively asked, praying that there were none.

Her wish was not granted. “Um. You said we should all be equal, right? No one treated differently because of superficial differences and everything?” The voice sounded just as anxious as Aomy’s often did, an impressive feat. “Then, um. Why are we called humans?”

The voice switched from anxious query to desperate defence of a point that was perceived as surely being judged and mocked by everyone in the vicinity. “Um, cos like, y’know, there’s man, there’s woman, then there’s human, and like, for some reason, man is tacked onto the end of everything like it’s the default. Um. Not to be rude. But that’s weird right?”

“Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck!” cried her thoughts. Of course, if you understood linguistics, its history, like the people of Earth did, then you could infer these words origins, and then you mostly accepted it, because, by god, were there more grievous injustices happening, basically all the time.

But the people of Excelsior had none of the contexts, and thus, they had free reign to question the weirdness and the weirdness’s very existence seemed to contradict Aomy’s views. And as it would appear to these people that Aomy had created the language they were speaking…oh god.

“Um good point” mumbled Aomy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good gooood point. Um. Then from now on, you shall not be humanity… You shall be… the hufolk.” When fantasy writers had decided to include mermaids who weren’t, well, maidens, they had generally settled on the name of their race being merfolk.

Aomy had always liked this name, as well as the suffix “folk” in general for fantasy races and decided this fit well enough. Well, if it was pronounced in such a way that didn’t stress the “u”, the way you did in the word human, then it kinda sounded like a lost English county, but whatever.

“I, er, anyway. Um. This is all the time we have for questions, probably, unless you have any urgent ones. You all probably have villages to build! Yeah… Um. Yeah, go, uh, go do that.”

Aomy quickly shut her portals, leaving her theatre blissfully empty. Immediately she curled back up into the foetal position she was in before she’d gone for her walk.

“Oh gooodddddddd, I’ve really fucked uuuuupppp.” She moaned.

“Yup, you have!” her doubts gleefully agreed. “A shitty speech, riddled with barely thought out tacked on thoughts and blasted apart with a general air of uncertainty. And you could see that the mortals didn’t respect you! God, what a fuck up!”

Aomy curled up tighter into her ball. “No, no, no, worst case scenario, I’ve come across as kinda stupid. Or not confident.” She tried to reassure herself.

“If they see you as stupid and not confident why would they listen to you?” goaded her doubts. “Hey, guess what? Because of this, they’re all gonna disregard your advice. Then, they’re gonna make all the fuck-ups Earth has. And with all the wars, the discrimination, the violence, you’re going to have the blood of MILLIONS on your hands!”

Her fists clenched against her legs, hard enough to really hurt.

“No, I’m sure their reactions to me aren’t as bad as I think. I worry too much, all the time. This is like that. Remember the people of that village? They all liked me, despite my awkwardness and I’m sure many more people in this crowd were the same. And even if they do discount my advice, that won’t be the end. There’s more civilisations I’ll make, and they can lead by example.”

She failed to convince herself, and lay on the floor, devoid of energy, almost up to the point that night would swiftly fall upon Excelsior. That was until she suddenly got a burst of reports from the immortals in her villages, desperately requesting aid. She sat bolt upright, her heart beating at an incredibly accelerated rate.

One word stuck out, consistent amongst all reports. Monster.