[image description: A bride walks out of an old, dark and threatening home into a beautiful autumn day. She leaves behind a bilious green space inhabited by threatening shadows and fiery red light pouring through stained glass. She leaves a bouquet of flowers on the floor behind her. Text reads, “251, Naja, the small god of Getting Out”]
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People want things.
They want things that are good for them and things that are bad for them, and most of all, they want the things they’re told to want by the people they trust and believe in, the things that seem like such a good idea from any sort of a distance. They want what they’re told to want, until the moment they don’t want them anymore.
When that moment arrives, Naja is there, one hand extended, no judgment in her heart. She knows that not every faith is a fit for every heart, and that sometimes even the things we truly believe will be with us forever—our names, our families, our genders—are the right things for us to carry. She knows we need the chance to change, and she knows that sometimes what we need more than anything else is an exit.
If you go back far enough in the annals of her faithful, you’ll find that once, she wasn’t Naja, Small God of Getting Out. She was Naja, Small God of Marriage and Eternal Loyalty. The day she broke and ran was a small war in the heavens, lightning and thunder. The clouds wept saltwater for a week, and she took shelter with the gods she trusted until her black eye faded into memory and the cast came off her arm.
She knows, better than most, that sometimes the only true act of faith is getting out, and believing that you can survive without the things you were told you had to want forever.
She believes in you, and she believes in me, and she’ll be there when we need her.
She always is.
Lee Moyer 