Afterwards, as they lay panting in her bed, she toyed with the curls of his chest hair and listened to the deep pump of his heart. The wind came in through the open shutters and blew the drapes back and forth in front of the sun. It was a clean smell, salt smell; in the distance the gulls were crying.

“So,” she said, and giggled, “what do you do, anyway? You never said.”

He laughed, and shook the bed. “I’m God,” he said.

“No,” she said, “really? Get out.”

“Zeus Skyking, that’s me. Thunderer, All-father, Oakman, Chronotides. Raised by goats and young shield-bearers… why are you laughing?”

“No, it’s just, it’s just,” (she couldn’t stop giggling, the laughter bubbled up in her like unmixed wine) “you’re so much shorter than I thought you’d be. You’re don’t look anything like your statues.”

Abruptly the body beneath hers was much heavier. The bed creaked and something deep within it popped. “More like this?”

She clapped her hands. “Yes, just like that! Ooh, you’re so handsome now! Not that you weren’t before, I mean I thought you were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen but now…!“

He laughed again and this time the room shook. “Kid, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Watch this!”

She didn’t even have time to scream before she was a pile of greasy ashes, along with the bed, the drapes, several gulls that were flying past the window, in fact everything organic in the room down to the stone of the floor.

“Crap,” said Zeus, and bent down to fish a zygote out of the mess. Waste not, want not, after all.