O Holy Virgin Porcelain Nightlight
God is brand-new, omnipotent in theory, and has sneezed the universe into existence. Which would be embarrassing enough without the universe mentioning how Her previous attempt ended. God becomes whatever creation believes Her to be. Last time, consensus settled on a hot dog, and reality kept Her rotating on a roller grill for nearly a hundred million years.
This time, the Universe warns, there would be no reset. No reincarnation. No loophole involving psychedelics and a well-tuned kaleidoscope. God is forced to watch Her creation be born again and pray, privately and with poor odds, that it does not reduce Her to a sacramental sausage.
That creation does not wait politely. One species staggers out the chaos early, eyes dilated and insisting the universe owes them an explanation. A shaman, licensed by absolutely no one, makes first contact by swallowing an innocent frog. God, ecstatic to find someone other than Herself capable of imagining their own world, hopes for collaboration. The shaman and later all of humanity mistake the offer as editorial control.
At first, the arrangement almost works. The shaman invents kissing, weekends, bathrobes, and several forms of public embarrassment God could never have imagined alone. Then, eager to impress the womenfolk, he turns one of God’s ideas into a glass ceiling. What begins as a roof meant to echo his applause becomes the first thing capable of capturing God and tempering Her almighty powers.
And so the trouble begins.
God shatters the ceilings, but humanity sweeps up the shards and rebuilds them into a woman no one, least of all God, could ever become. She destroys their statues, but humanity simply moves her prison into ceremony, temples and the use of silly hats. After all, a religion is much lighter to carry. Every attempt to escape becomes scripture. Every symbol meant to praise Her ensnares Her instead.
As civilization lurches from caves to empires, that mismatch curdles into a long history of unanswered prayers, holy merchandising, and a world-shaping refusal to see God as anything but a man with thundering abs and a certainty She has never had. Crushed beneath humanity’s imagination, God has one last chance to become Herself before humanity does it for Her.