SHE WHO DREAMS OF STEEL AND GLASS
Base Form
Maat'eyi resembles something between a traditional angel and some incomprehensible clockwork contraption. The core of her body resembles that of a human woman, but the cylindrical helm she wears hides any emotion she might otherwise display, making her seem quite alien. Large, feathered wings stretch out from her back, but they are dwarfed by the immense device she always carries with her. Its two arms and the three concentric circles behind Maat'eyi are arrayed with gears and other moving parts, constantly turning towards some end unknown to all but the goddess herself. The truth is, it was not the angel that created the machine, but the other way around. Maat'eyi - the real Maat'eyi - is the clockwork device, while the biological parts of her are simply a creation of hers to act as a mouthpiece to the other beings of the universe and to make her seem less alien to them.
Aspect
Maat'eyi is a goddess of invention. Though she is a patron for all craftspeople, she only tentatively sponsors the majority of them. Her real passion lies with those few who have the audacity to innovate. What has been made before is drab and uninspired, but what is new is a spark that lights up the mind with ideas and motivation.
Maat'eyi is that spark. In both the metaphorical spark within the inventor's mind and the literal one that lights their forge, Maat'eyi manifests. She is in the hammers and the tongs, the documents and the diagrams. She is nights spent wide awake, dreaming and planning and drawing in your mind. She is days spent toiling away, returning home each night drenched in sweat and oil. She is hundreds upon thousands of failed prototypes, and the cries of jubilation when one finally works. Between creativity and intelligence, there is innovation. That is Maat'eyi.
Persona
Maat'eyi's personality is split between two stereotypically divergent branches. Along one branch, she wields a piercing intelligence with a disconcerting ability to deconstruct the world around her - even literally, in some cases. She has a great capacity for logic, but resultingly tends to see things only in very precise terms; not that she can't comprehend shades of grey, but that she only sees them as the exact shade that they are. Empathy does not come easily to her.
Juxtaposing that cold logic is a passion for the new and the inspired. To most, Maat'eyi might seem to have a short attention span. But the truth is simply that few things are complex or clever enough to really have her attention in the first place. In the event that something does, it might be her obsession for days or even weeks at a time before she is ready to move on. Maat'eyi is in more or less a constant cycle of searching for new ideas to occupy her, finding them, exhausting every possible idea that could branch off of them, and then moving on.
Myth
It was on a sharp winter's morning, the kind when the sun hangs low in the cloudless sky and casts its rays long and bright, that I found the Stones. Weathered though they were, and half-buried under earth and snow, there was no mistaking their design. Angles and edges such as those do not appear in nature, nor do any natural stones arrange themselves so geometrically as these had been. No, these Stones were placed by human hands, and carved with human tools. Some ancient people, their name now lost to time, made this site by their own intent.
Prior commitments called me forth, but the memory the Stones drew me back. I felt a calling from them, as though the rock itself were vibrating with energy, with a soul. I made it my life's work to learn all I could about the Stones. And so I settled down, the shack I called home for that winter and countless more not but an hour's walk from the Stones. Perhaps it would have been easier had I lived closer still, but I could not bear to settle too close to them. It would've felt... improper, somehow.
Unearthing the Stones was a task that rich and powerful men would have two or perhaps three dozen for. But I was alone, and so it took me a great length of time, longer than I wish to remember. But they were not wasted. I found inscribed upon them runes, proof of human design. A fool could've seen they held meaning, but only a sage could say what it was. Alas, I tried. Paper copies of the runes quickly swamped my small home. They became an obsession for me, more important than eating or sleeping. But nothing came of my endless endeavours. Until I saw Her.
It was in the depths of a dream when She made Herself known to me. Like the apocryphal runes, my mortal mind could barely make sense of Her form. She was in some parts human, in some bird, and but most of all She was forged of metal - metal in shapes and arrangements unlike any I have seen before or since. But they moved, as alive as the rest of Her. She spoke to me in a language I had never heard before, yet understood intrinsically, and after mere moments I was awake once again, my mind alight with inspiration.
In a fever I set out on a work the likes of which I never been able to repeat. In a cosmic sense, all made sense to me now. Angles of the sun and the stars interlocked with the phases of the moon in my mind. In those moments, I ceased to believe in a distinction between the natural and artificial. I saw that what we call natural for what it truly is: a design of beings vaster than we could ever imagine, and for whom my prior visitor had been an emissary to me. The ancient people that had made the Stones had known it, too. The method by which they had found such enlightenment was carved there upon the Stones, for those with the imagination to comprehend it.
The understanding that I reached that day took its toll on my mind. The pieces I put together that night have never quite fit right to me since. I am left with the mere memory of understanding, and I fear I shall never again possess the energy I had in those days. Yet I do not regret my choices. I wish all would see the true wonders of the cosmos as I have, even if but for a moment.
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