The Gracious Pandora

This is the gracious Pandora, goddess of land, agriculture and fertility. Here’s an excerpt of “A Human Beauty”, short story included in our June/21 bundle:“Dear Aletheios, we, the gods, are very different from you, humans. One of the main differences is that you are mortal. We are not. We cannot die. Not even a god is capable of killing another. Death is one of the things that belongs to men, but it does not belong to us. I am older than you will ever be, poor Aletheios. I have lived longer than your mortal intelligence is capable of conceiving, and I will live long after your flesh and bones return to earth. Men are born, grow up, live, have children, love and suffer, and return to the darkness, giving other men their turn. And the gods observe this cycle thousands and thousands of times.Long ago — too long ago —, there were gods who got tired of this cycle, and envied humans. And they wanted to die. These divine beings created three artifacts, which allowed them to do the little of