“Hey, bro,” the young Native-Canadian man chimed, slinging his arm drunkenly around Jared’s table companion. “Spare a few drops for me?” The man held an empty glass out casually in front of the other man’s face.

He frowned but quietly grabbed the jug of beer off the table and poured the amber fluid into the young man’s glass. “Now piss off,” he told the young man curtly.

The young man stumbled back as he took a long draught from his newly acquired liquid libation and moved onto the next table where he asked the same question.

“That’s my jug,” Jared stated, quite perturbed with the tall, gangly looking Native-Canadian man sitting across from him. The man smiled.

“I know. Just sticking it to whitey.”

“Fucker,” the hunter said, to sum up his feelings on his companion’s explanation.

Coyote laughed. “Jared, Jared, Jared. You’ve spilled more beer on your lap than I gave the boy.”

“All I’m saying is you can only give away what’s yours,” Jared admonished. “Buy your own instead of taking what’s mine.”

“I wonder if the boy’s ancestors thought the very same thing when they were rounded up like cattle so your ancestors could be pioneers.” The man’s finger tapped his bottom lip in mock deep thought as he mused aloud. He gave a hearty chuckle and assured the hunter he would not keep that thought in the forefront of his mind.

“Be sure you do that,” Jared cautioned him. They both knew it was an empty threat. What sort of chance would a lowly mortal such as him have against a god? The odds were definitely in table companion’s favour on that score. Not that anyone else in the hole of a bar they were sitting in would know by looking at the man he was a god. He looked like your average tall, skinny and long-haired Native-Canadian dressed in faded jeans and a black tee-shirt that was far too small for his torso. The hunter thought if he were the kneel and squeal deal he would have said the sharpness of the chin and cheekbones would have given him a chiselled handsomeness. Added with that was the god’s black straight long hair and dark eyes which added the image of cunning and sleekness. What really got the hunter’s goat was that he had known Coyote for years before he even started to work for the department and running over gods and goddesses everywhere he went. He was just the friendly sort of guy. He had always assumed when he was not in the bar drinking that sludge the bartender passed off as coffee for pleasure, he was a babysitter for some relative. The two weren’t buddy-buddy, but they did share a few jokes time and again.

That changed about three months ago. Jared was in a bar in the deepest pit of Hell, Dionysus’ Derriere, with a couple of the gods that work in the same office, tossing a few back. It was karaoke night, and his name was called to do his swan song of Devil or Angel, a crowd favourite, and was walking up to the stage when Jared saw his acquaintance sitting there, same shirt, jeans and coffee mug. The hunter’s jaw dropped.

Coyote looked at him, smiled and said, “You dead?”

He shook his head. “No. You?”

“Can’t die. You sure you’re not dead?”

Jared looked himself over. “Yep, still alive and well.”

“Shame about that.”

Since then, the two sort of just started sitting down together, whether they were in the mortal realm or in the other realms. Jared had grown accustomed to god’s trickster persona. It was nice to have that security that no matter what vile beast, or if all of humanity had been averted from imploding, Coyote would find the inanity of it. It came to the hunter as a shock when the god’s attitude changed as they sat in that bar that night. He had just come back from pouring what Jared assumed passed as coffee, though he had seen sewer sludge with more appeal and wore a scowl.

Coyote looked around the bar and sighed. “Don’t you wish you could change the course of history?” he asked.

“Nope,” Jared answered, filling up his glass again. “What’s it to you? You’re not affected one way or the other, and besides, you aren’t allowed to do shit.”

“Sometimes I wonder...”

“Wonder all you like.” Jared shrugged. “Only a mortal could change humanity’s destiny, and you know that.” The god’s eyes lit up, which when he was talking to the hunter, was rare. Jared was used to his look of bemusement than the one of depth he saw now in the god’s eyes.

He leaned in. “But mortals can’t travel through time.”

“To change history, you don’t have to travel through time, Dipshit. All you have to do is trick the Fates,” Jared pronounced. Coyote looked stunned. Damn! I knew something that a god didn’t! the hunter thought. This was a high point in my life. That notion would have depressed the hunter if he had been thinking of it. He wouldn’t have known that tidbit if he hadn’t been watching a documentary and missed the ending. He heard the part of the Fates, though. It would have been enough to locate them and snip the fabric thinking he could reverse time to watch the final segment of the documentary. He cursed his lack of a personal video recorder. Unfortunately, unless the weave is exactly the same, a different destiny is created. Since at the time the hunter didn’t know this and he ended up watching the ass end of a documentary on the sad journey of a testicle-less ground squirrel named Herbert and his fruitless quest to procreate. Coyote brought him out of the hunter’s reminiscing.

“The three Greek women?” he asked, with his head tilted upward with a faraway look in his eyes.

Jared nodded. “Yep. I was charming Themis one night and...”