She sits on the shoulders of Hermes, the crossroad guide and her grandfather, and learns about the world.
You can learn a lot from crossroads. Everyone has to pass through them, and everyone has to choose, too, which path they will go down. Hermes does not force decisions: he simply stands, and holds up his lamp, so that they can see all their paths clearly. He will answer questions, if they ask him, but he might answer in riddles. He’s a trickster god, and he’s never really clear. But there is honesty in his words, if you can find it, more than it is in the simple answers, because working out the riddle brings you closer to the answer in a way that you never understand, if you just hear it from outside.
So she learns why humans make their choices. She learns about flawed decisions, she learns about logic that’s twisted to fit what a person needs to hear. She learns how people can ignore what their own hearts are screaming, and walk into the obvious traps. And she learns about good choices, too, ones that are made when the heart and mind are in harmony. She learns how to take an argument apart, and to listen with your conscience, and how you know when the time is right.
Her eyes are wide… she never imagined that people could be all so different, and so strange! And it frightens her, because, how can she be a messenger when she is never sure that people will get the message? When it can be twisted, in ten or fifty different ways, depending on a person’s mind and even what they had for breakfast? How can she do a divine service, when the world is so full of confusion?
But then, she looks down at her grandfather, sitting below her, never shaking even though he is old, only bending just a little, like an ancient tree. They come, day after day, year after year, one hundred years after one hundred years, and he never becomes tired, or angry, or turns them away. He simply smiles, and watches, and shines his light.
And she understands: the key is Patience. She must become as patient as her grandfather, and swear to her self that she will spread the messages, even if ninety nine out of one hundred are lost, even if ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine out of one hundred thousand are lost.
Because, the one that gets through will mean everything, she thinks, as she watches another soul go on their way, their face shining with the new enlightenment of wisdom.