Most of my peers had grown up knowing which god they would eventually follow. Some chose the gods of their parents, others chose the ones which seemed 'coolest'; all through high school and college there had been cliques dedicated to the Greek, Norse and Roman pantheons, the chiefest amongst those gods drawing the most followers.

I had not been a part of these groups. As a child I had planned to skip choosing a god altogether (though I am unsure now, I believe it was because I wanted to become one instead), but once I knew that was an impossibility - all wayward souls are claimed in the end - I resolved to study as many as I could, and base my decision off what I found. That plan had served me well until the night when, as I came home from college in the dark, I tripped and fell over a large object in the gloom, hearing the shattering of glass and clinking of coins.

That was the night I met her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, cock-wit?!" Taken aback, I spun around and landed flat on my ass. I had tripped over a glass jar of some sort, covered in dust and half sunk into the grassy verge. The jar was - apologies, had been - full of coins; all denominations, shapes and sizes, some bright as the sun, others so dulled with age they were unrecognisable. As I stared, they melted into liquid shadow until one single coin was left. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, ornate and fashioned from white gold with a large star-shaped hole in the middle which seemed to throw off its own light, and it appeared to be... screaming.

"Look what you've done to my shrine, you little shitweasel! It's ruined!" Then, as I continued to stare, dumbfounded: "Don't just sit there like a bag of arse hair! Touch the coin!"

"R-right," I managed, and reached out towards it. As my fingers brushed the shimmering edge there was a puff of smoke, and suddenly a furious young woman was staring at me, inches from my face. I could practically see the steam escaping from her ears like an angry kettle. I began to put two and two together. This was a goddess, and I had just, albeit accidentally, destroyed her shrine. Fuck.

I began to apologise, profusely, in as undignified a manner as I could. "Shut it, assbrains! I am the goddess Profanita, and you have defiled my shrine! What do you have to say for yourself?!"

I began to speak, but was quickly interrupted: "I said shut it, fuckbasket! You've ruined the whole thing! Here I was, asleep, and you come along with your big dumb foot and kick my shrine to pieces!!"

Needless to say, our first meeting did not get off to a flying start. It was a full quarter of an hour before Profanita's string of bizarre and colourful expletives devolved into wordless screaming, and finally she paused for breath. This was more to make a point than out of any necessity, as she did not actually need to breathe.

She looked me over, humming and hawing to herself. "I have decided, turd-noodle. You're going to pay for what you've done. You're going to help me rebuild my shrine and," she said, affecting a dramatic tone, "be my bitch servant until I decide you're finished."

Thus, it looked like my wayward soul had, at last, been claimed.