I don't normally do single fandom stories, but this one bugged me to write it ever since I began contemplating an Okami/Avengers crossover.

This is how a goddess views the world.

To Amaterasu's eyes, the world is made of bright splashes of paint and varying strokes of black ink. She does not see the limited truth of mortal eyes, colors dulled and details sharp, but the truth of the spirit. She sees not physical, but metaphysical, details dulled, hinted at, or absent completely. It is the color and shape of the spirit that matters the most to a god, and this is what she sees.

She sees not the body, but its representation. It is not skin and cloth and hair that she sees, but their highly stylized representations, sketched and painted in charcoals, inks and paints on the artist's canvas that is the world in her view.

She knows that what she sees is not what mortals see. She knows that the symbols of shock, anger, confusion, depression, and other emotions that she sees written above their heads or sketched upon their featureless faces are not truly there in any physical sense of the word. Most of the exaggerated motions and gestures that she witnesses are not truly expressed except through the spirit that she views.

Most mortal beings, humans and animals alike, are practically featureless to her divine sight; wolf and goddess both care little for those that scurry like ants beneath her heavenly body, her motherly love for them abstract in the face of the nearly identical masses. Only a few stand out, their passions so strong that they are reflected in their spirit, revealing themselves as clothes, hairstyles, hair pieces, and physical features that would be impractical or impossible in the mortal world.

Amaterasu knows that to mortal eyes, Susano's tsurugi is made of the finest jewel steel. She sees it as a carved slab of wood, symbolic of the warrior's brave front and secret fears. He is like child with a wooden sword; he strikes at and slays imaginary monsters in the bright light of day, but cowers from true monsters in the darkness. When he finds the courage to face his fears and strike down evil, the symbolism is carried on in the transformation of the sword from wood to gold, the noble metal, and in the flower that blooms as bright as his love.

Even her view of her environment is as stylized as a sumi-e painting. Mortals do not see the wind; in her view it blows as looping lines of black ink against stylized clouds and blue sky. Her body the sun is a shining red disk, etched with the image of flowing flames, but mortals see only a bright yellow light, so strong that they cannot look upon her for long. Plants, animals, and the very landscape itself appear to her like simple ink drawings, formed from the fewest possible brushstrokes, reduced to their very essence.

This is the world as a goddess sees it: An ink painting upon a rice paper screen; simple, beautiful, delicate, and so easily changed.

This is how a goddess influences the world.

Amaterasu is in battle against demons formed from evil and darkness. A breath, and the world… changes. Color flees, leaving the world in tones of sepia and lines of ink as her perception expands from the limits of her avatar.

In nonexistent hands she holds a crystallized moment in time as she steps outside of its flow. The world is a sphere centered on the physical body of her avatar. She rotates it, looking upon her body from all angles. At the same time, it is a sphere turned inside out, a three hundred and sixty degree view of her surroundings given from the single mid-point of her body. And yet, it is also a flat image, a painting on a sheet of parchment paper on the writing desk of her soul.

These descriptions are poor in comparison to the truth, which mortal minds are incapable of comprehending. The divine are above the laws of reality, of physics and geometry and time, for they rewrite reality to their will. These pitiable analogies will have to do, mortal languages being incapable of rendering the divine truth of the goddess's world.

Amaterasu holds the instrument of her will above the line drawing of the world, seeing the colors of the different possibilities. Here, a jagged line will draw down lightning from a clear sky. There, three crossed lines will freeze an enemy in its tracks. Two horizontal lines will slow the effects of time. She chooses, drawing the symbol of the power in her will, imposing it on the world.

She releases her hold on that one, endless moment, stepping back into time. Her awareness is reduced to near-mortal senses as her spirit withdraws back into the form of the white wolf. For an instant, her will hangs like ink in mid-air before reality rewrites itself. She has willed that there should be fire, and so there is as if there has always been. The Inferno briefly flares in the shape of Moegami's eternity symbol, the kanji for crimson that only she could see superimposed over the flames.

Before they die, the flames catch the demons she fought, two Blue Imps and an Ice Mouth, in their fiery embrace, felling the two imps immediately. Another breath, another endless moment, and her will tears open the very fabric of reality, cutting the imps in two as they fall through the air. As the magically constructed bodies turn to flowers, two Demon Fangs fall from within. She gathers these quickly and then turns to face the final demon.

The touch of the fire had forced the icy powers that animated the demon wheel into dormancy, leaving it colorless and vulnerable in her sight. Before the Ice Mouth could recover, she struck it with her flung reflector, finishing it off. Before its body could hit the ground, a breath, a moment, and her will written in crimson flames rendered it into a spray of flowers, leaving behind another Fang that was swiftly retrieved.

The battle over, the barrier shattered. Her light shining upon her fur once more, the goddess runs out into the world in her never-ending battle against darkness.

This is the way that the world is influenced by a goddess: A moment frozen in time on parchment; a will written in ink, painting the world as an artist does his canvas, remaking reality.