Graven

The graven idols stared back at Tul with blank stone eyes. Tul held her chisel uncertainly. She did not believe in her people's gods, not really, and she wondered how many of her fellows did and how many, like her, simply played along to fit in. But she did believe in art, and even if to her the idols were nothing more than mute stone statues with no connection to any higher power, still it gave her a sense of satisfaction to make them look as good as she could.

One, though, felt... wrong. It needed something. She wasn't sure what. No... she was sure what; she just wasn't sure why. It needed... it needed a... it needed a deeper cleft in its back. She couldn't explain why it needed that. She just knew it did.

Turning the idol around, she took her chisel and hammered it into the centerline of the idol's back, chipping away the stone just where she knew it had to go. But then as the cleft widened, she saw something beneath it. Something red. Something that wasn't stone.

And then the stone cracked and fell away, and where the idol had been there was standing a small red humanoid creature. It turned and looked at her, and then it knelt.

It wasn't a god. But it could be useful.