[Spoken]
Ananke, god of compulsion from the Orphic pantheon of endearingly specific deities, obscure and forgotten.

She who sits cross-legged and serpentine,
weaving at the loom of fate,
long and late into each consecutive night,
She who forgets to stretch and eat and hydrate,
who once curled herself around the cosmic egg until the shell cracked open and the universe escaped,
and whose creative vision foreset the perpetual machine whirring into motion, Ananke.
God of compulsion, god of necessity.

Patron saint of those who cannot work gently,
who can only corner their prey and kick its fucking teeth in,
wringing the riches out of its britches and can’t stop until it’s dead,
god of destructive, repulsive, Kubrickian mania,
god of those who are enslaved,
and we are all slaves,
some of money,
some of chance,
some of love or sickness,
others are forced by mass opinion or the threatening of law to act against their nature,
Well, Ananke is the god of duty and coercion,
and therefore the god of war,
the god of frightened soldiers packed in by their commanders,
tight between the horses and the infantry,
no room to run away,
all must stand and fight in the shadow cast by Ananke’s light because she is the god of inevitability,
of bonds stronger than blood and thicker than gravity,
the god of “if x, then y, if y, then z”, the god of determinism and video game development,
of dominoes as far as the eye can see,
Ananke, our lady of “I’ve forgotten how to do anything else”,
personification of “I am the sum of the things I create”,
partner of Chronos, god of time who has barely spoken to her in weeks.
Ananke, who hears all prayers and answers none,
who never clocks out,
whose work is never quite done,
god of slavery, god of necessity, god of compulsion.

Let me get some sleep tonight.
Please.