“Splendid, dear sister of mine,” Zelana said sweetly. “I’m sure all your fat servants will be delighted to see you bow down right here in your own temple—assuming, of course, that it’s still standing after he arrives on that silly thunderbolt he always rides. It’s a nice enough thunderbolt, I suppose, but the noise it makes when it passes shakes down buildings sometimes. Putting your temple back together should give your fat servants something to do while they’re pondering the fact that the supreme goddess of the universe just bowed down to somebody who looks for all the world like some shaggy bear.”
“You never bow down to him, Zelana,” Aracia accused.
“Of course I don’t,” Zelana replied. “I don’t have to, because I don’t demand—or expect—anybody to bow down to me. That’s the way it works, Aracia. Had you forgotten about that? It’s time to shed your cocoon, my butterfly sister. The dreams have begun, and the Vlagh could be on our doorstep before the week’s out. Let’s go talk with Dahlaine while there’s still time.”
Zelana took her sister’s hand, and they rode the wind toward the northwest. It was early autumn now, and the land far below was ablaze with color. The rivers sparkled in the autumn sun, and the mountains to the north of Aracia’s Domain gleamed white beneath their eternal snow.
Just to be on the safe side, they skirted the northeastern corner of the Wasteland. Many of the servants of the Vlagh had extremely sharp senses, and the sisters were certain that this wouldn’t be a good time to alert their enemy. It might not have been really necessary, but there was no point in taking chances.
Actually, the sisters were rather looking forward to the meeting. There hadn’t been a general family get-together for almost a dozen eons. There’d been occasional squabbles among them, of course. No family lives in absolute harmony forever, but in times of crisis the family was able to set their differences aside and work together to reach a solution.
“Isn’t that Dahlaine’s mountain?” Aracia asked, pointing at the land of the North lying far below.
Zelana glanced down. “No,” she replied. “Mount Shrak’s quite a bit taller.”
“I’ve never looked at Father Earth from this high up before,” Aracia said. “He looks different from up here, doesn’t he?”
“Try looking at him from the edge of the sky some time, dear sister,” Zelana suggested.
“Edge of the sky?” Aracia sounded puzzled.
“Up where it isn’t blue anymore. After Eleria told me her dream, I needed to tell Dahlaine what she’d seen, but when I went looking for a wind that was blowing in his direction, the only one I could find was up at the outer edge of the air. You can even see the curve of the world from that high.”
“Does it really curve?” Aracia asked. “Veltan told me that if you look at Father Earth from the moon, he looks like a round blue ball.” She frowned. “I never did understand just why it was that Mother Sea exiled Veltan to the moon for all those eons. Did he do something to offend her?”
Zelana laughed. “Indeed he did, Aracia. He told her that she bored him.”
“He didn’t!”
“Oh, yes he did. You know how juvenile Veltan can be sometimes. He thought he was being terribly funny, but he just can’t seem to get it through his mind that Mother Sea has absolutely no sense of humor. He kept clowning around with various absurdities—different shades of blue, and even the notion of ‘stripes.’ He was having all kinds of fun pestering her—probably hoping that he could make her laugh, but it didn’t work out very well for him. She finally lost her temper and told him to go away. That’s why our baby brother—who’ll probably never really grow up—spent ten thousand years on the moon.”
“And he passed the time cataloging shades of blue,” Aracia added. “That seems to be his major preoccupation.”
“How many shades of blue has he found so far?”
“Something in excess of thirteen million the last time I spoke with him. That was about an eon or so ago, though, so he’s probably found more by now.”
“There’s Mount Shrak,” Zelana told her sister, pointing toward the earth far below. “Let’s go down and see if Dahlaine’s managed to track Veltan down yet.”
They descended through the lambent air toward the craggy peak of Mount Shrak, startling a flock of geese as they went. Zelana rather liked geese. They were silly birds most of the time, but their migrations marked the change of the seasons very precisely, and that added a certain stability to an unpredictable world.
The sisters came to earth near the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave, and Zelana led Aracia down the long, winding passage toward their brother’s underground home.
“Hideous,” Aracia observed, looking around. “Did he put all those icicles on the ceiling himself?”
“They aren’t ice, dear sister,” Zelana replied. “They’re stone. They sort of grow the same way, though, but they take quite a bit longer.”
“He’ll starve to death if he lives here in the dark for too long,” Aracia observed.
“He has a little sun that follows him here in his cave,” Zelana said. “It’s a lot like a puppy, and it gives him all the light he needs.”
“He’s manufacturing suns now?” Aracia seemed a bit startled. “I tried that once, but the silly thing flew apart as soon as I started to make it spin.”
“You probably didn’t make it quite heavy enough. The balance of a sun has to be very precise—too light and it flies apart; too heavy and it collapses in on itself.”
Aracia looked around cautiously. “Where’s Dahlaine’s Dreamer?” she whispered.
“Ashad? Dahlaine told me that he was out playing with the bears. We all seem to have our favorite animals, don’t we? I love my pink dolphins, Dahlaine loves bears, Veltan’s fond of sheep, and you’re attached to the seals who nest along your coast.”
Aracia shrugged. “They gave us something to play with while we were waiting for the man-creatures to grow up,” she said. She peered back into the dim cave. “It seems that Dahlaine hasn’t found Veltan yet,” she noted. “I don’t see them anywhere. How far back does this cave go?”
“Miles and miles, I think,” Zelana replied. “Let’s wait. I’m sure they’ll be along soon. Has your Dreamer told you any interesting stories yet?”