Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.


It takes me sometime, but as I mull over the concept of worlds beyond this one, I decide that I like it.

The thought of the myriad possibilities, a thousand realms to be conquered, and the many more beyond that, an endless array of things to be seen and known, makes my heart quicken as much as it rouses fear that my Gods are false. It does not steal away my hope of becoming something greater in so far as my life here is concerned, rather inspires it; should I fail in one kingdom, a thousand more waited for me, and a hundred thousand beyond that. With such an array of places one could aspire to be a King with a strong measure of belief that, one day, he would be.

I did not shrink away from the vastness of what expanded before me, once I really dwelled for a while on the concept. I was actually… fascinated by it.

So much so that it’s hard to pull myself out of my thoughts to hear Själ answer me. Her first sentence is muffled, as if heard through really heavy rain, her second as if she has simply walked closer. When I do hear her clearly, I find myself glancing over at her, aureate gaze alive with the curios wonder as to whether she’s this easy to manipulate all the time. She’s quickly moved away from her position that the Rift might be another world entirely simply because I’d thought differently. I don’t say anything, allowing her the comfort of thinking she’s redeemed herself.

I could hum with laughter, and I almost do; glancing back out into the rippling sunlight shadow of the forest around us, through beams of colored light, I am again struck by the notion of the Starplane being less true than I thought it to be. And so I question her again, because questioning her and throwing these strange concepts at her foreign mind seems to have yielded interesting results so far.

All I get for my efforts is a raised brow so characteristic to women, a judgmental stare that stabs right through me, one that says “well you are crazy.” It makes me want to turn around and huff right on out of here, and what she says in response to my queries is equally frustrating, but I don’t have a lot of friends. I tend to huff out or blow up with most everyone, and she’s been very patient and open with me so far.

Even if she is a malleable moron.

I sigh, a long, angry thing.

I try to swallow back the agitation that she just hasn’t thought much about worlds beyond this one before.

Stupid, earth walking Gods, condemning the unicorn to small mindedness, forever tethered to the belief that they were all that there could be out there; it was hard to wonder if there were other places when you did not have to search for your guidance in the stars, but walk to a smoldering collective of shrines, and behold it in the flesh. The First Gods understood this. I think that, maybe, on some level anyway, Helovia’s Gods do too – it’s why the Sun floats overhead, and warms the Earth. It’s why the Moon casts her shadow over the world, to praise the circling of Time; Time who does not sleep, and holds them all.

Are these concepts foreign to her, as well?

"Maybe we should talk about something else," or I might not want to talk anymore at all. I let my aggression slip away with the sound of the water, and find a new topic in the meantime. If she can’t talk Gods, surely she can talk adventure. "What herd lands have you been to? I've been to most of them."