glorious, if somewhat uncouth. The other was filled with all the brightness of all the suns that ever were, and he was very stern and upright. They were much older than her, and very close to one another even though in the past they had fought viciously. “We were young and foolish then,” said Second Sibling, whenever the little girl asked him about it.
“Sex was more fun,” said First Sibling.
This sort of statement made Second Sibling very cross, which of course was why First Sibling said it. In this way did the little girl come to know and love them both.
This is an approximation, you realize. This is what your mortal mind can comprehend.
Thus went the little girl’s childhood. They had no parents, the three of them, and so the little girl raised herself. She drank glimmering stuff when she was thirsty and lay down in soft places when she got tired. When she was hungry, First Sibling showed her how to draw sustenance from energies that suited her, and when she was bored Second Sibling taught her all the lore that had come into being. This was how she came to know names. The place in which they lived was called EXISTENCE—as opposed to the place from which they had come, which was a great shrieking mass of nothingness called MAELSTROM. The toys and foods she conjured were POSSIBILITY, and what a delightful substance that was! With it she could build anything she needed, even change the nature of EXISTENCE—though she quickly learned to ask before doing this, because Second Sibling got upset when she altered his carefully ordered rules and processes. First Sibling did not care.
Over time it came to be that the little girl spent more time with First Sibling than with Second, because Second did not seem to like her as much. “This is difficult for him,” First Sibling said, when she complained. “We have been alone, he and I, for so very long. Now you are here, and that changes everything. He does not like change.”
This the little girl had already come to understand. And this was why her siblings so often fought with each other, because First Sibling loved change. Often First Sibling would grow bored with EXISTENCE and transform it, or turn it inside out just to see the other side. Second Sibling would rage at First Sibling whenever this happened, and First Sibling would laugh at his fury, and before the little girl could blink they would be on each other, tearing and blasting, until something changed and then they would be clutching and gasping, and whenever this happened the little girl would patiently wait for them to finish so they could play with her again.
In time the little girl became a woman. She had learned to live with her two siblings, each in their own way —dancing wild with First Sibling and growing adept at discipline alongside Second. Now she made her own way beyond their peculiarities. She had stepped in between her siblings during their battles, fighting them to measure her strength and loving them when the fighting turned to joy. She had, though they did not know it, gone off to create her own separate EXISTENCES, where sometimes she pretended that she had no siblings. There she could arrange POSSIBILITY into stunning new shapes and meanings that she was sure neither of her siblings could have created themselves. In time she grew adept at this, and her creations so pleased her that she began to bring them into the realm where her siblings lived. She did this subtly at first, taking great care to fit them into Second Sibling’s orderly spaces and arrangements in a way that might not offend him.
First Sibling, as usual delighted by anything new, urged her to do far more. However, the woman found that she had developed a taste for some of Second Sibling’s order. She incorporated First Sibling’s suggestions, but gradually, purposefully, observing how each minute change triggered others, sometimes causing growth in unexpected and wonderful ways. Sometimes the changes destroyed everything, forcing her to start over. She mourned the loss of her toys, her treasures, but she always began the process again. Like First Sibling’s darkness and Second Sibling’s light, this particular gift was something only she could master. The compulsion to do it was as essential to her as breathing, as much a part of her as her own soul.
Second Sibling, once he got over his annoyance at her tinkering, asked her about it. “It is called ‘life,’” she said, liking the sound of the word. He smiled, pleased, for to name a thing is to give it order and purpose, and he understood then that she had done so to offer him respect.
But it was to First Sibling that she went for help with her most ambitious experiment. First Sibling was, as she had expected, eager to assist—but to her surprise, there was a sober warning as well. “If this works, it will change many things. You realize that, don’t you? Nothing in our lives will ever be the same.” First Sibling paused, waiting to see that she understood, and abruptly she did. Second Sibling did not like change.
“Nothing can stay the same forever,” she said. “We were not made to be still. Even he must realize that.”
First Sibling only sighed and said no more.
The experiment worked. The new life, mewling and shaking and uttering vehement protests, was beautiful in its unfinished way, and the woman knew that what she had begun was good and right. She named the creature “Sieh,” because that was the sound of the wind. And she called his type of being a “child,” meaning that it had the potential to grow into something like themselves, and meaning, too, that they could create more of them.
And as always with life, this minute change triggered many, many others. The most profound of them was something even she had not anticipated: they became a family. For a time, they were all happy with that—even Second Sibling.
But not all families last.
So there was love, once.
More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel.
But love like that doesn’t just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath.
Yes. Horrible, isn’t it?
When the body suffers an assault, it often reacts with a fever. Assaults to the mind can have the same effect. Thus I lay shivering and insensible for the better part of three days.
A few moments from this time appear in my memory as still-life portraits, some in color and some in shades of gray. A solitary figure standing near my bedroom window, huge and alert with inhuman vigilance. Zhakkarn. Blink and the same image returns in negative: the same figure, framed by glowing white walls and a black rectangle of night beyond the window. Blink and there is another image: the old woman from the library standing over me, peering carefully into my eyes. Zhakkarn stands in the background, watching. A thread of conversation, disconnected from any image.
“If she dies—”
“Then we start over. What’s a few more decades?”
“Nahadoth will be displeased.”
A rough, rueful laugh. “You have a great gift for understatement, sister.”
“Sieh, too.”
“That is Sieh’s own fault. I warned him not to get attached, the little fool.”
Silence for a moment, full of reproach. “There is nothing foolish about hope.”
Silence in reply, though this silence feels faintly of shame.
One of the images in my head is different from the others. This one is dark again, but the walls, too, have gone dark, and there is a
Her head is bowed in respect. In the foreground stands Nahadoth, gazing down at me in silence. Once again
