Aili opened the door of her house.

“Come in,” she said to Daira and the two other monks who had descended from the mountain with them.

She had insisted to invite them to sleep there, since she had her dad’s bed and two sleeping sacks. The rest of the monks working in Lausune lived either inside of the post office or in tents on the outskirts of the village.

“I don’t want to use a bed just because I'm a prior,” Daira said while stepping inside. “With your permission, I'd like to organize a system of turns to sleep here. Obviously you can keep your bed, it's your house after all.”

Aili wondered whether that would have changed once the new Koidan was created. She'd have spent the rest of her life with the monks, so having an empty house in the middle of the village was just a waste of space. She tried to imagine other people living there, but she could only picture a younger version of her family: a man with

a glint of perennial amusement in his eyes, a little girl that asked too many questions about everything, a woman without a face, but dressed with the floral patterns of the northern villages.

She went through each room, opening all the windows and hiding the worst of the mess under the furniture. It mostly consisted of bags full of maps of the villages, some of them recent, some old, some just pieces she had drawn based on the remains of ancient stones at the corner of the streets that could suggest the presence of long-gone houses.

“You have an impressive collection,” Daira observed, pointing at a bag on the table in the middle of the living room.

Aili opened the last window.

“Thank you, but the ones back at the village are more detailed.”

She had studied them as much as possible, during the last week. They went further back than any of the ones she had managed to find, and in hindsight it was probably the monks' fault. But they didn't go further enough to talk about the foundation of the villages. She had inquired about it and looked for books on the topic, but everyone and everything was evasive, spewing back at her the foundation myth.

It talked about how the monks’ village was born before the others from people who came from the sea. They found sediments of viss inside the mountain and gathered it all in one place over the course of numerous decades, in a special chamber from which they could draw every time they created a god. But before all of that, nobody seemed to know who they were, or why there was so much viss around to begin with. If the story was even true.

She found the two sleeping sacks inside an old wardrobe. She helped the two monks free enough space in the living room to open them, then showed Daira her father's old room. She had left it closed for months after the funeral, then took some weeks off from work to properly clean and examine every single item that had belonged to him, in hope of facing the grief all at once. It hadn't stopped there, obviously, but at least the room was clean and ready to be used.

“Let me know if anything's missing,” she told Daira, then left her to settle down.

As soon as everyone had put away their things and rested their feet, they left for the post office. Aili saw the line in front of it from afar and almost groaned with exasperation. She remembered the chaos that had followed Koidan's announcement about the labour division and hoped that the monks were more prepared to deal with it than she and Saia had been.

She noticed someone approach. She smiled when she saw Dan, even if his expression was serious and bordering on angry. Morìc was walking some steps behind him, as if he didn't want to engage in the conversation about to happen unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Hi,” Aili greeted them. “I’m happy to see you two.”

Dan recoiled a bit at that, as if he had expected her to match his mood.

“Yeah, me too. Where's Saia?”

“She's fine.”

“Good. Where?”

Aili stopped. Daira and the other monks slowed down, looking back at her.

“I’ll join you in a second,” she said. “It's important.”

Daira nodded. The group proceeded toward the post office.

“She's fine, Dan,” Aili said, lowering her voice. “I can't tell you anything more.”

“You're one of them, now?” he asked, giving a meaningful glance to her gray tunic.

“Why?” she asked. “Did they do something wrong?”

“They entered the houses, all of them. They said they wanted to get to know everyone, but they were looking for something. They even checked the closets!”

“They seemed interested,” Morìc said with a shrug.

Dan pointed at him.

“And this. I don't know why, but everyone seems to like them. The teacher didn’t want to let them in, but they convinced him immediately.”

Aili reflected that the monks were probably looking for Zeles, and convincing people seemed to be the effect of some kind of manipulation. It had to be simple, if even monks who weren't scholars could do it easily without having a chance to touch the other person for a long period of time. Her guess was that they were communicating their good intentions through their viss, and since they actually thought they were helping the village, those feelings were sincere enough to convince everyone. Obviously the effect wouldn't have lasted if they also weren't doing their best to solve everyone's problems.

“I stayed away from them,” Dan continued. “They kept Koidan’s groups, but they're the ones in charge, and every group has at least one of them. They're everywhere. I've tried asking Koidan why he sent them, since we were managing on our own, but he doesn't answer anymore. His statue doesn't even move during the ceremonies.”

He took a deep breath, looking as if he was about to cry. Aili had to remind herself that he was still very young.

“What do you think is going on?” she asked.

“I don't know. But if Koidan has disappeared, maybe... Maybe the evil god has won. And maybe these people are his people, and they're here to replace us. Or to force us to join them,” he added, glancing at Aili’s tunic again.

He stepped back.

“You're one of them now, right? And Saia... Saia is too smart to listen to them. What did you do to her?”

Aili recoiled.

“We didn't do anything.”

Morìc put a hand on his shoulder.

“Calm down, it's Aili.”

Dan shrugged to get free of his gentle grip and stepped aside. He stood there, glaring at his brother.

“I promise you it's not what is happening,” Aili said. “You thought that we were managing, but I ensure you that we needed help. Milvia was killed, remember? Even if Koidan was still talking to us, to some degree.”

Dan looked at her.

“Saia is fine,” Aili continued. “Do you really think I would help these people if they had hurt her?”

He lowered his eyes.

“Then why did you come back and she didn’t?”

Aili wanted to hug him, but she didn't want to scare him or make him think that he was being manipulated.

“She's busy. She…” Aili hesitated. She didn't know how much they knew about Saia's past. Nothing, most likely.

“Her village is going through some problems, so she's there to help.”

“What problems? Did their god disappear too?”

Aili almost smiled at that.

“No. It's just that their goddess isn't a good deity and she's looking for a way to change that.”

Dan and Morìc exchanged a glance.

“How?” Dan asked.

“I don't know.”

“She promised she'd have tried to come back.”

Aili hesitated, then shrugged.

“I didn’t know that.”

Dan nodded, lowering his head. Aili glanced toward the post office: the monks had disappeared inside. Some of the people in line were starting to recognize her.

“I really need to go, now. Let me know if you have any problems.”

She hurried toward the entrance, hoping to slip through before someone could stop her. But the doorway was obstructed by two men discussing their turns as wardens, so she was forced to greet everyone and give one-sentence explanations to a constant stream of questions. Lihana and the herbalist insisted to know where Saia was, but she managed to squeeze her way inside before they could stop her. She sprinted toward the stairs, up to the first floor.

She slowed down when she saw Daira sitting at the table in the center of the room, the other monks scattered around her. They were listing the problems they had to face in the last two days, and some long-term ones that had begun since they started their work at Lausune. Aili sat down quietly on the floor against the wall, in a spot that let her see both the bottom of the stairs and some of the people who were talking to the monks behind the counter.

“So you haven't found him?” Daira asked, her voice low enough that no one could listen from the bottom floor.

“No,” a young monk answered in the same tone. “We've checked every house, multiple times when possible.”

“And every step of the territory outside the buildings,” an older woman added. “Including the ones around the village: forest, beach and cave.”

Daira nodded, looking at the sheets scattered on the table.

“The other gods didn't signal anything?”

The woman shook her head.

“They could be accomplices, though.”

Daira sighed and scratched her head.

“We should search their villages too. Discreetly, if possible.”

“We already stopped everyone from leaving,” someone else said. Aili couldn't see them from the point where she was sitting. “The merchants are a bit worried that this is going to ruin their trade if it continues for too long.”

Daira nodded.

“We need to find Zeles quickly, then. We'll start by searching the inhabitants more thoroughly, then we’ll examine their houses from top to bottom. The first investigation wasn’t enough to cover everything.”

The monks looked silently at each other.

“I know,” Daira said. “I don't like it either. But we have to start somewhere, and we don't have much time. It would be ideal to find him before we have a substitute.”

She looked at Aili as she said that. She fought to keep impassible against all the glances that followed.

“It's impossible to search everyone without them suspecting anything,” a monk said, pacing up and down the room behind Daira.

“They were talking about an evil god,” the young monk said. “Maybe if we tell them that he put an illness in the food and we have the cure, they'll come here without us having to go house to house.”

“But whoever has Zeles will have time to hide him,” Daira observed, then shook her head. “There isn't a clean way to do this. Our only hope is to be fast enough that the effect of such a thing won't get out of control.”

Aili realized her heart was pounding. She had to think fast about who could have Zeles’s sphere, or where it was hidden.

“I’ll have to ask for the abbot's permission, first,” Daira added, standing up. “If I know him and the other priors, they'll have to discuss a lot before they approve of something like this. If we send the message today, we’ll have the answer in about a week, and preparations will probably require another one. Anything else?”

Most monks shook their heads. The rest didn’t say anything.

“Then I think we’re finished here. Thank you for your insights and good job to everyone.”

The monks started to leave. Daira nodded in Aili's direction, and she followed her downstairs. Now there were four monks behind the counter and the line seemed noticeably shorter than before.

Daira left first. Aili was about to follow her, when she saw Liraira arguing with a monk.

“What does it mean, you don't know who's delivering the letters?”

Aili stopped. It wasn't like the monks overlooking something like that. Probably they didn't want anyone and anything to leave before they could check it properly, and checking everything meant eliciting suspicion.

Liraira saw that she was looking. She gave one last glance to the monk, then strode toward Aili. She felt her heart accelerate.

“You don't work here anymore,” Liraira said, glancing at her tunic. “Why?”

“Koidan wanted us to…”

“Well, nobody can leave or enter and I need to know if the letter was delivered. Do you have it?”

Aili blinked.

“What letter?”

But she realized as soon as she had finished talking that she meant the letter for Anbem, Milvia’s boyfriend.

“I asked the monks to deliver it,” she said.

“But they can't tell me anything about it!”

She looked so frustrated Aili expected her to start crying.

“I can ask around, I know some of these people. What do you need to know?”

Liraira sighed.

“The letter I gave you was... Very angry. I used words I'm not proud of.”

Aili remembered them.

“I’m sure they know you didn't mean it.”

“Oh, I meant every single thing. It was for one of my father's employees, but it's too long to explain. Dad hasn't heard from him in a while, and I still hate him, but I would have never thought…”

She shook her head.

“Hold on,” Aili said. “The gods would have stopped him, if he had tried to hurt himself or something like that. Most likely, it's only a momentary problem. I'm sure you'll find him once we're allowed to leave the village again.”

“And when is that supposed to happen?”

Aili didn't know. She hesitated too long, looking for the best wording, but Liraira started to walk away.

“Let me know if you find something.”

“Wait,” Aili said.

Liraira turned. As she looked into her eyes, Aili realized it was the worst possible moment to ask her out. She didn't even know if she liked women, and she'd have to leave for the mountain in two months, regardless. Besides, the words in her letter had soured her feelings a bit.

“Nothing,” she said.

She watched her leave and waited a bit before following her. Daira was waiting outside.

“I’m sorry,” Aili started, but the prior stopped her by raising a hand.

“They didn’t expect to have you back dressed like one of us. I accounted for the fact that you’d have a lot of explanations to give.”

Aili walked beside her.

“We have time to start your training,” Daira continued. “There’s a lot to cover.”

Aili realized that Daira not only expected her to become a goddess, but she also was almost sure it would happen, if the glance she gave her earlier was an indication to go by.

“I know it goes against my interests, but wouldn’t it be an unfair advantage, compared to the other candidates?”

“No. First of all, I won’t tell you what the trials are about, and trust me when I say that nothing can prepare you for that. Second, my goal is to give you the knowledge that the other candidates had the time to absorb by virtue of living in the village. You won’t be advantaged, you’ll only be at their level.”

“You seem very invested in my victory. What if I fail?”

Daira shrugged.

“I’ll try again with another candidate if the chance presents itself. I think you'd still be useful to the community as a scholar. And just so you know, even if you win the trials you can step back until the moment they transform you into a sphere. In that case, we'll just ask the next candidate, and so on.”

“It's reassuring to know.”

They were almost at the beginning of her street.

“Spheres are a good place to start,” Daira said. “I suppose you saw the carvings in our temple?”

“Yes. I've read that gods are spheres of glass full of viss, but I couldn’t find anything on how they are created.”

“Well, the exact details are extremely complicated, and obviously not the kind of information we want everyone to know. But I can give you the general idea. Mind if we keep going?” She asked, pointing at the end of the street. “I want to see the beach.”

Aili nodded. They kept following the main road.

“The concept is simple: we create a sphere of glass, free from impurities, then we fill it with part of the viss that is stored inside the mountain. The candidate is transformed into viss that contains all of the information about them.”

“What kind of information?”

“Their consciousness, essentially. Them, without loss of data.”

“Except for the body.”

Daira shook her head.

“Every single information about their body is preserved, even if the physical form won't exist anymore.”

Aili looked down at her hands.

“And it doesn't get mixed up with the energy of the mountain?”

“The viss gets purified by any residue of data and imprint right before being used to create a god.”

They were descending along the docks, now. Daira turned her head toward the sea as they walked past the boats. Aili took that time to think about her words.

“What if a god left the mountain? It would be a waste of viss.”

“We are constantly observing them to prevent that. It could destroy the mountain.”

Aili listened with growing surprise as Daira explained how the gods had to keep the mountain from crumbling, how unstable it was, to the point that a portion of the gods' power was always aimed at it to keep it whole.

“There are other measures and restrictions put in place at the moment of their creation,” Daira concluded. “No god has ever escaped, and the few ones who tried eventually came back. In the worst case, we’ll immediately create a new sphere before the damage becomes too big.”

“If the mountain is so unstable, how did the first monks manage to build anything up there?”

“It wasn’t always that unstable. They made a mistake while building the system to extract the viss from the mountain to create the gods. We don't know exactly what went wrong, but the first deities had to consciously prevent it from collapsing. Later, this behavior was imprinted during the creation of the sphere.”

“Hypothetically, would it be possible to imprint other commands? Like protecting the villages, or healing the sick?”

“It would be extremely complicated to the point of being impossible. For example, if I wanted a god to automatically protect the village from cloud people, I'd have to take into account every possible combination of weapon and direction of attack. If the attackers changed strategy, all that work would be useless. If you consider everything that could happen to the village, every possible illness…”

“Right,” Aili said. “So gods have to be human, in order to understand what's wrong and how to fix it.”

Daira nodded.

“But how could you prevent a god from leaving?”

“Every shrine is always illuminated and kept under observation, even at night, so we can immediately deactivate them as soon as they leave with the shards we took from them. Provided a human doesn't help them,” she added with a sigh.

“It's what happened with Koidan, right?”

“Most likely.”

“And it has never happened before? All of the gods have always accepted that it was time for them to die?”

Daira gave her a bitter smile.

“Of course not. That's another reason why we have to keep track of how much energy they have left, so that we can deactivate them before they realize that their time is ending. But we underestimated how much energy Zeles was actually using.”

Aili thought about Saia's house. Zeles healed any kind of hurt and illness even before people asked him to. He was always answering, always paying attention, loosely enough to know when something was wrong without spying on the inhabitants. Given what Saia had told her about Vizena micro-managing everything to the point that everyone was extremely careful not to capture her attention in any way, and Dore leaving the most difficult jobs to homeless people, it wasn't difficult to believe that he had been using a lot more viss in comparison.

The feeling of sand under her shoes was so sudden it took her by surprise. Daira stopped, eyes going from the beach to the sea and vice versa. Aili looked at the horizon: the view down there was different than the one they had on the mountain.

“Before we came to the village,” she said, hesitant to break the silence, “We saw a ship.”

Daira looked at her.

“We know. It was what convinced us to deactivate Zeles and investigate. But the question you wanted to make is different, right?”

Aili nodded. She couldn’t read Daira’s expression.

“The world beyond the mountain,” the prior said with a sigh, bringing her eyes back to the sea. “What do you know about it?”

“Only what’s written in the sacred texts: that the nine gods created humanity, but the other great forces of the world didn’t like that, so they tried to destroy it. So the nine gods created the mountain as a place where their followers could live in peace. Then I read the myths about the monks discovering the mountain and I don't know what to think anymore.”

Daira resumed walking. Aili followed her after an instant.

“We don't know for sure what is happening in the rest of the world. We know that the sea and the external forest are big enough to isolate us. We know that there are humans like us, living in places just like the villages, but as big as the mountain itself.”

Aili tried and failed to imagine it.

“We know that they have to deal with all the dangers the gods are shielding us from, and more. Do you remember the murder?”

Aili winced and nodded.

“Sorry, I didn't know you were familiar with the victim. Where those people live, similar things happen every day. They're violent and disorganized. Nobody knows what they could do to this place, were they to find it.”

“They're trying to get here, right? And the gods are protecting us from them.”

“Correct, but in this case the gods are a last resort, in case the ships get too close. There is a guardian that lives in the sea and is dangerous enough to deter them.”

“Another god?”

“A creature, or so our texts say. We don't know what it is exactly, only that our predecessors had to face it in order to come here.”

“Maybe it left? Or it died?”

Daira frowned.

“That would be a problem we really don't need.”

They walked in silence beyond the line of white stones. Daira stopped midway through the beach.

“What do you feel about it?”

Aili frowned.

“About what?”

“Becoming a sphere. Not having an actual body anymore. I mean, we'll obviously give you a statue, but that's not the same thing. And remember that you won't be allowed to leave the shrine.”

Aili thought about it. She had no intention of winning the trials, and even in the remote chance she did, she could always step back and let somebody else take her place. Still, the idea of her body vanishing forever made her heart pound. She liked her body. She tried to imagine a statue with her face, but with the imposing presence of the gods' statues. It looked amazing, but also so far away from her that she couldn't fathom getting used to it.

“This is what I mean when I say that you won't be advantaged,” Daira said. “The other candidates had years to think about what it means to be a god. They knew the implications a long time before being voted.”

She sat down on the dry sand, some steps away from the calm sea waves.

“I want you to think about this as much as you can. By the time the two months are over, I want you to know exactly how you feel about this. Remember that you can step back at any moment.”

Aili nodded. She sat down two steps to Daira’s left and filled her hands with soft sand.

“There's another thing: we’ll create a new statue for you, but your predecessor was a man, and the people of the village are used to refer to Koidan as such. Obviously we'll change this, but for the first month or so you'll have to use Zeles’s statue.”

“Why?”

Daira started tracing a spiral in the sand with a finger.

“We have to write the speech for the population and be prepared to deal with all the evidence that could be left after that.”

“Evidence? So, like... Documents?”

“Documents, art, anything that could hint at the fact that Koidan has changed in any way.”

Aili thought about her research around the villages. Before finding out about the monks, she hadn't even imagined that the same god could actually be a long line of different people.

“Why is this so important that it requires all this preparation?”

“It's not about the change itself, it's more about the timing. The inhabitants of the villages should think that their gods are omnipotent and have existed since the beginning of time. And above all, they shouldn't notice a pattern where they change in any significant way every two hundred years or so.”

Aili thought about the patterns she had found by questioning the elders about ancient myths. She nodded.

“It's another thing you'll have to think about,” Daira added.

“Compared to not having my body anymore, being treated like a man doesn't feel like a big change.”

“I agree, but it could be another cause of stress during an already delicate time. Maybe it's not your case, but you could also find that it does make a difference on your ability to function as a goddess.”

Daira rubbed her hands together to clean them from the sand.

“I’m telling you this because I know how it feels like to be treated like a man even if you’re not. I only went to Erimur at twenty-five.”

Aili remembered the place clearly, even if it was one of the villages she had visited less. The local god was an expert in matters of medicine and anatomy, and his temple was a popular destination for people who needed to undergo big changes to their bodies.

“I’ve learned a lot of techniques to quiet most of the distress that came from being mistaken for a man,” Daira continued. “They’re mostly based on viss manipulation. I can teach you how to use them, if you think they could be useful.”

Aili looked at her, eyes wide.

“Please. That would be amazing.”

Daira produced a small smile, then got up.

“Time to go back. We have a lot of things to organize.”

Aili followed her toward the village. She focused on the feeling of sand under her shoes, the wind moving strands of hair around her face, the sight of pink clouds while the sun sunk under the water. She tried to imagine how gods could experience the world, but couldn’t find an answer.