"Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible." - Edward Teller

I remembered how I'd felt the first time I'd seen a glimpse of the Light in Raziel. It had driven me to my knees and nearly broken something inside of me. Understanding, dark and horrible, crept into my mind. "No one can bear to be near me."

"They just need to get used to it. It will be OK. You'll see." She said all this a little too quickly.

I raced for the door and, though she yelled for me to stop, she made no move against me and I paid no attention to her. In a moment the door was open. I burst into the massive common room. A group sat around the table. Instantly two of them were on their feet, facing me, teeth bared. Vampires. Denisa lunged at me and fell back, looking away, while Adam kept his eyes on the floor but inched closer to me seemingly against his will. Both growled low in their throats with a savage animal longing. Freyja threw herself in front me me, facing them with her arms spread wide.

"Stop!" she commanded. "Go."

Adam shuddered. "I can't! The blood!"

"Go!" Freyja demanded. Atsheena took each of them by the arm and they allowed themselves to be pulled toward the exit. Denisa's animal scream could be heard echoing in the night. They had promised not to drink human blood but, no doubt, something would meet death at their hands this day.

All of this had happened in the space of a few moments. I still stood in the same place. Those at the table turned their heads from me. I could hear a few of them weeping, among them my beloved Michael, at the head of the table, his shoulders hunched over as if in agony.

"Michael?" I spoke and the people winced at the sound of my voice. "Michael?" I whispered.

"I'm here, Simone," he answered in a choked voice.

I went back to the dorm. I could cause them no further pain.

Freyja followed me.

"Is it so bad?" I asked.

"No!" she said. "It is too good."

"What do I do?"

"Cover yourself. They'll adjust." She left me to get dressed. I blamed Raziel for everything. Hatred sunk a tiny seed into my heart.

She was right. It took a few days, but the other residents of our little community acclimated to my presence. Even the vampires stayed with the group, though they kept their distance from me. Gaia came often. Her influence must have been something of a stabilizing force. It always seemed easiest to be around everyone when she was with us. The little ones especially grew accustomed to me, and my sweet Ike could even touch my clothes after a week or so. He was the only one of the humans able to do so.

One evening, I sat playing with the children near the animal enclosures as they pestered Atsheena. "Tell us a story!" they demanded of her. She sat with us and crossed her long legs under her. "I have a friend who lives far from here. She's a being of the Realms and she has a great love for earth, and for silly little children who demand stories when they're supposed to be sleeping! "

The children all giggled at being teased and not one of the little stinkers had the decency to look ashamed of themselves.

"My friend's name is Pavarti. A very long time ago she met Shiva and she fell madly in love." A huge, dramatic sigh, a hand over her heart, and some fluttering of her eyelashes sent the girls into further fits of giggles. The boys rolled their eyes at each other to prove they were far too manly to care about love stories. "Shiva is...," she paused and then continued in a deep booming voice, "THE GOD OF WAR!" Now she had them all in the palm of her hand. "His wife had died and he'd become a giant grouch who lived in a cave, talking to no one."

"Like The Grinch?" asked one of the boys.

"Exactly like the Grinch," declared Atsheena. "Except he wasn't green. He was quite handsome and so Pavarti wanted him to cheer up and notice her. Every day she would come to his creepy cave, and do nice things for him, but he never paid her much attention at all. After a while, Pavarti became incredibly frustrated. She loved the big galoot, and he wasn't even noticing her!

"So she thought up a plan to get his attention. She went into the woods, and she spent a very long time meditating. She became a perfect master of her physical world. She was totally in tune with That Which Is, so she was offered anything she wanted.

"'Make me beautiful,' she asked. Now, in my opinion, this was a bit of silliness. Pavarti was perfect just as she was created and many, including me, loved her very much just the way she was. But, alas, we girls can be a bit stupid over boys sometimes."

The little girls nodded at each other, sagely.

"That Which Is gave her what she wanted and, when Shiva saw her he sure did notice. He proposed on the spot! Sadly, Pavarti hadn't realized that Shiva did not want any babies. He thought children were a nuisance. Can you imagine?"

The kids were wide-eyed, unsure how to respond.

"He tossed her an old rag and told her, 'Here you go. Just make a doll and cuddle with that.' Well, you can imagine that she wasn't very happy. In fact, her feelings were so hurt that she started to cry. The thing is, that all that meditating and communing with That Which Is had made her quite powerful, so her tears, falling on that ugly little doll, brought life into it and turned it into a sweet baby boy whom she loved with all her heart. When he grew up, she gave him the job of protecting their little home.

After a long time, Shiva started to get lonely and he realized he'd acted like a big jerk. So he went to find Pavarti and what did he find but this young man? He flew into a rage--remember, he was the GOD OF WAR (the big booming voice again, inciting further laughter), so he wasn't well known for his patience and calm spirit. And he..." She slashed her hand dramatically across her throat. "Chopped off the boy's head!"

They all gasped, enthralled with the words of this master story teller.

"Pretty quickly, he realized that was a seriously bad choice, and so he tried to make it right by finding him a new head but it seemed the best he could come up with was an elephant's head.

"It wasn't perfect, but the boy accepted that at least he had a head. He had such a lovely spirit and peace of mind that he became a keeper of good fortune, and a protector of men. Shiva learned that nothing good comes from being ruled by your anger and letting your emotions run wild, and he started channeling all his power to making life better for others. Pavarti found peace and joy in her lovely little family, and taught us all that even in the midst of the very most horrible, sad, dark, scary times in our lives, there is a way to joy and peace and hope for those who are strong in spirit and willing to seek creative answers.

"And now... spirited little children need to toddle off to bed. The sun will rise again before you know it and it's much easier to be strong and creative when you've had a proper rest."

She shooed them forward with a wink and a smile over her shoulder.

I remained sitting on the floor with a newborn baby goat in my lap, visiting with my husband, Mother Earth, and a purple fairy. All attention was on the goat, an adorable fuzz puff of black and white fur pushing his face into the bottle of milk as though he came out of the womb terrified that his food supply could be cut short at any moment.

"My life is weird," I said. I hadn't really meant to say it out loud but sometimes the lines between the internal and external became blurred.

"Life has always been full of the unexpected," Gaia said, reaching out to stroke the little animal's head. "It's part of the beauty of this place. There are some rhythms that never change and, within the cadence of those rhythms, the variations are endless."

The kid realized that the bottle was empty and nothing more could be drawn from it. He began licking Gaia's face instead, which earned him a hearty scratching behind the ears. We all laughed when he tried to climb Gaia as if she were a mountain to be conquered. For a moment, I was concerned he would run wild through the compound, but then Fayette alighted on his neck and spoke in the ringing bell language of her kind and he trotted over to the enclosure. Michael stood to open the gate and let him in.

Life had changed so much, but there was a purity here that was undeniably comfortable. I wished we could just go on existing like this forever, raising our kids in a happy little commune where material wealth meant nothing and caring for your neighbor was an everyday act. But I suspected the days given to us to get settled in and prepared were drawing to a close.

I stood up to finish my evening chores and head to bed, but I hadn't even lain down yet when Atsheena came to get me. "Simone! Myra's in labor."

~*~

I stood in the corner, terrified that my presence would be more of a hindrance than a help and I watched in fascination. I'd given birth twice but I'd never seen another woman go through this miraculous transformation in person. Myra was glorious. She paced the room like a tiger in a cage, breathing deeply with a soft animal grunt upon each exhale in between contractions. As a new contraction would come upon her, each closer than the last, she would put her palms against the wall and lean forward, with her knees slightly bent and rock back and forth, completely lost in her own world of strength, and pain, and total force of will until it had passed. Freyja stayed close, offering sips of water and bits of broth or bread but, for the most part she, too kept her distance. As much as you hear about women needing support during labor and delivery, it hadn't occurred to me before now, removed from the trappings of modern medicine, what a solitary thing birth was. No one could do anything for her. It was up to her: her strength, her will, her instinctive knowledge of her own body, to do this thing.

Time passed in the normal way, but none of us in that room seemed aware of it. At some point Myra knelt down next to the bed and lay her head down on her crossed arms. She was making a constant low noise in the back of her throat, and Freyja sat down behind her. She didn't have to wait long. With no prompting and no words she began pushing. The force of her concentration was a vortex that drew in my own focus. Nothing else in the universe existed outside of this time and place. I watched her face, a mask of sheer determination, and I felt myself timing my breathing to hers, flexing my stomach muscles as she strained, willing her to be strong.

Light poured out of me, far too bright to be contained by fabric, and illuminated the room. As the edge of the aura approached Freyja she peered at me, surprise and question in her eyes. At that moment the light encompassed Myra, and with a warrior's cry she made one last monumental effort and suddenly, there in Freyja's hands, was a perfectly formed brand new human being, bathed in a golden glow, and looking straight at me with wide eyes. She seemed startled to find herself in this new world, but she didn't cry. She moved her lips and took a deep breath and her skin took on a wonderful pinkish hue.

I wept at her perfect beauty. The Light seeped back into me, leaving the room aglow with the dancing shadows of the oil lamps. Gaia helped Myra move onto the bed, and Freyja placed her daughter in her arms. We heard the baby's voice, then: not in a cry, but a tiny kittenish mewl that made us all laugh.

I sat down on Myra's bedside. "She's so beautiful," I said. "She's absolutely perfect. What are you going to name her?"

Myra beamed down at her sweet baby girl. "I wasn't sure but then... tonight... well... I think I will name her Pavarti."

Freyja's delighted, musical laughter filled the room. Her joy was infectious. "A perfect choice!" she declared. I agreed. Pavarti had a great future ahead of her. I was certain of it in my soul and, in that moment, my heart was calm, and I was confident that, in some way, everything was going to work out just fine.

I left the room and found the men gathered around the breakfast table. The sight made me smile. I could imagine the same scene in a room five thousand years ago.

"A perfect little girl," I told them. "Her name is Pavarti. She and her mother are resting. "

It was at that moment that the door banged open. Eddie and Jake came in, carrying a body between them. It was Mark, a young man who'd come to us alone only a few weeks ago. His body was already turning blue. An arrow was struck through the center of his chest, the tip buried so deeply in that it nearly protruded from his back.

"What happened?"

Jake crossed his arms over himself and stepped away from the corpse. "We were out hunting and he just dropped. We saw the guys. They looked like they were hunters too. It seemed like it was an accident but, I don't know. It was all so fast. And they ran away and..." he trailed off.

A few of the group went out to prepare a place to lay Mark to rest in the vast yard behind the factory. There was talk of chasing the ones responsible, but what good would it do? There was no purpose to be served by undertaking such a dangerous pursuit.

When they were ready, we carried him out and prayed over him, that he may have a smooth transition to the spirit world. His was the first death among us but we all knew it wouldn't be the last. Death had always been a part of living but, in this new world, it took on a central role. When it was over, and we all resumed the tasks of life, a weird numbness settled upon the group. It was as though the birth and the death, so close together, had created too overwhelming of an emotional response, leaving everybody in a weird limbo. I hoped people would snap out of it sooner rather than later, but had no inspired ideas about how to make that happen.

I found myself nodding off at a sewing machine sometime around noon. Michael saw it, too. "Go to bed, Simone. You're no good to any of us if you exhaust yourself into being too sick to hold your head up." I could hardly blame him for his grouchy tone. He was doing his best to adapt, but some days were harder than others.

I considered taking the bait and arguing, but the truth was, he was right. I'd been up straight through the night. I was fast approaching the point of face-planting onto the floor.

I'd only slept for about two hours, though, when the man who had told me to go to bed was waking me up again. "Simone. There's someone here. I think you need to meet him."

Would it be childish to pull the covers over my head and hide? Probably. What was so bad about being childish? I groaned and stretched.

"OK." I said." I'll be right there."

I tried to remember the dream I was having. It was something about a roof top and there was a vaguely familiar man who I was terrified of. The dream slipped through my fingers, even as I was remembering it, in that weird way that dreams so often did.

I washed my face to wake up a little and headed on out to meet the newcomer.

The little boy seemed perfectly ordinary. I would never have suspected that he was anything other than a little boy except for Raziel's reaction. When they caught sight of one another, Raziel smiled more broadly than I'd ever seen before.

"Brother!"

The child grinned, for all the world looking like Dennis the Menace. "I've missed you!"

They embraced as warmly as two long-separated brothers.

"What have you been doing? Where have you been?" Raziel asked.

The boy's shrugged, good-naturedly. "I have been wandering to and fro on the earth, of course. And amongst the realms as well."

"And what have you seen?" Raziel asked.

"Too many things to tell, all at once. I will tell you this, though. What I have seen confuses me greatly. I seek the greater experience of one who has spent more time here than me," the boy said.

"You are not unfamiliar with the ways of the humans."

"No. Nor with the ways of those who are not human. But this interaction is something new and it's... disorienting."

"Yes. For all of us." Raziel said, and then, "Simone, this is one who is like me."

"Ha!" the boy laughed. "There is no one like you!"

I agreed with him. Raziel was one of a kind, and this kid didn't seem much like him at all. He was all laughter, exuberance, and good humor. Raziel was more like a stained glass window in a cathedral, extraordinary and untouchable. I stepped forward and offered my gloved hand, which the child shook with great enthusiasm, and no sign of discomfort.

"I've heard of The Prophetess, of course. It's an honor to meet you in person. I am being Atticus."

"It's nice to meet you Atticus. Won't you have a seat?"

We all sat together at the table and Atticus shared his story. He had been traveling and had found himself relentlessly pursued by others who had chosen darkness. After a long time, he managed to escape from them. He had heard of a prophet spreading a message of love and finding meaning in life. He suspected Raziel's hand in that and so he tracked me to the compound.

"Forgive me, but I have to ask. What do you mean when you say, 'I am being Atticus?'"

He spread his hands in a way that reminded me very much of my own son. "When I draw matter to myself it always takes the form of one who already exists."

"So you are a copy of an actual boy named Atticus who exists in the world somewhere?"

"That's right," he said.

"Don't you think that could potentially create an awkward situation at some point?"

"It is the only way for me to create a physical form. The original Atticus is far from here and I don't remember it ever being an issue in the past though, admittedly, the world is different now."

"That's for sure!" I agreed. "Do you seek refuge here? Have you come to stay with us?"

Raziel spoke up. "Atticus is one of the Wanderers."

Freyja explained, "The Arch Angels are created in classes. There are Warriors, Messengers, Wanderers, Watchers, and Overseers. Each group has a specific place within The Scheme. Raziel is an Overseer. He's the chief, over the wanderers. He's... like... middle management."

I snickered. Raziel's face remained unresponsive, which made me laugh even harder. I waved a hand in front of my face.

"Sorry," I said. "I am very tired, and I've been a little high strung lately."

The ancient child's wide eyes were dancing. I found myself liking him very much. Something about him drew me in. I made a motion for Freyja to go on. She did so with merriment in her voice. She wasn't above a bit of fun at Raziel's expense.

"Wanderers and Watchers are similar. They are not earthbound. Not in the way of one who is Cast Down or tied to a particular space because of their love for that space. They are more like researchers. Their task is to move among the humans, helping if they deem it appropriate but mostly observing and learning. They report what they observe to That Which Is. Their reports are observed by countless numbers of the creatures of the Realms. It is a way of learning and growing, creating understanding, and showing the Wonder of all that That Which Is has created."