The Godspace, Planting Season, 5th rotation, 5th day

"I've let you have your way for the last year, Galt, but I am worried now about how things are going with our prophet. You don't even have Asgotl accompanying her, and she's not in a good state of mind. Introducing Tom early seemed to help, but now he seems to be making her worse."

"Look, you poor excuse of a Tiki god, I've sent Kamagishi to keep an eye on her and she'll be going to Foskos for a short vacation from prophetting. She needs a break. I'm getting her one."

"Prophetting is not a word, Meow-face."

"Is too. I'm the god of knowledge; if I say it's a real word, it's a real word."

"Galt, why be difficult when, with a little more effort, you could be a cat?"

"Hey, you stole that from Giltak!" Galt accused.

"No, I stole it from him. Remember?" Giltak barged in and interrupted Galt.

"Who invited you?" Tiki demanded, a bit miffed.

"I invited myself," Giltak's sultry alto purred.

"Tiki is right to be concerned," Mugash popped in.

"Look, folks, I was having a nice peaceful moment of contemplating patterns in the first ten thousand digits of pi," Galt growled, "and I would like to return to that. I dare not intervene with Emily in a more direct way. I've already intervened with her too much, making me wary of more direct contact. Emily is the most intelligent prophet I've ever had to manage. She is also the most volatile, which we expected since she is human. Human races are so touchy. We have to give her both space and some semblance of agency, or her feelings of entrapment will ruin our plans."

"Surely, you can arrange circumstances to guide her to the outcomes we want," Mugash opined. "She will not feel manipulated if she doesn't know she's being manipulated."

"What wisdom, merciful one," Erhonsay hooted in her owl aspect. "I seem to recall that your quiet manipulation of our prophet did not turn out so well, Mugash."

"I admit I cannot dispute that. Emily is the first failure I've had in a long time," Mugash sighed. "I had no anticipation that my plans for Emily and Aylem would not succeed."

"Can we not lift some of her burdens from her?" Mueb asked in her aspect of the mother of trees. "She advanced technology beyond what we had hoped for. She introduced iron like we asked her to. She did a great job at saving Aylem. We still need her to prevent the destruction of Erdos through the third age. She's the only one alive who can write that scripture. But we don't need her for the destruction of the crystal at the White Shrine of Landa. That was a convenience we decided upon during our intervention to prevent Aylem's execution a year and a half ago."

"We are in the groove leading to the destruction of the bridge at No'ank," Vassu floated into the growing gathering of gods in her aspect of a lion's mane jellyfish. "The Cosm on the east side of the Mattaheehee River must be isolated before the Chem arrive, or the Chem force will be wiped out. That is not an acceptable outcome. You all agreed to this, and you must stick to that."

"But does Emily need to be directly involved?" Surd asked, radiating domesticity in her workaday gown. "Mueb has a good point. The only thing that Emily has left to do is write that scripture to guide future generations. She doesn't need to destroy that bridge or be at the White Shrine for a revelation. The crystal needs Aylem to destroy it, not Emily. And we can find some other way to destroy the bridge. Why not lift some of the remaining burdens we have placed on her?"

"We have already meddled too much with her," Galt growled. "We need to step back for now. She needs time to think things through. That's how things work with Emily."

"She's on a cusp, fur face," Mugash interjected. "Just one little push, and she'll run away or kill herself. Do you really want to risk pushing her over the edge?"

"I am watching her," Galt grumped. "I will not let her come to lasting harm."

"Lasting harm?" Gertzpul asked in a quiet voice that everyone heard. "What game are you playing, whiskers? I can feel the timeline you are hiding."

"I want some progress on Emily's enlightenment," Galt stated. "She needs it. Without it, she will not feel compelled to do her last task for us."

"And how do you propose to do this?" Sassoo inquired, stepping out of his whirlwind, conjuring a chair, and sitting down.

"What happens next is up to Emily," Galt said. "My worry is that she will resolve to kill herself and follow through while I'm not paying attention. Her depression lifted when Tom showed up, but it has come creeping back. As a result, I am watching her, even when she sleeps. Running away isn't a problem. I can handle that, though it means destroying the bridge myself to put her where I need her to be at the end of the year."

"And where is that?" Landa asked.

"The Great Alster Heath, north of Kas."

"What's there?" Tiki asked.

"Melk," Erhonsay stated. "You're sending her to find Melk, aren't you? You sneaky fur ball."

"Melk?" Tiki asked. "You mean Melk the—"

"Yes," Galt cut him off. "That Melk."

"Now that's an elegant move, mister cat god," said Surd with tones of admiration. "I hope you can pull it off. But poor Emily. Getting her up there will not be easy, and I suspect she will suffer."

"Yes, I can see that things will be difficult for her, and it is not impossible that she might die up there," Galt sighed.

"Why are you risking the life of our prophet, Galt?" Mugash snapped. "We are in too deep to abort the Great Breaking now."

"I have planned a great result, one that will fulfill all our desires for this third age of intervention," Galt pronounced. "Great results are not possible without the risk of failure."

Emily, Planting Season, 5th rotation, 5th day

"When will you be leaving?" Tom plunked down on the sleeping pad next to me.

"Leaving?" I had no idea what he was referring to.

He had just returned from the banquet the Chem had thrown at the end of a momentous day. I never showed up for the spread, as I was sure that if I tried to eat, I would be sick to my stomach.

It had been a day full of too many events. First, the messenger showed up with news of the vanquished raiders. Moxsef turned over the ice charm gems to the five Caretakers. Then Twee arrived with Ketch One and the captured raider ship.

After the captive raiders were paraded around Sils'chk, the Caretakers decided to blind all the captured Cosm. It wasn't meant to be a permanent punishment. The Chem would permit the restoration of the captives' eyesight after a period equal to the number of years the prisoners had raided. For example, the chief of the raiders had been raiding for thirty-two years. The Chem sentenced him to thirty-two years of blindness. Given his age, he would likely die blind if he didn't find a way to get around his punishment. The youngest of the raiders, a twelve-year-old boy, was on his first voyage. The Chem decided to blind him in one eye, which he could have fixed in a year.

The Chem put the boy in charge of helping his fellow raiders after the Chem spent the afternoon blinding them. The Caretakers ordered the seventeen surviving raiders to be staked out on the sand of the east landing. Then, teams of Chem dribbled quicklime into the Cosm's eyes and took their time to prolong the pain of the chemical burns.

I had to leave. I couldn't bear watching and listening to the men screaming. I'm not sure what bothered me more: watching the raiders have quicklime applied to their eyes or the Chem carrying out such an act of cruelty and appearing to take great satisfaction from it.

I had to ask myself: how much of a role did I play in corrupting the Chem? What was better? The peaceful Chem who had always fled the Cosm slave raiders, or the Chem who would defend themselves and take actions of retribution against those who had harmed them? Neither scenario was a good one from my perspective. Before this current endeavor to free the enslaved Chem, Vassu's children had a peaceful existence. They did not war amongst themselves. Their biggest altercations were over nest locations between individuals, settled on a village level, or over fishing rights between villages, settled by the Caretakers. The abundance of the Sussbesschem fishing stocks and the fertility of their sugar cane fields meant that the Chem lived without want.

The way the Chem used to be reminded me of that Bible verse from the Book of Micah, one of the Old Testament prophets: "For every man beneath his vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid." An amazing truth was buried in that scripture—that when everyone has their basic needs met, a society can achieve true peace. Not all war was driven by scarcity, but the uneven distribution of goods between tribal groups, including nations, had started most wars throughout history. Were humans so greedy that we always had to fight over assets?

Maybe it was good for the Chem to learn to defend themselves and stand up against the injustice that the Cosm inflicted on them. It was what Vassu wanted for them. But I couldn't banish the sight of a jubilant young ksh'g'lsh dribbling quicklime powder into the eyes of a terrified thirty-something halfhair Cosm, staked out on the sand, while three other excited ksh'g'lsh held his head down and his eyelids open. The age of innocence for the Chem was now over, and I had a hand in it.

I walked away and found a spot away from people where I lost what little was in my stomach. Then I found a date palm overlooking the south slough, sat down against it, and had a good cry. After that, I retired to our hut and cried myself to sleep.

Tom sitting on the bed woke me up.

"I was wondering when you and Kamagishi would be heading up to Foskos and whether you wanted to take a few extra days before returning," Tom answered my question.

"You can come, you know," I replied, rolling over to see him better.

"No, I can't, love," he leaned over and started to untie the garter laces of my stockings. I had not bothered to undress when I fell asleep. I had been too bummed out to do anything other than snivel into my pillow.

"I need to be here for Twee and company," Tom continued. "The general of this invasion can't run off for several days right before we launch the fleet." He pulled off my right stocking and started undoing the garter laces on the left.

"What are you doing, Tom?"

"Taking off your foot panties," he waggled his eyebrows at me. "Such lovely feet."

"Don't, Tom," I cautioned him, not at all in the mood. "Not now."

"But Mouse, they are such cute little toes."

"Leave my poor feet alone, please. It's been too upsetting a day for me."

"Everyone is wondering where you disappeared," he said, picking up my feet and setting them in his lap. "Kamagishi asked me to wake you if you didn't intend to sleep through the festivities. The Chem know how to throw a party, and the fruit punch they make with their rum is fantastic."

"Watching the punishment of the raiders upset me," I admitted. "I don't think I can eat right now."

"I thought it was a fair judgment on the raiders," Tom frowned at me. "You don't approve?"

"It's not that," I shook my head. "The glee with which the Chem applied the quicklime is what bothered me. Here we are, in the midst of the most peaceful society on the planet, teaching them to enjoy the ways of violence. I find it disturbing and rather tragic. The sight of all those Chem rejoicing at the suffering of the raiders made me lose the contents of my stomach. I am here only because Vassu asked me. Though it is the will of a god, I hate what I am doing to these people. I feel disgusted with myself. War sucks."

"I think someone needs to lighten up a bit," Tom looked thoughtful. "Such beautiful feet," he said, tracing his finger across the fleshy backsides of my toes.

I squealed and tried to yank my feet off his lap. He pounced and trapped my legs. It took some grumpiness, but I managed to keep his tickling torture of my poor feet to a minimum. I finally got it through his thick head that I was not in the mood for roughhousing or any other sort of bed play this evening. We chatted for a few more moments, and then he returned to the banquet with my apologies for my absence.