Double post, w00t.

I don't own the Tortall series of novels, Tammy does, although copies of her books do line my book shelves…

I know it's different but I hope you like it. I just love Gainel so much, sniff I wish he was mine… I'm afraid I don't have a copy of Tamora Pierce's The Realms of the Gods and my mind is kind of fuzzy on what Gainel looks like…but lucky for me gods can change their appearance at will so it doesn't matter anyways! Yay!

Everyone take a look at chapter one again before you read this, because I fixed it. It was pretty sparse near the end and so I added some stuff. Sorry to be a pain.

Also there's a lot of fumbling inner-monologue from Lynn's point of view, it might be kind of difficult to understand because of the way I wrote it. I was almost confusing myself, so if anyone has any questions about it, just ask in a review and I'll post it up here for everyone.

Review! Please!

Providence Smiles

By LGR

Part I- It Just Feels Right

He wasn't like a God at all, at least not the way she pictured them, in armor with weapons and blue flames and big explosions and great auras Gods who were detached from the world, haughty, arrogant, and not really caring about anyone's well-being unless it had something to do with their own plans. But she could tell he was special, that he wasn't like everyone else. He had to be a God, what else was there?

Sarralyn had always been able to shape-shift, even in the womb, or at least that was what her mother said. For the longest time, Lynn had thought it was an outstanding joke that all of her relatives and adoptive relatives were in on. But recently, she'd acquired the brain power and maturity to realize that carrying on a joke so vast and complex that everyone she asked about it could describe realistically how her mother had to put up with her shape-changing powers, even before she was born, was impossible.

According to her mother, she hadn't even had an original form before she was born. It took her Grandmother, the demi-goddess The Green Lady, to force the baby Lynn to choose a form that she was to stay in for at least six years, before changing to others. She hadn't been aloud to shape-change till she was six.

It was a rule made by a goddess, which meant it was unable to be broken, even if Lynn had wanted to.

Which she had.

Growing up normal for six years, you'd think she would never even have figured out she could change shape. But she'd known, Lynn had always known she could, had remembered herself doing it, as if she'd just done it the day before, when she couldn't even remember anything before she was four, when she could shape change when she wasn't even born.

She could do other things too. Lynn saw things that others couldn't. Or at least "seeing" was how she'd described it. Up until she was five, everyone had thought she'd had The Sight, even though it didn't run in her family, and it worked different from her Uncle George and Cousin Aly's. But her father had did some delving and realized that was she had been "seeing", she'd actually been sensing in a way that had nothing to do with the eyes.

It didn't really have much to do with her other senses at all. It was just a kind of feeling, and her mind put it together like a picture. Like how a bat could see in the dark, but didn't use it's eyes, instead it used echoes, and it's brain put it together so it knew what it's surroundings looked like, without using it's eyes at all.

She could tell things about people, even if she didn't know them. She could sense magic, and when someone had the sight or the gift or wild magic. She could tell other things as well, but she hadn't yet figured out what they meant, even with her father's help.

So when she'd been reading in the palace library right after lunch, when the pages and squires were all at their studies, and sensed a thinning of the 'air'.

And as she approached it seemed more and more like a definite 'something', and not something that had to do with the air at all. And it was more like some sort of dip, or depression than anything else. It was a material that seemed to coat the universe, of which, she'd somehow missed until that moment, when it was making dents into itself, screaming for attention.

It seemed horribly conspicuous. So what else was she going to do, but take a look?

And reaching out her hand, she couldn't grasp it, or interact with in anyway. Her hand didn't so much go through it, as somehow not be anyway near it all, even though they were on top of each other. Why couldn't she touch it?

Lynn, being a shape-shifter, often changed aspects about herself to suit the situation, suddenly gaining cat's eyes when it was dark, or fishes with webbed toes and fingers when swimming, or camouflaging her while hiding. She was way beyond the point where she needed to consciously think about it. She adjusted automatically.

So she shouldn't have been a surprise when her body suddenly took on a aspect that could touch that element and she was automatically sucked into it.

It hadn't been obvious to her that she should suddenly see a billion different universes everywhere and anywhere and nowhere at all yet somehow contain within a single space. They ran through her world, within her world, outside her world, all at once, and yet they were separate.

And she was sucked inside them.

Surrounded and completely lost as to which way was up or down, or whether it really mattered in the first place because maybe it didn't exist here? She scrambled through them, pushing them out of the way like so many wispy cloths waiting to smother her.

She was moving, she could tell that at least, and at her own volition, though she didn't particularly know how she knew this, or how she'd done it. She wanted to go back home, and as she was fumbling her way through this 'space', not really knowing where she was, she saw her world drift by. 'Floating' towards it, she couldn't manage to touch it, as if it wasn't even there. But she knew her world, with that deep part of her that somehow sensed things; she recognized it like one recognizes an old friend.

It won't let me go back.

Looking at herself, she realized why. Hers was a world of ups, downs, forwards and backwards. She wasn't equipped to go back anymore, her body had changed. It was in a form of inside-outsides, and downside-ups and all the twists in between.

But she didn't remember what she'd changed to make it so, and her world kept drifting along with everything else and she had to move to keep it in site, as she tried to change the nature of her body.

Something clicked, and now the no-where-everywhere place was rejecting her. She reached for her world, but she could tell as she came to it, that she still wasn't the right frequency to go in.

But she was the right frequency to go somewhere. It just felt right, that place did, and Lynn found that she was already drifting towards it. It seemed the closest world to hers, and it was welcoming her on its own.

Lynn decided; she touched it—

—and promptly fell onto a cobblestone path in the middle of what looked like a country estate.

"Wasn't here before, here now, stays here." She blinked, the echoing voice had come from what looked like a giant raven with lots of eyes, that was sitting on the shoulder of a man. And the man was just…looking at her. Well, through or into her, seemed slightly more accurate.

Her attention shifted back to the bird as it leapt off the man's shoulder with an un-natural grace to glide and land on hers. With the wild mage herself, being her mother, she was fairly used to strange animals and immortals and new their 'feel'. This didn't feel like an animal at all, it was very different, though she didn't have the knowledge to describe, how it was different.

But when it seemed friendly enough, she reached up her hand to pet its sleek feathers, and found herself smiling.

"How did you get here?" the man asked. It wasn't a particularly vengeful or commanding voice, it wasn't impressive, and in fact was fairly soft and quiet.

"I dunno." she answered, still petting the bird; it had started to make an odd purring sound while rubbing her hand. She was trying to make out the man's appearance, but he was mostly in shadow from the sun.

But it wasn't what she saw with her eyes that gave her the most insight into his identity. Just like she knew animals and immortals, she also new humans, and he was no human.

At first she thought he might be an immortal, but there were no immortals that looked like replicas of humans, and although he had a very similar feel to an immortal, it was still different. His essence was complex and stretched beyond the physical. He had to be a god, what other beings were there?

"What's your name?" he asked, in a slightly curious tone, but he was still so quiet she could barely hear.

"My Ma says I shouldn't talk to strangers." She said automatically. She was nervous, what should she do what should she say?

And something her father had told her about the gods kept repeating in her head: "Be mindful, you can't appeal to the humanity of a God, because they aren't human, and things that would be horrible to us are nothing to them."

But he wasn't spouting lightening; he must not be a very powerful or important god. He seemed…well, a lot like a cat: shady, curious, quiet, and intense all at once. She'd always admired cats; she had a black and white one named sugar at home. And she turned into cats all the time.

But cats were also tricky and proud. She just needed to find out if he was a temperamental lion, or a cool jaguar. She realized she was still measuring him by human standards (and now animal standards.) Doubtless her way of seeing things was different than hers.

He seemed almost sad at her words, or was she imagining it? She must have put more bite into her words than she'd thought or meant. But why would a god care what she thought of him?

"I just want to help you get back to your Ma, and if you don't know how, I have to try and figure out myself." he told her calmly and sadly. He shifted slightly and she finally got a good look at him.

Once again she found herself thinking he definitely wasn't human, because a strange abnormal shadow hung over his eyes so she could barely make out his face, but his appearance looked fairly young, only about twice as old as her twelve and a half. The shadow kept her from making out his eye color but he had dark hair that seemed made from shadow, and his skin looked normal enough, except that it was just hard to make him out period, he just seemed to melt into the back ground. He also had that far away look of someone who was slightly out of step with reality.

His height was also on par with her father Numair's, however he definitely didn't have the lanky stork-look her father did. He was more willowy. If he hadn't looked so much like an ether-worldly being, she would have thought him a scholar. In fact, he reminded Lynn a lot of her favorite foster cousin, Thom, except for the fact that the best that could be said about Thom's height was that he was "almost average". Although Thom had a lot more muscle than the average scholar/mage.

She liked his feel.

She knew it was a stupid thing to base a decision on ones trustworthy-ness, but her Senses had failed her yet… Unless of course you counted that fiasco just a few moments ago…now, that was just bunk.

"Sarralyn, but I like to be called Lynn." She told him. He actually looked like he was relieve and happy she was going to trust him. She didn't know what he'd done to make her think it was so, he'd hardly moved at all, but Lynn was sure she was right.

"Alright Lynn, do you know where you are?" he asked her.

"No." She replied, feeling strangely confident.

"And you don't know what you did to get here?" He already knew what the answer was, she could tell.

"Nope," she said again. Now that the depression was gone, she had no idea how to get back to that nether-place.

"Well, can you tell me where you're from?" Nothing really changed in his expression, but she could tell he was getting slightly frustrated, not really at her, but at her answers.

"Tortall." She could just hear him thinking well that figures! She could tell because she would have thought that same thing in his situation.

"So, your name is Sarralyn, although you liked to be called Lynn, and you are from Tortall." he repeated.

"That's right." she answered.

"Oh, please, here," he said flustered at realizing she was still on the ground, and acting the most normal out of the whole time she'd been talking with him. He held out his hand for hers.

Not really thinking about it, she accepted it and he helped pull her up. While dusting herself off, checking for scraped or bruises, she thought about the feel of his hand. It had seemed normal enough…In fact, though he looked inhuman, and acted strange, she could tell, with that sense of hers, that his behavior wasn't from his godliness, but seemed to come from his lifestyle.

She wasn't sure how she new this, but he was unused to having any living things about him at all.

"Would you like to come in, while we try to figure out how to send you home?" he seemed to be unsure of what to do for her.

"Well, uh…I…I guess so." She didn't know what else to say. She stopped petting the construct and it seemed to get bored and it flew away only to disappear before her very eyes!

"It disappeared!" she gasped, and nearly did so again when the god started laughing at her.

"It surprised me!" she objected, not really caring for a moment that she was yelling at a god. When her protests did nothing but making him cackle harder, she involuntarily shouted "It's not funny!"

But that didn't faze him either.

Maybe gods really don't care about human's feelings. And to think, for a moment, she'd thought he was an okay guy!

A god could have helped her get home, but what was she to do now? Things felt so hopeless. She squished her eyes shut, because she felt herself start to cry, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction…if gods could feel satisfaction at something so mundane.

"I guess if all you're going to do is laugh at me, then I…" she began and his laughing died down and seemed genuinely sorry.

"I'm sorry, Lynn, I'm not very used to people." He even looked genuinely sorry; he gave her an apologetic smile. His whole demeanor was tiring. One second he was Mr. Blank-face, the next he was flipping out.

"Yeah, if you laugh at everyone you meet, I can't imagine you'd get many guests." She replied angrily.

It didn't help her mood that her senses were reeling. They kept telling her he was all over the place even though he was just standing in front of her, as well as things just beyond her range moving around and going about their own business.

Was this normal behavior? Even for a god? Her father had never mentioned they were psychotic. He didn't say anything about them being bi-polar either…

"No, I don't get many guests; no one ever comes to see me." he said, his face blank again. But she could see it made him very sad, as if he'd painted it in bright blue on his face and started crying.

"Oh, it must be lonely." She didn't really know what to say to that.

"Sometimes." Was all he said, but she didn't buy that blank face for a second.

"Would you like to come to my chateau?" he asked her. She nodded, and he held his hand for her.

Wow, even if he's insane, at least he's a gentleman about it, she thought taking his arm. She giggled, "I feel like the ladies in the palace!"

"You are most certainly the finest lady to ever grace the halls of my home, of that you can be sure." He said. She wasn't sure if he meant it to be a compliment or just the truth, considering he never got visitors, but she appreciated it none-the-less.

"What's your name?" she said without really thinking, then wondering why she hadn't asked before.

"Gainel." She flinched slightly, not just in surprise, but also in fear.

"Gainel, you say? Like the dream god?" she asked to be sure.

"The very same." he admitted. They were nearly upon the entrance now, and they were passing through some gardens. Lynn vaguely noticed that it seemed like spring here when it was autumn at home.

"This is the Divine realms isn't it, and you're the real Gainel, aren't you." she said woodenly. She almost wanted to pull away from him, but that would have been beyond rude. Gainel wasn't your average everyday god who helped out with a child birth, fertility or this year's crops; Gainel was one of the Great Gods!

Well, I suppose that explains why he doesn't know much about humans. He can't leave the Divine realms.

"You are quite correct." was all he said.

"But how did I get here? How do I get back?" It all came crashing down, and she felt like nothing could ever have been worse.

"I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going to do all I can to help you." he said sympathetically as the wooden door was only a foot away.

A god was actually being sympathetic to her.

And all of a sudden she realized what it must mean that she was here with Gainel. Granted it was completely by accident and apparently unexpected, but still…All her aunts, uncles and cousins who had met the gods, they were heroes! They were extraordinary people!

She looked at him found that he saw it too. But he was resolved. And she saw that it wouldn't just be duty to him, but also a pleasure. He wouldn't talk down to her, wouldn't order her about. If she stepped through that door, there was no turning back; he would be her patron god.

But he wasn't like the Gods she's heard about at all. So at least if it had to happen, like her Father had guessed, at least it was Gainel.

And she had a strange feeling around him, like she'd known him forever. He didn't seem so ether-real, anymore; like they'd met at a crossroads and come to an agreement. Somehow, she'd decided and she hadn't even noticed, but it was the exactly the way it should be.

"Thank you." she said, very confused at her own thoughts and feelings.

"But in the meantime, there's no reason you can't enjoy a cup of tea with me, is there? I don't get many guests, as I've already told you." He said in a slightly teasing tone, he realized, as he flashed her a smile.

He really did remind her of a cat.

"I suppose not." His smile was infectious, she couldn't help but smile back, and as she looked at him she thought for a moment that the shade over his eyes had dissipated.

"Then do come in, Milady Lynn." He opened the door.

"Don't mind if I do, Milord!" She didn't even hesitate as she stepped in.

And that Ether-being known as Providence smiled.