Give a shout out, if you think I'm trying to claim the Tortall universe as my own! Well I'm not! Those ramblings of it in my journal were a set-up I swear… But anyways, everyone be happy, with the installment of this chapter Providence Smiles is now +10,000 words, Yay!
Reviews, Yay!
Ace Ryn Knight: Yes, I have an awful habit of not posting grammar and spelling perfect posts. And I'm not being sarcastic. If you read my story Revenant you'll just die from all the spelling errors. 'Course, I didn't have spell check at the time I posted most of it, but still, I've had many complaints. It makes me sad…
And there were a couple errors in Chapter One too, (if yah hadn't noticed), I fixed one of them when I reposted it, but I just couldn't find the others I'd seen while looking it over on the website. It's almost like uploading causes errors, because it all looks crisp to me then I post it and there are all these mistakes. Drives me insane, it really does.
Ivory Nightshade, Yes! A new reviewer! Thanks for reviewing, and as I want all my readers to be happy, I will indeed continue, though my updates are sporadic and slightly random. And originally I hadn't planned on doing scenes over from different points of view but the scene just called for it. I'm not sure if the whole story will be like that or not yet because although I have the main ideas down, all the details in between are basically non-existent at this point.
Numair's Lover, Yay! Another new reviewer! Thank you! I do try my very best to be entertaining and original. I like writing things that no one has done before, because what's the point if you already know what's going to happen? At least that's how I see it. I'm definitely going to try and update, but my track record thus far isn't so outstanding.
My interest waxes and wanes, and sometimes I just have to put down the pen, as it were. Theses periods have been known to last fairly long as well. But don't worry, I'm actually fairly proud of how this story is turning out, there's not chance I'm going to drop it and I think I'll be able to get a couple more chapters out very soon!
Oh and NL, I love Numair also, but not quite as much as I love Gainel! But the fact the Numair is just one step below him should prove how much I do like, which is to say, it's a level so way out there, it can't be expressed, much less understood, by the human psyche!
Review! Please!
Providence Smiles
By LGR
Part I- Rules?
He wouldn't have gone so far as to say it was a shock to find that she was the eldest daughter of Veralidaine Sarrasri and Numair Salmalín, whom he'd actually met on one occasion, but it had surprised him slightly.
"So, you're the shape-shifter everyone's been going on about." He said absent-mindedly, and took a sip of tea.
Gainel had heard a lot about this shape-shifting human who was more than half-goddess but still mortal. And not only from the whispers his constructs brought him, but even from some of the other gods.
Weiryn, who he'd been known to visit from time to time, was not below expounding on the exceptionalities of his granddaughter; even a mortal granddaughter. The Green Lady was just ecstatic about the whole situation period, and was always voicing her worries about whether they were being raised right in the palace and Mage's Tower; whether they were warm enough at night…Needless to say he hadn't visited them in sometime.
And Weiryn and The Green Lady weren't the only ones. Kyprioth had commented on her 'potential for mischief' not too long ago when he'd come to Gainel for a favor involving the dreams of a mortal.
"People have been talking about me?" She asked curiously.
He couldn't even say how nice it was to just have a conversation with an intelligent being. Constructs weren't great conversationalists, and the few times he'd talked to another god where they weren't expounding on the greatness of their patron country or people, they were expounding on the faults of the other gods' peoples.
And he couldn't even voice an opinion about it; he hadn't any people of his own.
It also felt pleasant to have something that didn't sport a condescending look facing him. It seemed to him that with the exception of the trickster gods, The Black God and a few of the previously mortal gods, most divine beings had a condescending or arrogant expression permanently stuck on their faces; if they had faces that is, because some of them didn't.
"Yes, many have shown an interest in your future. Your younger brother also." he told Lynn.
"Rikash? I guess I could see that, he's going to grow into a great mage, everyone knows it, but still, he's so annoying…" she answered, with typical twelve-year-old savvy.
"Yes, siblings are annoying at times." Gainel agreed and sighed in a very world-weary fashion.
This surprised Lynn, she'd never really thought of gods as having relatives or families. "That's right," she remembered, "all the gods are brothers and sisters."
"Well, not all of them," he admitted. "Most are related in some fashion; If not siblings, then cousins or aunts and uncles; that sort of thing. A few are Divinified mortals or immortals, and some just manifested themselves, but those are both in the minority." He explained to her.
Divified? Self-manifesting? The World of God's was getting bigger, stranger and more complex every moment. It had always seemed to Lynn that it must be boring to be a god, you don't really do that much except meddle with mortals. But it appeared now that they really did have a part in maintaining the 'universal-equilibrium', or whatever.
She also hadn't thought that the Gods would have much to do with each other, and Gainel would have fit right in with her theory, except that apparently he was the exception. Gods had their own politics that she didn't know anything about.
'Course, she didn't know much about regular politics either. It made her wonder if inviting mortals into your Library with large windows and cushy chairs for some tea (hers was watered, however; everything was the very essence of it's being in the divine realms, so the tea was stronger and the biscotti tasted sweeter; it could almost make a mortal sick,) was having some affect on his position.
She stopped nibbling a piece of biscotti to clarify, "But wait, most of gods are related right?"
"I just said so, didn't I?" he did another one of those horrible blank faces as he sipped some more tea out of a fine, white porcelain tea cup.
"So that means…that most of the gods are married to their siblings."
Not only was that nasty, but unhealthy Being the daughter of Diane the wild mage, she knew the theory of heredity using animals as example. She knew that animals that were forced to inter-breed often became sick and had more diseases than animals that didn't.
Gainel could guess what she was thinking. Though it wasn't really an issue to him, he could see where it would be to a mortal. He wanted to explain it to her but he didn't know if he could do it in a way that would make her understand. Also, he didn't know all the rules concerning how much a god could tell a mortal about the inner-workings of the universe and the gods.
He decided to tell her what he could. He would be stopped before he said something outside what he was allowed to; of that he was sure.
Rules and promises made by gods weren't simply words, they became reality. Humans had less power, but more freedom, they weren't constricted by their very essence. The Gods were physical and metaphysical manifestations of a particular element or idea. They didn't get to choose, they just were.
Humans on the other hand, though they were born with certain characteristics that they couldn't change about themselves, had the freedom to do whatever they wanted with their lives. They could be carpenters or fisherman, heroes or villains, they could speak or remain quiet, they could marry who they wanted, choose who they loved and hated, go anywhere, do anything, be whatever they wanted.
They could choose to break or keep promises; Gods could not. That was why they were very careful about what they promised to anyone.
"—so although humans often find the Gods to be very overbearing, they in fact have more freedom then the gods themselves. Many of us are very envious, some to and almost violent poin—" Gainel stopped speaking in shock; he hadn't realized he'd been talking aloud.
He saw Lynn sitting there listening calmly and with great intensity, her stick of biscotti temporarily forgotten. Her face showed a surprising amount of understanding and intellectual capacity for a girl of the bare twelve and a half years she clamed; granted he'd thought she'd looked a year under that.
It wasn't the fact that she was taking this information with unusual composure and intellect; (for most mortals, this would be a mind-blowing thought, even for a child, that they were in some way greater than the gods.) or the fact that he'd began saying what he was thinking out loud, because he couldn't in all honesty say that it didn't happen to him fairly often as of late; It was that he'd been able to speak of it at all.
Though he wasn't sure of the exact rules pertaining to what you could tell mortals about the relationship between mortals, gods, and the universe, he was sure he'd passed it almost before he'd begun to speak.
"What, why'd you stop?" Lynn asked him hungrily, and completely oblivious to the enormity of the situation.
"What was first thing I said?" he asked, not remembering himself.
It must have seemed to her that he was being very absent-minded, but it couldn't be helped; she gave him a weird look but said, "The stuff about gods being physical and metaphysical representations of the elements; I think that was what you said."
"I see." he said, blankly, too caught up in his own thoughts to give a proper response.
"You know, you never really explained about the concept of gods and kids and…things." Lynn said trying to leech as much information as she could. She had the feeling that this stuff wasn't normal for humans too hear and she wanted as many secrets of the universe as she could get. Not that she wanted to rule the world or anything but the willingness to know ran strong in her from her father's side.
Gainel seemed pretty caught up in some thought or other but he answered, apparently not paying any attention to what he was saying, "Unlike mortals, the aspects of gods aren't determined by any sort of genetic code. There essence can't deteriorate in such a fashion. And besides our characteristics don't come from our parents, who in themselves are only vessels so that we may manifest; we come from the imaginations and wills of mortals.
"The bonds of blood that humans may share, do not apply to us. It is only kinship of elements that may cause us to have some sort if natural fellowship. And we do have bonds of friendship, in that we do have a choice." He told her, and then was silent for a moment, wearing one of his blank faces, however she sensed confusion.
"I don't know why I'm telling you this." He said suddenly.
She shrugged and took another nibble of biscotti, Lynn really liked this stuff for some reason, then said "Well, you don't get too talk to people that much, so you might as well get in all the chatting you can get before I have to get back home…"
Lynn suddenly realized that some how they'd gotten way off topic. She'd started telling him how she'd came and then the conversation turned about her family and now it was getting philosophical. "Yeah…about that getting back home…"
Gainel still looked not really there, mental that is; he'd never really looked there physically.
He waved a hand as if to say it was of no consequence. "One way or another we'll get you home, though I can't say that I can bring you there myself, or that you can get back the way you came."
He sighed again, "How was I telling you that?"
This absent-minded babbling was starting to grate on her. She wasn't particularly temperamental, but ones temper wasn't based on not getting angry, it was based on how well you controlled that anger.
"Are you still going on about that? And what do you mean how?"
"There are rules about what you can say to mortals, and I'm sure I crossed the line."
"What! What are you saying?"
"How is it that a portal opened for you, and it must have been for you, to the nether-plane? And come you can hear me when I speak?—"
Lynn interrupted him by saying "Well we are in the divine realms—"
"It doesn't matter what realm you're in, you have to be asleep." he told her, "How come I can tell you anything, everything?" he seemed to fade even more into the back ground, she could barely keep him in her vision.
What she thought he was saying, what she thought he was getting at…
"Are you saying," she said nervously, "that I'm a goddess?"
She looked at him. He looked at her wearing a very intense version of his blank-face and said,
"No." he now appeared very confused, "Did you think I was? How strange!"
Lynn face-faulted, she knew it had to be good to be true.
"Now why would you think that, I wonder? No you are most definitely, definitely not a goddess." Gainel went on with an enthusiasm that made Lynn feel very self conscious and rejected
"Well, you don't have to rub it in…" she muttered sadly.
"It wasn't meant to be insulting." He said, sounding confused again. "My assessment was based on the fact that no one can be a god without knowing it, there are strict rules involved."
Well she supposed she understood how it mightn't seem insulting to him, and the fact that he genuinely hadn't meant it like that made her feel better. "Rules? Like not telling humans things?"
"Yes." He answered, but he was staring off into space again.
"So what were you getting at before?" she asked curiously.
"What? Oh, nothing. I didn't really have a point other than the fact that it is…well, apparently not impossible, but extremely improbable. I have yet to discern what makes it possible." He had his eyebrows squished together in thought.
She was really getting tired of him working her up them saying something that was extremely ineffectual; it was tiring, not to mention frustrating.
"So…about the home-thing," she said, bringing them back to the subject for a second time.
He shrugged, "I can't take you. I can get someone else to take you in a moment, maybe Kyprioth. Chaos knows he owes me a favor or two." His attention seemed to drift off again.
Lynn didn't know if it was a short attention-span, or what, but he seemed to not be able to focus on anything for more than a few moments.
"Wait, are you saying that you can take me home…and within the next few minutes!" She was anxious and excited.
"Yes, it isn't as much of a problem as I'd thought it might be."
"Well, let's go! Come on! Let's get moving!" she was grinning in expectation, her parents were going to be so surprised where she'd been! Not to mention all her other relatives, they would just flip. And her brother would be so jealous…
"I don't feel like It." he said expressionlessly, then took another sip of tea. She noticed that it never became empty.
"…you're joking, right?"
"No." he said quite seriously.
"What are you, lazy or something?" she demanded, jumping out of her seat.
He shrugged. "Yes."
But before she could get too worked up, the many eyed black bird she had petted earlier suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Gainel didn't even register that she jumped five feet in the air.
"An intruder," its echoing voice said, "It kills."
"Show me." He commanded. His voice was still a faint whisper to her ears, but now it held an intense purpose that caused her to flinch from the very force of it. His words had seemed a shout or intense boom, even though it could barely be heard by her. His intent was undeniable. He wasn't just a shadow any longer, he was very much there. This was a glimpse at Gainel, The Dream-King, and one of the Great Gods, the first gods to come into existence, the most powerful beings in the heavens.
He stood from the chair, and as he moved off, she felt almost tangibly the tension-field surrounding him.
And the she could see that he was changing his make-up, shifting from the world of ups-downs-lefts-rights, to another one of those twisting, inside-out worlds; just as she had done to come here in the first place. But she could see that the way he was configured now, wasn't the same as she had been then, so it seemed he hadn't been lying when he'd said he couldn't take her home himself.
But wait…he was leaving her here!
"Hey!" she exclaimed, and without thinking she grabbed onto the slightly flared sleeve of his onyx-black, high-necked button up coat.
"What are you doing!" he yelled at her, but she didn't back down. He tried to shift more into his twisted form, but she just shifted with him. He looked every bit as bewildered as she must have when she'd arrived.
"You can't just leave me here!" she stated furiously.
"And why not?"
"Well—I—ah—just because!" she stuttered.
Way to go Sarralyn! That'll convince him! She thought to herself sarcastically.
"Because ahh, what if something happens to me, while your not here!" he gave her look that told her he clearly thought she was being ridiculous.
Apparently he wasn't buying it, but he still couldn't get her to let go by shifting. She wasn't sure what she was going to do when once he decided to try something else.
"Because what!" he asked angrily.
"Because ah—" she didn't really know why she wanted to go with him. Certainly it was because she didn't want to be alone here, but that wasn't all of it surely. And then she saw what it was, or at least some of what it was.
"Because you're my patron god! I'm your charge! I help you do things; I can't just let you go out there alone!" she argued.
He gave her an exasperated look, "I don't think—"
"It's not likely that this thing, (whatever it may be!) is likely to be much of a problem for you, is it?"
He snuffed, as if thinking the whole idea of something that could match him as preposterous, "Not likely."
"Then there's no problem." She declared.
Gainel stood there. This mortal was being extremely intractable, he'd heard about there stubbornness, even experienced it himself the few times he'd met one in person, but this was just something else.
He could always put an enchantment on her to make wait patiently till he came back…But he wouldn't feel comfortable doing something like that. Most gods wouldn't have hesitated a second, but had always felt uneasy when it came to messing with their free-will.
Hitting or hurting her was out of the question. He could always just move her by magic…But he couldn't leave her here, he didn't want to admit it, but things were so strange at the moment that though it was unlikely something would come to get her, it wasn't altogether impossible.
But the clock was ticking, and the longer he waited the more damage was being done to his realm and the mortals who lay dreaming. And for the construct to personally get him, it had to be something they weren't able to deal with themselves, which meant it must be fairly powerful, and definitely dangerous, especially to a human.
He would just need to keep an eye out for her; there was no telling what they'd find, with the odd sorts of things going on lately. It really was unnatural.
"Fine, but stay close, and don't touch anything." He said gruffly. Her face lit up, despite his stern speech.
He held out his arm for her and she took it, giddy with excitement, and they headed off to face the unknown.
And that Ether-being known as Providence grinned in anticipation.
