A/N: My apologies for lagging on the updates. Depression's a bitch. Enjoy this very odd "dream"of Sarah's...

I followed a radiant light up from warm waters. Floated through an ocean as warm and protective as an amniotic fluid-filled womb, a baby, and a god swimming through a spectral galaxy of glittering universes encapsulated in transparent bubbles. Not one of them would be crushed unless I wanted them to be and I knew without reason that it would only take the merest intent for me to dive into one feet first and meet their proportions, climate, sensations without strain or any consciousness permeable amount of time. I loved them, these galaxies younger and lower than myself and I knew them as much as I knew myself. My fingernails brushed over their stars and my rested cheek against the soft membrane separating the universes could be seen by every living, breathing thing that swam, crept, or walked across water and land. In every color and texture worth knowing. My children that existed to be watched over and cared for.

I let them flow over my perfect shoulders, wipe up my silken skin and I watched closely, leaning like a child into a fishbowl and watched the little creatures make love and war. Even tinier creatures jumped out of their mother's bellies. They cried and laid waste and grew and wore hats and ventured out to marry and make more tiny creatures. Here and there they had gaping, screaming mouths that cursed their fellow creatures, cut them down, spread ugly, invisible barriers, and encouraged segregation and hate. It hurt my stomach to watch, but I held my hand to give them the benefit of the doubt. There was a time for unbridled pain and consequences, for death along with life. If I were to intervene too much they might not take clean roots in their soil and grow strong.

Then my enraptured attention got away from me and I watched a row of these child galaxies flicker out, a tragic testimony to self-interest and degenerative ideas.

Others, my golden children, grew brighter, larger, filled themselves with flowers and gorgeous foliage, and beautiful cityscapes that I could be proud to look over. Their grass and twig gathered apparel turned to pastel muslin, tall headdresses, and crowns. The planes of their faces were more three dimensional, the cheekbones, brow bones, and eye hollows so far-reaching and angular and the eyes so pigmented and pure that they pierced from several mountains distance away. Every follicle of their hair so white blonde that it refracted light almost as well as a mirror.

Beauty and good genetics that made it a pleasurable rush to see through the perfect veneer to the pure ideas and philosophies beneath clouding through and around their grey matter. They loved easily because wisdom was the most common trait. This commonality, this trademark is why I named their world, their people the illuminate and in their eventual awareness of the source of all wisdom, they named me Sarai, the diamond goddess of the skies. In their Grecian temples, my likeness was a golden smoke projection over a columned podium and I gave them my blessed prophecies and insights for their prayers and petitioning. For centuries, for minutes, seconds their songs and poems and seasonal plays regarded my existence and my part in their creation and continued success. I witnessed my delight from outside myself and also in myself and amongst the creatures as a pure, unstoppable force for good and further creation. And all this was enough…. until it wasn't.

My heart rate climbed.

My children were begetting enough children of their own to create miniature worlds set apart. Apart from me and my fawning. No, it was unthinkable! I shouted into the waters, pushing more of the bubble galaxies out from my clutch. Tears fell from my eyes and joined the warm waters.

I couldn't crush the illuminate but I couldn't let my ocean of iridescent bubbles expand past what I could hold onto. I turned over under the waters and tried to think and call up the spectrum of colored aura. Red for love, yellow for compassion, green for peace, blue for melancholy, orange for wisdom, purple for creativity, brown for disappointment, white for clarity, and black for hate.

There could not be a split in form without a split in energy. I needed a partner. Ideally, the wisest illuminate child to take care of what was beyond me, one trustworthy and benevolent, and permeable into the unknown.

What stretches of watching and waiting it took. It took a little over a decade to tap through the archives of life and death, kings and peasants, rich and poor, those who grew old enough to nurture multiple branches of a family and those too young to have a namesake. Through so many stories and interconnected webs of destiny, I spindled to him.

Jaretheon. The irony of his condition and reclusive life was not lost or unappreciated. With one hand I dug through the thick, brown, muddy earth to gather his two-hundred-year-old, malformed bones. My heart pained to witness that his spine had the curvature and fragility of the hunchback and his skin was yellowed jerky that would not stay put. His condition and enlarged organs hadn't allowed him to live long among the Illuminate and he had done little past gardening and functioning as a part-time herbalist. No family, no wife, no children. No waves above ground but enough energy still present in his resting earth. His voice called to me and supported and led my file through his actions and past. I knew that he could understand the elements and atoms comprising the loose leaves of his teas just by feeling over them and he had too much cleverness to need to laugh with other illuminates. Not that his laugh would have brought camaraderie smiles from his brief community. I had to run my thumb over the inside of his voice box muscles, stretch them out as he stretched across my palm to ungarble his speech for clear conversation. All he asked without needing to ask was that he might be made whole and beautiful. I could grant this and I did with an amber-colored exhale and a kiss over his decrepit head.

In my palm, in this way, his bones elongated and became as incorruptible as steel, his skin tightened and smoothed, his features rearranged until I was pleased. Head to head, naked shoulder to naked shoulder, he turned breathtaking and wholesome as the earth. A renewed sense of urgency drove me to extend my creation kiss. Wrapped up in hearty muscle, in solid arms, I became more weightless than ever. Where had my anxious reach dropped off to? Loss, where did your bite go? Jaretheon could be more than assistant I decided, and I could have communion between us as one whole. Yes, we could become co-parents to our encapsulated starlings.

Sarai….he whispered….Sarai my heart.

My heart rose up my ribcage and glowed neon through my translucent breasts. My heart ached and cramped, my insides jangled with anxiety.

There was nothing but a wooden bird's cage under his skin. He was missing the most important piece. The one that would require the steepest sacrifice.

Sarai, my goddess...the mended sound of his voice affected me deeply. Sarai your heart.

My heart, my core, the power cell for all. It pumped out the viscous beginning and end.

Jaretheon's accountability would have to be loaned out with it, his love and servitude held against the very heart of a god on the term of forever. Only forever.

Our fingertips met in the sluggish warmth and I felt the electricity of his touch. Forever wasn't very long at all. Not if you could be a watcher.

With a deep breath, I unwrapped my ribcage. Gored it in half, and let it spill over a moonbeam into his mouth. My ambrosia blood was coppery and sweet on his lips as I touched my lips over his and breathed in eternal livelihood.