I woke up in my bed. Suraia was on top of me, snoring. I shifted my arm outside the blankets and shook her shoulder.

"Mmmnyeah?" she hummed, blinking at me. She slid off the blanket and felt along the bedside table for the glasses she had removed. Stifling a yawn, she peered down at me. "You look good, for a guy who nearly turned himself to stone."

"What?" I sat up, rubbing my head. It felt way too heavy. "What'd I do that for?"

"Because Mary loves Jack."

Oh, right.

My eyes widened. I touched my chest, over my heart. Nothing. No horrible compulsion to beat my head again a wall, just faint recognition. "Um, Suraia? Why didn't that hurt?"

She sat on my bed, her skirt drifting down around her and her knees crossed comfortably. "That would be something you need to see."

So, with nothing better to do, I stumbled around the room and got dressed. She kept talking the entire time, about new things she had noticed about the world in the one night I had been recovering, and what the flowers and plants were singing about today, and anything else she thought of.

It was soothing, even if most of it went over my head.

She led me outside the Inn and around the corner. As we came to Mary's house, a shrill noise crept into my head, and I clapped my hands over my ears.

"Goddess, what is that?" I ground out. "It hurts!"

"I can't hear it. Only you can." Suraia bent down to look me in the eyes and put a finger under my chin. She turned my head to look at the streetlamp.

Or, where the streetlamp used to be. Now it was twisted in on itself, trying to get away, trying to rip itself apart - it was a painful thing.

And it was screaming. My eyes were watering against the constant sound.

"What happened to it?"

She went forward, stepping toe-heel like a ballerina, and touched one of the protruding curlicues. "I told you to put all of the hurt into it."

When she motioned for me to come closer, I did, and she put my hand under hers against the metal. It burned horribly, and I tried to snatch it away.

She held on. "Take it back, Gray. Look at how much pain you caused it, poor thing. You put a bit of your soul into it, and now you'll be ready for it."

I couldn't feel my hand. It had to be scarred by now. "I won't turn myself to stone again?"

She leaned her head against the metal and smiled. "No. Well, you might think you don't need to breathe anymore, but that worked out well for me the last time, didn't it?" She put a finger to her lips and mine, and then winked at me. "I say, go for it."

"I don't even know how!"

"Take a deep breath and calm down."

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the screaming.

"Now, can you find it in your mind? You're touching it, it should be prominent."

I shuffled through everything around me. There were ghosts of iron tools I had made, and I could see the Goddess pendant I wore glowing blue. That was odd. But I saw the lamp and grabbed for it.

"Wrap yourself around it. It is a part of you."

I brought it into my body and mind and soul and Goddess it hurt so much.

I cried out from the hurt and loneliness and blithe rejection and how could she have chosen Jack over me?

Suraia wrapped her arms around my middle and pressed ours cheeks together, both of them wet. "I know it hurts. I know. You'll feel better later," she murmured, over and over again. We were on the ground now, my hand still against the lamp. "Do you think you can put it back how it was?"

I focused on the shape of it in my head. Easy enough to push the willing metal back into it. Everything was better now.

I wasn't breathing again, but that was because I was trying to stop crying. Suraia laid me out on the ground and I didn't have the energy to hold onto the green cloth that brushed against my hand as she moved away. I just lay there, in a ball, gasping for air.

And then the door of Mary's house opened. "Gray!"

I opened my eyes. She was rushing over, but I saw a pretty, smart girl now, not an angel. She kneeled next to me and said, "I had a really strange dream. I thought you stopped breathing yesterday, and then the lamp was melting, sort of, and I went to the Clinic to get Doctor but then you had disappeared..." she trailed off and leaned closer. "Are you alright? You're crying..."

"I just fell down and got hurt." I pushed myself up into a sitting position and searched for a topic. Hadn't it always been hard to talk to her? "Um, have you seen Jack lately?"

She blushed. "Yeah. He came over really early this morning and," she swallowed, and held out her right hand, "we're engaged."

I smiled, for real. "Congratulations." I didn't react as I heard and felt Suraia sit down behind me and lean against me, back to back.

She touched my hand. "Don't you have a girl you like?"

"Well, let's think this through," I told her, closing my eyes. If I leaned my head back far enough, it hit Suraia's. "There's you and Jack, Rick and Karen, Cliff and Ann, Popuri and Kai whenever he's around, and Elli and Doctor. Who is there for me?"

Suraia said, "There's this really neat chick. I hear she's pretty."

I blinked.

"Oh, but there's certainly someone in the city where you used to live?" Mary asked, frowning.

"I'm never going back there," I reminded. I heard Suraia laugh. Mary looked sad. I reassured her, "Don't worry. I'm sure I'll find my place."

She smiled and stood. "I should get back to the Library now. I'll see you around, Gray."

I waved good-bye to her as Suraia said, "No, she won't, sweet thing that she is."

"Why did you drag me up to the Spring?" I sighed. I was very tired, even though I had woken up only an hour before. "Are we waiting for the Harvest Goddess?"

"Something like that."

From the shore, I watched as she danced and skipped along the rocks lining the shallow pool. I closed my eyes and lay back in the grass, feeling the flecks of minerals in the soil and the plants. And, of course, the Spring Mine was a well of iron and bronze and sliver talking to each other and me. They spoke very slowly, but I could feel what they meant.

Suraia spread herself out on the grass beside me. She turned on her side and laid her head on my shoulder, and I barely even noticed it. She said, "Your eyes changed color when we came here."

"What do you mean?"

"I watched for it. They're kind of goldish-bronze." I reached my hand up to touch my eyelid, wishing for a mirror. It didn't occur to me to disbelieve her.

"My eyes changed color, too, when I came here, once I was ready. Grey turned to blue. Then my hair, too."

I breathed in and out, watching her head rise and fall with me. Her words washed over me like water from the Spring.

In her smooth, soothing voice, she said, "When I wrote the Gospel, I was lost. I didn't know what was happening to me."

The grass grew five inches in a second, three feet in a minute. Suraia's doing. Now, I couldn't see anything but her.

"But I could sense that someone else would be coming. I could feel his presence as though he were already with me. I knew that he would understand what it's like to keep the ability to grow enough crops to feed the world in a single season a secret and how much it hurts."

I remembered how Grandpa had looked at me when I had squeezed the block of mithril. I could still hear Mary talking about her 'horrible dream'.

This was me. The metal was me, too. And if they were going to be afraid of the metal...

I said, "Why can I do all these magic things?"

She hummed and rubbed her cheek against me. "Because you and I are alike. Just like my shrine is the Spring, yours will be the Mine."

I stopped breathing. She was looking at me, worried about how I would take this.

"You're the Harvest Goddess."

"Yes."

"And I'm some kind of God of the Mine."

"Yup."

I was quiet for a long time. She set her chin on my shoulder, watching me.

There weren't very many things left on my list of impossible things. Metal sat up and begged for me, after all. But to be a God...

"Why me?"

"Because this is your place."

I was quiet again. Then I said, "Why did you say that you don't like the Harvest Goddess?"

"I'm the human me. She's the Goddess me. It gets complicated, usually. If you want them to keep believing without asking for a miracle at every turn, you can't just go around helping everyone. I wish that I could, and she understands that she can't."

"That does sound complicated," I agreed sarcastically.

She stuck her tongue out at me, digging her chin into my shoulder.

"And you've been waiting all this time."

"Just for you. I think it was worth it."

I rubbed my hand over my face. "This is really it? This is what I've been waiting for?"

"I guess. How should I know?" She smiled at me, reached her hand up, and mussed my hair.

I put my hand on her shoulder and rolled on top of her. "It's not so bad." I leaned down and kissed her, and everything was good.

I'm so sorry it took so long for an update! I got sidetracked! But, now, this isn't the end. There's an epilogue.