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It was a bright day at the Pantheon, and if it weren't for the heavy weight of gold at his neck and the itch of the scabbed-over stitching, he would've thought he'd imagined the whole long nightmare: Embless's death, the tributary, all of it. But the gold was where it was, and Aoi Melhilde--first, last, best hope for her country, last chance for Althai, unfairly condemned but still awaiting the axe--was a real person, one who needed help. And he thought he might know who to ask... if she wasn't irredeemably pissed at him.

"I don't know if she'll answer," he said to the woman at his shoulder. Janine Bishop, as she'd introduced herself, was the seneschal at Yali--a place he'd never been, though he'd heard it was lovely. In Aoi's absence, it fell to her to manage her estates, and among them, Aska. "It's been... some time."

He looked back to the comm screen, and crossed his fingers that Whisteria would pick up.

For her part, Janine had less than no confidence that it would work. This place seemed primitive, what with the belief in... gods... and geists and monsters. The multiverse was full of many things, magic and all, but gods? Conclusively, there was no proof of them. She tapped her stylus on the reader in the crook of her arm, and tipped her head down to start recording notes on the new method of travel she'd been working on.

"I should hope she will pick up," said Janine. "She is your wife."

He waited. And waited. And waited some more, as Janine waited impatiently, adjusting the sheer overlay of her jacket, tapping her shoes, making notes. "This is completely ridiculous," she huffed, finally, "I propose we move on and find someone more likely to answer a comm--"

Because of dramatic timing, that was when Whisteria picked up. He smiled on reflex; it was so good to see her alive and well, and he took roll of what he saw on reflex. She hadn't changed much at all since he'd last seen her... the fangs were new. Her eyes had changed color, insomuch as they'd been all-pale before, and now they were as blue as the Empress's back on II Delta Shaowei. "Whisteria," he said, "love," and then he wondered: would she even still feel that way about him, after two years?

He took a deep breath, and brushed his curls out of his eyes. "I don't have much time to explain, but..." He gestured at the bandaging at the base of his throat, where Althai's gem form had once rested. "I'm having a hard time convincing the people who, er..." There was no good way to explain the tributary, was there?...

Janine reached over and took the comm from him. "You're Lady Whisteria, aren't you," she asked, her tones clipped short and proper. "I'm told you're a healer of some ability. Can you confirm this?"

Janine huffed, and stroked dark hair back from her face again, impatiently. "Yes, of course. What do you know of these... rocks? The ones which possess people, and grant them inhuman powers?"

"I told you, they're reborn gods," said Aska, and Janine held up a hand to silence him. He took a deep breath and sighed it out, rolling his eyes.

"The one that this one had," she said, jerking a thumb at Aska, "has implanted itself in my liege. It caused some sort of... conflagration... and now she won't wake. If you know anything about these... things... the state of Yali humbly requests your aid, Lady Whisteria."

Aska really just wanted to see her in person again. He didn't think that was such a complicated thing to request. He wanted, needed, to know everything that was happening back at home--everything about Lily, about the other gods he'd met. Just... everything. "It is of vital importance that you comply," said Janine, and Aska sighed. Again.

"II Delta Shaowei," said Janine. Her tone was skeptical, and she seemed to be slightly irritable about the insistence on the god thing. The glance she threw his way said your wife corroborating your story doesn't make it more believable. Well, she'd see. Eventually, she would see.

Aska said, "I've heard it called Oenone before. I think that may be the first name it had, before it achieved spaceflight." That didn't necessarily make it a true name, but it possibly made it truer. II Delta Shaowei, as detached and scientific a name as it was, had the sound of something carefully selected for sound rather than for truth. "We're near a place called Gamont Kaising."

Janine sighed, and drew back a step, as if she was concerned that the Door Whisteria was promising to open would slam open on her toes, or something equally so ridiculous. "Once you're here, I am capable of opening portals on-world," she said, primly. "Please come quickly."

They waited for an hour, and finally Janine said, "Do you happen to have anything of your wife's..."

"I'm a tribute," said Aska, a little befuddled. "They took my things and disposed of them."

"Ah, yes," said Janine. "Of course."

He decided to occupy his time by tending to a few of the more storm-wracked trees in the area--all of them beaten, probably in the cataclysm that had broken Embless. It really just required the right slant of mind to fix them, as he'd been finding recently. None of them were really irreparably broken...

Janine turned to him as he finished straightening a fallen birch, the bark healing over like it'd never been there in the first place. "Did you do that," she asked. "That pulse of power. Was that you?"

"Uh," he said. "No?"

Up above, there was a blue bird that seemed, to him, vaguely familiar. Or, vaguely unfamiliar--not one of any breed he'd seen in Gamont or in the Rosforte. On instinct, he raised a hand to gesture it down.

"Excellent," said Janine, "we have summoned a giant bird. This is very helpful."

Aska said, "No, my wife is a shapeshifter," just as the bird lit upon his shoulder. She was heavy, but not too heavy for a trade carpenter; it was the gentle head butts that really clued him in. If he was crying, he trusted that neither of the two women would notice. By way of distraction, he stroked a hand down the long, sinuous line of her back. "I'm so glad to see you again," he said to Whisteria. "You look lovely. Your plumage is beautiful in this light."

Janine, for her part, looked confused. "Lady Whisteria, if you could please assume some kind of..." She gestured vaguely, sort of sketching a four-limbed figure in the air between them. "Humanoid form," she finished. "I'll take you to Lady Melhilde."

She was more beautiful in real life than the comm screen could have ever communicated to him, he decided. He wanted to talk to her, to ask her everything he'd missed and just... to touch her. To know that she was real. It had been years...

Janine was gaping. "That's impossible," she said, and Aska smothered a smile. It was nice to see the implacable mage thrown for a loop. It only lasted a moment, though; she turned towards the road they'd come up, and with three broad, slashing gestures, sketched a triangle in iridescent fire. The space between lit up brilliant white-gold, and Janine ushered the pair of them through the portal.

They stepped out into a well-appointed bedroom, one that Aska had been in several times. Curled up asleep in the massive bed was a diminutive young woman, small and dark haired. "This is Althai's new host," he said. "She's the Empress's First Sword and an heir of the blood, as they say around here. Her name's Aoi, and we can't wake her up."

"Lady Melhilde," corrected Janine, and Aska sighed.

"She prefers her tributes call her Aoi, actually," he said, deliberately. "I wouldn't disrespect her that way." He turned his attention to his wife. "Whisteria, I'm not sure what to do. Althai never tried to channel his powers through me. We've been hoping we might be able to find someone from that other world that might know."

Aska remembered all of that, but the skepticism on Janine's face was fading as she listened to Whisteria speak authoritatively on the topic of gods and their powers. "She can't die," said Janine, taking an uncertain step closer to Whisteria, one hand lifted as if to touch her.

"Stay back," said Aska sharply.

"Well, she can't," said Janine, shrilly. "If she dies, we lose all of it--Nicholas can't take the throne, Hannelore can't stay on it, the woman is a psychopath, she cut off the Prince of Babylon's hand and no one's seen him since--"

Aska put a hand on Janine's shoulder, and showed her out of the room. "It'll be okay," he said. "Maybe go find Nicodeme and Erasme, tell them to start packing up? I'm sure Aoi will want to go to the Rosforte as soon as she's well." Acting like something was going to happen wouldn't make it happen, but Aska had become quite good at being a silent pillar of strength over the last two years.

He turned to Whisteria. "I don't think we can move her," he said, regretting the truth of that. "She's... rather important, and no one is supposed to know that she's like this, I gather."