Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hvergelmir folded her hands in front of her, happy to bask in the glow of Ida's excitement. It was something special, on a day like today -- on a day when magic had not been enough, and a lost man had died -- to witness something dead being reborn. To see the resurrection of a whole world, all at once . . .

Such miracles were rare. They were worth appreciating. She wondered if any of her past selves, any previous Hvergelmirs had witnessed the likes of this in their time -- or if they'd seen smaller miracles, or greater ones.

This one, nonetheless, was a memory worthy of being passed down to her next lifetime. She had stood in a wave of light and felt the ashes of a world rekindling, lit by a lone woman's hands.

"A friend of mine was . . . similarly changed," she said. "Though the circumstances were different. That took place at my Wonder, not his -- but he bears marks a little like yours, and an energy that -- feels similar. It happened when his ancestor passed on to the Galaxy Cauldron. Another passing of the torch, I suppose you could say?"

Hvergelmir thought of the great glass tube back in the city, the dead mother tree. Perhaps, she thought, someday this world will have use for its trees again.

"The other side of Mars?" Hvergelmir echoed, looking around with unconcealed interest, as though she expected to spot the telltales of the big red planet hiding somewhere behind a tree. "Is that where we are?"

It was strange, to think of traveling through space without leaving the Solar System. Strange, as it had been to stand in the snows of Mercury (the snows! Of the sun's closest planet!), or braving the hot sands of Mars itself.

The Temple of Hvergelmir was halfway across the galaxy, nowhere near here. Nowhere near anything at all -- which she supposed was the point of it. It was funny to think of how impossibly far these places, places like Ida, were from Earth -- funny, when she'd been so much farther so often, and had a bed there to call her own.

How odd and exciting a thing it was, to live in such an age.

"Ganymede," she said, storing away the name in her memory. The cup-bearer, young and beautiful. "Well, then. Babylon of Mercury makes your third -- I'll let you know if I meet anyone else like the group of you. No apology needed for the imposition, though -- " She smiled. " -- I did blind you first."

Hvergelmir cast a long glance around her, trying to clear a place in her memory to store an image of this strange and beautiful place, young again with its new life. Who knew when, if ever, she might be back?

Then -- knowing despite herself that they had to return, and the world would be waiting for them with all its ill news, as they'd left it -- she put out a hand, letting Ida's glowing fingers clasp hers.