Welcome to Gaia! ::

- one: Elizabeth -

Sitting in the couch under the window, Elizabeth was transfixed by the overlapping forms of the leaves outside her window. They formed a blanket of overlapping scales, the hide of a vibrant green dragon, broken in places where spears had pierced it through. The gaps between the leaves. The couch under her was buoyantly unyielding, her small form barely denting its upholstered surface. For someone who was one-third of a goddess, she was not terribly impressive. She stood just an inch or two past five feet, her figure small, and a good wind might blow her over. The drab, oversized clothes she wore gave the wind plenty of sail to work with, and while they did serve to make her appear slightly bigger, it was not in any flattering manner. Brown hair clung to her head in an unbrushed twist, unwashed and oily. She wore glasses by necessity of her poor vision.

A bug came crawling across the pane of the window, a beetle or something similar. The bookshelf on the wall behind her contained an identification guide for North American insects, but she was too lost in the view to even consider reaching back to get it. Her mind was too unfocused, too purely involved in visual stimulation.

A movement attracted her attention and she turned from the window, jumping. She was always easily startled, a byproduct of that slightly too-intense focus. Djerod, the one she called her father, gestured to the empty space beside her on the couch and she nodded.

It was then that she became aware of the noises in the house around her. Voices from the rooms adjacent, talking and laughing and playing. Her friends and family. They lived here, together, always a bit too crowded and always the happier for it.

Her father wore grey, as always, but in the warmer days of the late Virginian summer went without his trademark coat and hat. He stared at her a moment, some faint humor in his expression, piercing blue eyes matching hers. Then he shifted so he too was looking out the window, looking for whatever she saw, but as always it was lost to him. He hummed discontentedly.

"Whut?" she asked lowly, ever the petulant child. She was some months past twenty, but perhaps looking so small and being so often mistaken for someone years younger had cemented her with a child's mentality.

As usual he was initially dismissive of his own thoughts. "Oh, nothing." She turned back to the dragon outside the window, and as soon as she did he spoke again and drew her back. "You did the right thing, you know."

That put an acrid taste in her mouth. This was the whole reason she had been staring out so blankly at the window, trying -- or trying not -- to think about the recent dismissal of her friend Kazuhiko. Until that moment, she had been succeeding.

The immediate response in her mind was You have no idea the real reason behind it. She bit back any criticism of her father and simply glowered. She would not and could not tell him. Despite anything else, she was still one part of the White Duchess, and he the Grey Mage. Their goals and philosophies were not always in concordance.

She had met Kazuhiko quite by accident almost a year before. Violent, calculating -- a mercenary out to sell his sword for fame and glory to the highest bidder. He was not kind, though he could be very considerate, was not loyal, though he operated by a personal code of honor, and was comfortable performing acts most people would never even contemplate. Yet despite his many apparent shortcomings, she had known the moment upon meeting him that she loved him with the fierce, deific devotion that bound her followers to her. He was marked in the depths of his soul as one of her followers, though he did not know it.

Djerod had been against this recruitment from the beginning, protective of his daughter and unable to see the vast potential of this bloodthirsty individual. He saw only a person who was dangerous, too dangerous. No, he said to Elizabeth. Not this one. Pick another, or give this recruit to Ken or Trion. Because he did not understand his daughter, he did not understand that she could not pick and choose her followers. They were already chosen for her by that invisible benefactor, the White Duchess, who had set all the pieces in motion so long ago.

She recruited Kazuhiko and made him one of her personal guard. It was a sad reminder of the war they were fighting that she needed guards. Four or more, at all times, highly trained and deadly and unswervingly loyal. Kazuhiko was all but one of those things, and Djerod did not believe he could learn the last part required. Elizabeth ignored her father. She could be stubborn when she wanted, and she wanted Kazuhiko. It took time, and several times Kazuhiko tried to kill her and she hid this from her father, but in the end he was exactly what she knew he would be.

And now he was gone. No more late-night meetings that would leave them trying to hide their laughter from those sleeping, no more cooking scrambled eggs and toast for one another, burnt more often than not, no more "accidental" run-ins outside the shower. They had been having, up until Kazuhiko's dismissal, a very lighthearted relationship of flirting and joking and generally inappropriate friendship. All that was gone now. She was having trouble with the empty picture.

Elizabeth put her thoughts behind her and stared at the filigreed patterns on the couch upholstery. She could see into infinity when she looked at them. Fractals, infinite creation: the gift of patternmancy. See the pattern and extrapolate its path in reality, but the patterns she saw were not mere numerical repetitions on a test of intelligence. They were elements of the fabric of the universe, the perpetual creation that was necessary to keep the universe from dying, because unless creation was perpetual the universe would be unchanging. Yet without the Grey Mage to fix her creation into reality, it was unconstant. It was so vicious a paradox.

Two children ran by, Djerod's other charges. They were laughing and happy in their youthfulness. Ages six and twelve, so mindless and innocent, reveling in their mortal methods of creation. To Elizabeth, they possessed such a limited imagination. They could not contain whole universes in their souls the way she did. She would sometimes play with them because, despite the disparity in their abilities and ages, they shared some elements of infantile communication, but more and more she was losing those as she settled into semi-adulthood. She would forever be a child, but the ways of children were becoming lost to her.

Though Djerod considered himself her father, his other "children" were not Elizabeth's siblings. Her family was defined by something more intransient than blood or legal relation, and such definitions could not bind her. She chose the people who were in her family regardless of their actual relation and named them to her places. It was this way with Djerod. They were no physical relation, but she named him Father, and he named her Daughter. The other children he looked after had no bearing on this relationship. They were merely part of her extended family, friends or cousins, dear to someone she loved but not to her personally.

She returned back to Djerod's assertion, that she had made the right decision. He was not in a position to judge her, yet as the physical elder and parent in the relationship, he did so daily. She found his judgment slightly damning. At the same time, she accepted it. Being judged was a price she was willing to pay because she loved her family, and she loved her father in particular, and as much as she missed Kazuhiko already she was surrounded by people who loved her in return.

So she smiled, not wholly insincerely, and picked at the couch patterns with her bitten fingernail.

January 20th. The lights in the box never go out and he never sleeps. He just sits there, staring at the ceiling while the tubes alternately sap him and nourish him, keeping him unbalanced. He thinks there is something at the back of his mind but he cannot reach it. Maybe it is death. He is changing.


January 22nd. He is aware of something outside the box which confuses him because the box is the only thing he has ever known. (He has already forgotten about the cabbage. Maybe he imagined it.) He has been in the box forever and will be there forever if his life so far is any indication. He is alone in the universe except for the tubes that are always pumping something into him and taking something out.

He does not realize it, but this is the first phase of a training prison where they intend to make him a killer and they are pumping him full of drugs both to tame him and change the development of his brain and body. The memories he has here he will have with him always because they have increased his power of recollection chemically. The fact that he is awake with eyes open and does not sleep is part of the chemical modification. They need a weapon which is always vigilant. Most of what they pump into him is just to keep him quiet and contained. They do not want him to know they are afraid of him.


January 23rd, midday. He can feel it again, that definite sense of something outside this. His eyes keep darting back and forth, trying to find it, but it is fleeting. He almost thinks for a moment he can catch it, but his hand smashes against the ceiling. The pain doesn't even give him pause any more. It is constant and everywhere.


January 23rd, late evening. No one else has screamed in hours. He has discovered that he can see the fleeting thing better when he lets his eyes stop working. It's like a ribbon, or a ripple, dark and pulsating. It shakes and dances to the rhythm of chaos, never making any sense, but he can see it, and even though it is outside, it remains a part of him.


January 24th, early in the morning. He knows what it is. He knows what it is. He is just waiting for it to be in the right place.


January 26th. Finally is it in the right place. This time, when he reaches out to grab it, he does not hit the ceiling.

- two: Constant -

It was one of those nights when the moon was so bright you could see everything. As she wove her way through the trees towards the cliffside, the pup could not help but to loll her tongue in happy anticipation. Tonight her escape had been perfect, silent and unnoticed, and so early that she would have hours to herself in the forest to revel in the sounds and smells and the feel of magic that permeated every leaf and twig, every stream and river, every rock and patch of dirt and whispers of the breeze. The Elders would be mad if they discovered her missing yet again, but on a night such as this it was worth it. It was so perfect she almost could not breathe for the splendor of it.

Arriving at the cliffside, she carefully sat down near its edge and looked out over the forest. Trees stretched as far as she could see north, to the mountains, and to the west was the trade road used by the humans and then further on a bit the plains. The east held the elder forest where fae creatures roamed.

As lovely as the moonlight on the trees was, the pup turned her attention to the road. She longed for one of the trade caravans to come, for one of the mages to be travelling with it and pick her as his companion. Familiars, people called them, mage-guides and wizard eyes.

While it was a true fact she might not be chosen and could remains here as one of the tribe members who stayed to continue the tribe, the pup refused to accept such a fate. She could hear it on the wind, a calling that lured her far and away.

She was alive with her dreams but not so lost in them that she failed to notice the cry from somewhere below. A strange cry, not something familiar, young and weak. It piqued her curiosity. She waited, listening, but did not hear it again.

There was really nothing to lose as she was already out for the night. In her mind at least, there was no bigger trouble for her to be in. She went west along the ridge to the spot where it formed a set of switchbacks that could take her down the cliff and back up again. She had to be careful, for though she was fleet of foot, it was dark out, and the rocks could be noisy. Far be it for her to alert some patrolling guard in the area as to her presence. She wove her way down and back eastwards a bit.

In the stillness of the forest the sound of movement was magnified and she easily traced its source, picking up the faintest trace of that earlier cry. She prepared for caution, only intending on peeking through the bushes to identify what it was, then going along her way. There were Nightstalkers in the elder woods that sometimes ventured to the new wood areas.

What she found was not a nightstalker. It was in fact something she had seen only once before with a visiting caravan. It was a human baby.

He was so young it was doubtful he could walk and she remembered how the baby in the caravan had been carried everywhere by its mother. Tribe younglings were sometimes carried by the nape of their neck, but certainly not the extent of the human youngling. This one had no parent carrying it, nor any clothing, and the pup could easily smell blood and wounds on it. Its hair was black and its breathing was troubled by its own distress.

Just to be sure, Constant did a circle around the child, but for the life of her could pick up no trail. It was as if he had dropped from the sky. She knew it was a he after taking a moment to think about it because some parts seemed to be universal among all types of tribes and humans, and that part was universally male.

She emerged from the thick of the forest and the baby went silent and still. It was scared. The pup, not seeing any reason for this behavior, walked right up and nudged him with her nose. He squirmed, and she licked him carefully, especially all the parts where he was hurt.

The pup now realized she had a conundrum. This human baby out in the middle of the forest was not something she could carry. Maybe the elders could, but she was still rather small and had only sat through two selection circles out of the eight allowed. If she alerted the guard, she would get in trouble. The best thing, she decided, was to sit here and wait for morning and then call them and pretend she had simply gone for a sunrise walk, which was allowable. At least the boy seemed to have calmed a bit now that he was clean. The pup circled him once and lay down at his side, curling her tail over his stomach. Cautious but encouraged, the boy reached over and took hold of her ear, for the first time in his life finding someone to hold on to.

It came lumbering through the forest like a buffalo, not caring who or what it disturbed because it was a Nightstalker and it owned the darkness. It could smell a dog and a wounded human and unlike a bear knew from the odor alone that there was no reason to fear an ambush. It was not smart but it was cunning and its jaws dripped with a hunger it could never fully answer, a hunger not for mere sustenance but for the pain and suffering of its prey, for the violence of dismemberment and the thrill of joy it felt with something screamed its final scream.

When it was close enough, it broke into a heavy, lumbering run, crashing past branches that snapped and withered in its wake. It was upon its prey before it even realized, almost tripping over them in its excitement. Finding a pup and a baby pushed the Nightstalker into a frenzied ecstasy. The pup called out for her people with a terrified howl and in the distance howls answered it, but the Nightstalker did not care as it rushed towards pup and baby.

The poor boy could not even begin to understand the Nightstalker's identity but he was scared by it. Nothing about the creature promised anything good. The pup's paws were big to the boy but miniscule compared to the Nightstalker's. Where the pup had thick, rounded nails that pressed into skin without danger, the Nightstalker had jagged claws that snapped out as it reared up above the boy and the pup, forelegs raised for the strike.

The pup had no intention of hiving it that chance. Though her paws were small and her nails dull, her teeth were sharp as any of her people's. She leapt up towards the Nightstalker just as she had been trained to attack bears, closing her teeth on its neck, and bit down with all her might.

If the pup's bray had not been enough to call her people, the Nightstalker's roar could have called them from their graves. The boy, who had at times lost his voice, suddenly found it and expressed his terror in purest infant form, a scream the begged for someone to save them.

With the pup still clamped down on its neck, the Nightstalker stumbled back two steps, clawing the pup away. One of its claws caught on the pup's back right leg, ripping it open and wrenching the pup free, but with a hefty chunk of its own skin still hanging from the pup's teeth. The pup was thrown into a bush and seemed almost to bounce off onto the dirt. The boy's voice seized for a moment as concern for the pup overwhelmed his own sense of terror and self-preservation. The one thing he had found to hold on to lay like a limp, bloody rag in the dirt while the giant Nightstalker turned its attention to what it viewed as a troublesome annoyance. The boy reached out for the pup, but she was too far away for him to touch.

The pup was down but not out and she found her feet again, never mind that only three of them still remained useful. She stood tall and proud and bayed out to her people once more, the answering calls closer now, but still far away, trying to find her in the darkness of the night.

Infuriated, the Nightstalker turned to her and swept her aside with one of its giant claws, tossing her against a tree as if she weighed nothing. There was a horrid noise when she hit, a pained yelp mixed with the sound of her ribs cracking, and she slid down into the dirt near the boy. He wailed in terror and alarm but could do nothing except reach for her in panicked desperation.

Saliva dripped from the Nightstalker's fangs, mingling with the blood seeping from its neck as it advanced on them. Against all odds, the pup rose once more, even as every broken bone in her body protested. She hacked blood and managed to bark. The Nightstalker paused.

Each step was a monumental effort as the pup dragged herself towards the boy. She would not let the Nightstalker hurt him, she would protect the baby boy with her last ounce of strength and courage, she would be unwavering and constant to her last breath. She reached him just as the Nightstalker, snarling, reared up for the kill. She would protect the boy, she had to.

It was as if she found new strength and grew to twice her size. There was magic in the world, and it was in her and around her and it filled her with strength she had not know she had. Her claws seemed sharper, her teeth bigger, and her torn leg somehow managed to propel her up into the air to the Nightstalker's neck once again, where her teeth sank into the same spot and came away with more flesh and more blood, a spray of red that arced over her and the baby boy. There was a huge and furious roar as the Nightstalker felt the pain of this wound over the force of its own adrenaline and it stumbled back on its rear two legs.

The pup dropped to the ground, her warning finally delivered. The Nightstalker was so consumed with its own pain it reeled away and gurgled and whimpered towards a bush.

She had just enough energy to make her way back to the boy, her back right leg dragging, and lick him before she collapsed, all the energy spent from her. The boy, confused, pulled on her ears and her fur but there was no response.

The Nightstalker was dying. It could feel its life seeping away into nothing. It was scared for the first time and in its terror it realized the only thing it could would be to make sure its killer knew one last moment of terror and shared in the coming death. With a sick snarl the Nightstalker rose, claws digging into the dirt, and managed to rear up one more, claws and fangs bared. There was a split second and then it lunged.

In that split second, the boy gripped the dog as tightly as he could and grabbed for the outside.



In a sudden break from the forest the boy and the dog tumbled in the chaos between realities. They were nowhere and everywhere at once, torn by unspeakable forced in a thousand million trillion infinity of directions. An infinite chorus screamed around them, a cacophony that defined and destroyed and encompassed everything. The boy had pulled them here from the forest, just as he had pulled himself from that cold metal box with its cruel snaking wires to this between-chaos, just as he had pulled himself into the world of the pup who tried to protect him, and if had never been his intention to pull himself into this horrid not-place again, but there had been nowhere else for them to go.

They were lost between the worlds.

To a baby still learning to stand and his faithful companion born of the People, even the modestly mundane house in Virginia seemed to be a great adventure. The Third and his Constant were in awe of the toys and the colors and the electrical appliances, so overwhelmed they were only peripherally aware of the other denizens in the house and the frequent visitors. Today they sat in the middle of a mess of broken Cheerios on the kitchen linoleum, Elizabeth beside them and a guest standing over the proceedings in grim appraisal. Douglas MacArthur Heller, ranked general and semi-official head of the Triumvirate Army, did not trust Third and Constant, even after Elizabeth's reassurances. He fully believed that Elizabeth, and all of the Duchess's many avatars, were too trusting in general. After all, they had trusted Heller and brought him here, and as wonderful as that had been for Heller, he would never have trusted someone like himself. He was guilty of a few too many insubordination crimes. The fact that the two newest additions to Elizabeth's extended family were just a baby and a dog did not reassure Heller.

"I'm telling you, that child is unsettling," he said. Heller was leaning against the kitchen counter with arms crossed and a disapproving frown. He was wearing his officer's coat over plain civilian clothes, the look of a military rebel. His cap lay on the counter next to him.

"Don't say that, I think he's darling," said Elizabeth, catching Third's attention and smiling at him. "As handsome a man as I've ever seen."

The Third was just as both Heller and Elizabeth described him. His cherubic features were utterly charming in the way only a baby could manage, his body small but otherwise healthy, his inky black locks a halo of fine curls around his head. Had his hair been blonde and his eyes blue, he would have resembled the cherubs of a Valentine's Day card. It was the eyes that were the problem. The left was black in both iris and pupil, so dark it was impossible to tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. The right eye had a dot of black pupil surrounded by pale grey iris. The effect was as unnerving as it was striking. Elizabeth was momentarily transfixed as she looked at Third's face.

That was not the only unusual trait Elizabeth had discovered. It had been enough days now for her to confirm: Third, the Deity Absolute, did not sleep. He remained wide awake at all times, alert always, and when Constant slept he would lay beside her, thinking, for however many hours it took until the familiar woke up again. It was sweet, that constant vigil for Constant, and Elizabeth closed her eyes at night with the comforting thought that so long as the pair of them were together, it was going to be all right.

Doug's voice drew Elizabeth out of her reverie. "What does Djerod say?"

"He doesn't say anything," said Elizabeth, grouping together a pile of unbroken Cheerios and beginning to arrange them into an outline of a shape. "It's no concern of his what I spend my time doing."

Heller quirked an eyebrow. He considered Elizabeth family, a niece if not a daughter, and that sort of answer concerned him. "He's your father, it's every bit his concern."

Elizabeth bit back a response which was untrue and inappropriate, the fact that Djerod was not truly her father. He was in almost every way but one, and she would be lying blatantly if she pretended she thought that one way was anything important. Bloodlines and genetics did not figure into her definition of family. Since she would not do herself, Djerod, and Heller the dishonor of blurting out something so distasteful, she shrugged.

Heller had never put much stock in talking problems out. He preferred to internalize them, let them fester, wallow in anger in misery if that was what it took to avoid admitting he had problems. Sometimes, though, he had to admit that it was better to talk things out. "Talk to me."

Elizabeth sighed. She hated talking about problems as much as he did. "I don't know," she lied. "It's not important." Heller let her speak the lies aloud. He would let her lie at first because she needed to, the same as he did.

"Talk to me," he repeated.

Third played with his Cheerios, trying to make shapes the way Elizabeth did with considerably less success. He had been cooped up in that tiny metal box with the wires for so long that coordination was still a struggle, but each day he improved by leaps and bounds.

"It doesn't feel right," Elizabeth said, looking towards the dining room. "I need a break."

Heller understood too well. When you internalized your problems the way he and Elizabeth did it eventually led to a strong desire to escape from everything for an extended period of time. He also thought Elizabeth was in a much better position than he himself was to do something about the issue.

"You're a ******** praetorix," he said, a little jealous and angry at her, "you can do whatever you want."

In many ways, it was the truth, but in just as many ways it was not. Heller felt trapped by his responsibilities, but Elizabeth did, too. This house, the whole of the Triumvirate, her praetorian duties: none of these things seemed restrictive to Heller, but to Elizabeth they were like solid chains binding her to this time and place. The shackles of a mortal existence, the constraints of Time and all that was Grey. They both felt trapped, even if Heller did not see it.

"You control the universe, Elly."

"That doesn't mean I can do what I want with it," she replied, sweeping away the shape of a dinosaur from the linoleum so all that remained was a random scattering of cereal, the building blocks of creation. The pile of Cheerios represented infinite possibility, but once reality was shaped, she could not so easily erase it. Time and the physical laws prevented it. She began to make a new shape with the Cheerios. In her mortal guise, this was her only outlet for her creative instinct. The price she paid for having these friends and this family. As much as she would not trade it, she needed to escape for a bit.

Looking at Third, she saw such endless possibility, and at the same time, she knew his life was governed by a certain causality. So much of his life was outside his control simply because he was, like her, a mortal. But for now, so little of his life was written, there existed millions upon millions of possibilities. She truly envied that. His arrival had reawoken in her the desire for endless possibility, the desire to escape, at least for a short time, the turnings of the mortal machine.

She looked up at Heller. She knew Doug, in ways he did not know himself, because she was his praetorix and that was her job. Sometimes it made her sad to know him, but no matter what, she was committed to his wellbeing, just as she was now committed to Third and Constant. "I have an idea." It was as much for herself as for Doug that she proposed it, and to her joy and delight, Doug agreed. They both needed to get away from this war before it ate them alive.

Being part of a deity, many things came easily to Elizabeth. To her, the creation of a world was as natural and simple as breathing. Extrapolating the possibilities of a situation and calculating the most likely outcomes was second nature. Walking between universes was as easy as turning the page of a book. Standing before her family, she wondered why it was so hard to do something as simple as talk.

Humans spoke to one another every day. Deities were supposed to be more powerful than humans, yet Elizabeth found herself wishing she could disappear into the floorboards.

Djerod was seated on the couch before her, the noise of running children enlivening the house behind her. Life poured from every nook and cranny of this dimension. Elizabeth looked out and around and tried to pretend this was something besides an admission of failure. It was the only thing in her mind. I've failed you and I'm sorry.

The words finally spilled out from her messily, guiltily. "I'm leaving."

Djerod normally affected an air of patient amusement. It broke. "Oh?" he asked, voice tight and bordering near the edge of faint panic.

Their relationship was a complicated one. Elizabeth was, in some part, the person who had created Djerod from the mess of chaos and time, personified him as a deity rather than a merely mathematical, computational force of existence. She had given a face and name to time, and it was Djerod. That made her in some sense his mother.

Yet through all their interactions, he was always her father and rarely her son. He had the wisdom of the ages, maturity and control beyond what she was capable of, in this life and outside. Creation was the realm of chaotic freedom and did not well ascribe itself to the qualities of a responsible parent. Those who said love was the only prerequisite for good parenting were wrong. For Third's sake, Elizabeth was learning.

Yet despite his role in the relationship, Djerod needed Elizabeth in the same way a child needs a parent. Without her, he always felt somewhat adrift, lonely. Maybe, he often thought, he should invest in some form of mortal relationship to fill that particular need for company. Instead, he chose to share his life with Elizabeth and forego mortal relationships beyond the ones he was directly responsible for.

The house they shared was frequently home to guests, and had by some happy accident become the semi-permanent living space of a few close friends. Djerod's thought process on the subject was simple. As long as a mortal was under his roof, he could cook and care for and protect that mortal. When they left, they were no longer his regard. Only memories and sentimentality remained, and Djerod was comfortable with this arrangement. He always had Elizabeth.

"Leaving where?" he asked.

She pressed a lock of twisting hair behind her ear. "World Zero."

He knew the place, though he had not seen it in centuries and could not return to it. Once his creation was cemented he lost the ability to travel there, being unable to strain his deific nature through World Zero's matrix wall.

World Zero was a deific planet and the deity it belonged to was the Duchess. It was an extension of her very soul. Every thread of the planet's existence was a thread of pure creation, and the Duchess had kept him there just long enough to put into place the laws that governed its continued reality. It was, to her, a perfect planet, where anything could happen but nothing would without her expressly choosing it. Controlled creation, the reason she needed him so strongly.

Djerod's first instinct was that this was a short trip, and he could withstand that. Perhaps a problem that needed fixing. "Is there something wrong with it?"

Elizabeth easily grasped that he was not following her meaning. She frowned, faltered, looked at him briefly and then down at the table where several magazines and a large unlit candle sat arrayed. She ran her fingers across the smooth, glossy magazine covers. She shook her head. "I'm going there to stay for a while."

That fear that Djerod had been steeling himself against resurfaced and grabbed hold of him, tentacles of doom rising from the deep and wrapping around his heart.

He was so controlled, it was only his face that spoke of it, the closing of his capillaries and widening of his eyes.

There were, he told himself, other Elizabeths, but in some weird way, he was attached to this one, and he understood too well that while they were all her, they were not all the same. This one was his Elizabeth, his little girl whom he counted on and protected. For him, any other Elizabeth -- or other El for that matter -- would be only a pale imitation, a false goddess.

He did the only thing he could. He stared at her, quietly frightened, quelling the shiver that grew deep inside him, and asked her, "When?"

Elizabeth smiled sadly when she looked at him, knowing truly that it did not matter when, least of all to the man who personified Time in her version of the universe. "In the morning. Doug is coming with me. Third, too."

"His daughter?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Shizue. And Constant." It would be remiss of her to neglect to mention the familiar. Though Constant went without saying where Third was concerned, not mentioning Constant was a cruel oversight. Third's familiar was a part of this family now.

Elsewhere in the house, a child tripped and fell. The cries reached their ears. Djerod hastily stood. "I had better take care of that."

Elizabeth nodded, let him go. Then she went and found a quiet corner and crouched down in it, hidden from sight by boxes and curtains. Her hands were shaking. She thought, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

She wanted to need Djerod the way he needed her, but right now, she needed some alone time. She needed some sanctuary from the responsibilities she had and the stress of the conflict they were all, in their own way, fighting, even if they were not on the front lines.

And, she told herself, she needed to believe in hope that the people she loved and who were fighting in her honor were going to survive this. She just did not have the strength to see that hope through to the end. Wiping an unwelcome tear from her eye, she went to fetch Third and Constant. She almost made it, too, but midway up the stairs she had to stop and sit and cry at the shame of her own inadequacy.



Elizabeth finally returned to Third's side with a feeling of guilt that she had left him alone in the first place, even though it had been necessary. Third looked up from where he was playing with his hand-me-down toy blocks, oblivious to the fault, and saw only the form of the girl who took care of him and was gladder for her presence, greeting her with a soft smile.

"It's done," Elizabeth announced, to which Third, sitting in the middle of a pile of colored blocks, could say nothing. He looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face. He was learning quite quickly and had some vocabulary under his belt, but words without context could still be quite confusing. He much preferred to simply communicate with Constant.

Something had happened that fateful night, some binding between the pair of them, and what resulted was an emotional bond transcending all words. Third had only to think something and Constant knew it. Constant had only to feel an emotion and Third could tell. He was much dismayed that this bond did not extend to everyone he encountered, but that in no way belittled whatever magic bound the pair of them together.

Constant gave a little bark. Elizabeth sat down heavily on the wood floor next to Third, stacking up the nearby blocks into a tower. "I suppose you're wondering what's done," she said. From this distance it was possible to observe her red eyes and newly-dried cheeks. "I'm done, that's what. I'm leaving."

Constant gave another small bark and Elizabeth laughed despite herself. "You're coming with me, of course, both of you. We're going to very special place, the place where I grew up, a place almost as good as paradise."

"Good?" asked Third, and Elizabeth scrunched up her face in a smile and tapped him on the nose.

"Very good," she said. "It's for the better, really it is. It's the most beautiful planet in the whole of Creation, with so much to see and explore. You'd like that, wouldn't you? No more hand-me-down toys, because everything you need is provided there. Things like you're never tasted and never seen before."

Again, Third was at something of a loss for the context of this speech. He understood leaving, and the concept disturbed him somewhat, so he focused on the parts that seemed to match the positive tone Elizabeth was employing for this explanation. "Toys?"

It was amazing how stress seemed to melt away talking to Third. He was such a good listener and sitting next to him the whole of the rest of the universe seemed to disappear so that the world became only Elizabeth, Third, and constant. She smiled, even laughed as she confirmed it: "Yes, toys! And friends. Some very special friends will be coming with us."

The tower of blocks before Elizabeth was now eight high. Third reached out, balled up his hand, and took a swing. The blocks collapsed into a heap and Elizabeth laughed. "Yes, you're very good at knocking down the things I build," she said, rustling Third's hair. He sweetly giggled in that way only babies could, a sound of purely good intent and curiosity. Constant sniffed at a nearby block and looked at both of them reproachfully, as if she did not approve of such a mess.

In a few days there would be no blocks, no hardwood floors, and no more house whatsoever. There would be only World Zero.

They slept on soft mosses under a starry sky that stayed the color of sunset, over which a pair of moons would sometimes drift. It was strange but comforting the way the quality of light was never-failing, how they could see stars as clearly as each other despite the jungle canopy.

Elizabeth showed them the trees with the bark-like fungal covering that could be turned to cloth and blankets, and giant furry white flowers that made for short-term pillows or a good game of catch. They found flowers akin to orchids, immensely complex in their beauty, and with them the ugly, misshapen lumpy, sticky fruits from which the flowers emerged. Every morning they would wake and find some new fruit to try, a new taste or smell to experience.

Time blurred. Days passed or months or weeks, it was impossible to tell. The need to try and count days, to know time, passed, and the universe became a stream of moments. They lived in those moments completely.

Everything they needed, the world provided. Food, warmth, shelter, clothing. One had only to reach into the jungle and pluck out some strange fruit or leaf. Doug had a knife and found a type of wood which was quite easy for woodworking. He would sit there and carve things for the children and Constant, animal shapes and toys. Third and Constant gradually enamored themselves to the shy, quiet Shizue, eliciting first small smiles and then soundless laughter. Though they had not known her prior to setting foot on World Zero, they quickly called her friend.

The only thing that seemed to indicate the passage of any kind was Third and Constant's growth. It was startling how the pair of them sprouted, like weeds in an otherwise immaculately-tended jungle. In no time at all Third was just as big as Shizue, and as they watched Third, Constant, and Shizue wander through the jungle, laughing together and enjoying imaginary adventures, Doug and Elizabeth felt such peace and calm.

"Thank you," said Doug one lazy evening, for even though there were no days or dates, they all rested and rose together and that alone defined the daytime from the night.

"For what?" said Elizabeth, who had not moved from her spot in some time and thus had done nothing recently which required thanks.

"Everything," said Doug, and wished it would never end.