Our Little Gods 0.1: ATACHEREL, the Other Side of the Coin.

Veviensis

There was pain. There was suffering and great sorrow. The sorrow came from great love. The Veviensis raised her head from the pillow and sat on her bed. She was troubled. Her dreams were showing her things she did not comprehend. She stood up and walked through the wide-open bays onto the terrace. The air felt cooler there. There was absolutely no wind and the stones were radiating with the heat of yesterday's sun. As always when she felt uneasy she went to the parapet to look at the lake. It spread out right at the foot of the palace, the slender jetty was almost in front of her and the waters were like solid obsidian except where the moon crescent was reflected. The elegant slender line of glowing white was the last one left in the sky, its two sisters had already set and were shining on the other side of this world. She could sense them, the people on these far away lands. They were no men. They were of much older stock. Actually, they were the reason she had been attracted to this world. They smelled of the one true world. But it mattered not she was here now, she would offer this world to Anagh and Anagh would come to here and love her and love all these creatures and rule over them like the benevolent mother she was.

But this dream, it felt so important. Was it coming from Anagh? Was it from elsewhere? The details were becoming elusive. There had been love and sorrow and much, much pain. She shivered despite the heat and came back inside. The brutality of the people of this world sometime made her sick. She kept having these urges to do all this without involving them at all. Maybe she could do it on her own. But Anagh wants the people of this world to love her, so there was no escaping it. She knew of the war that was coming. She could picture, with graphic details in her mind what it will look like, her armies engaged with theirs. She liked what she had constructed here. The community on the bay, the Rehevîmes' village, the Natab's camp even the angry monk's harbour. She liked the feeling of constructing, what you felt when you assembled thing, or connected people one with the other. During the palace construction she posed for several days as a Rehevîme women brick laying the walls of the stables. Often she was in the kitchen as a helping girl. The guards would flirt with her and she would smile and blush and rush away until the master cook would come and tell the guards to go. There was a smile on her lips now. Yes, she loved them these brutes. She wished them well. She walked back to her bed and gently raked the dark grey sand with her fingers. She had insisted that the Rehevîmes built it for her exactly like so. They had created a large square and shallow tank in stone and filled it with the sand from the banks in the middle of the lake. They had baked the sand with cinnamon and cloves for a week to dry it and perfume it and then, they had filled the tank with burning coal so that it would not add moisture to the sand and finally when the ash had all been swept away they had filled it with the dark grey, scented sand. It had been on this bank, on this sand she had been born to the world after rising from the depth of the lake. The voice had been strong at the time, so strong, purposeful and soothing. She missed the voice of her maker. But there was no space to be sad, she had purpose and needed focus. The dream was gone now and she felt tired and went back to her bed with gratitude. As she was closing her eyes the images came, in flashes. There was a hammer, why was there a hammer? The feelings were gone now, and yet the images remained. It was important. Suddenly she knew exactly where it had been happening. It was in her DeadLands, where her coming had laid waste to the people and the land and where the plagues were rampant. In a hamlet controlled by the warlord Beterel, except Beterel was not there, he was at the meet up with the Balà in Haven. Was it because he was so close she could sense this? Was he trying to hide something from her? She would know, she merely had to look in their eyes to know all their secrets. She decided she would go to Haven and meet this man.