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When Eliane woke she thought she felt surprisingly rested for someone who’d had an important conversation with a deity in her sleep.  She and Helire decided to go and see the cows before breakfast and found Second Cousin Herome in the cowstalls checking on his ox.  Eliane offered to help the team who were doing the shovelling out, but was waved away with their thanks because, they said, all the shovels were in use.  A turn past the muck pile was ruled out because Herome, who’d joined them after he’d finished with Smoke, wanted to try and catch Great Uncle Banning at breakfast.  According to Herome, Great Uncle had left their room after dinner to catch up with some old friends and not returned since.  Apparently Eliane’s great uncle had asked Herome for space on the cart on the way home for some seed, and Herome wanted to clarify as soon as he could whether ‘some’ meant a few pounds or several hundredweight.

Breakfast was in the same communal dining hall as dinner and far more informal.  Instead of servers bringing platters and bowls to the dining tables, the food was placed on a side table running the length of the room and everyone served themselves before sitting down at a dining table.  That was the intention, but Eliane saw one poor man eating his entire meal standing just out of reach of the dining tables because people kept talking to him.  She was considering whether she was bold enough to rescue a stranger from other strangers when the gong sounded to warn everyone that it was almost time for the morning service.

Eliane found herself a seat on the wall end of a row, under a carving of sheep and goats.  Helire and Herome were with Great Uncle Banning near the aisle of the row in front of her but the people already in the row Eliane was sitting in had refused to shuffle down and she’d had to push past their knees to get a spot.  Once she was seated, she realised why no-one had moved – the spot she was in had half its view of the sanctuary blocked by load-bearing architecture.  She sat quietly in her place and listened to the choir sing the morning order, recited the day’s prayers with everyone else, and passed the serving salver of devotional elixir on quickly when it came to after taking her a sip cup for herself.

Like everyone else, Eliane held the sip cup on the palm of her hand to warm the liquid in the small bowl-shaped vessel through the thin porcelain.  The priest leading the service, who was also the man Eliane had considered rescuing at breakfast, intoned the standard introduction to the sermon, and everyone raised their sip cup to their mouth.  At this point most people simply inhaled deeply and let the fumes clear their mind so they could pay full attention to the sermon that they were about to hear.  You could however, if you wished to truly open your mind to the goddess, drink the elixir.  Eliane had done it before, once when she’d asked to be considered for dedication as Skilled and then again at the actual dedication.  She’d found it an interesting experience that had left her senses more receptive and her mind better at processing new information for half a day, but she hadn’t thought it had brought her closer to the goddess….

Rhenasanamofa stepped into her fully awake mind.

“I’ll need you to let me run your body for a little while,” said the deity calmly.  “I didn’t mention this part of the plan to you earlier so you wouldn’t get anticipation anxiety about it.  Don’t worry, by all that may bind me, I swear that no harm will come to you from this.  If necessary,” she added calmly, “I will provide stout and timely physical intervention on your behalf.”

Eliane felt herself moved aside out of the goddess’ way.  “What are you doing, ma’am?”  She could still see and hear what was going on in the temple, but she knew that she was no longer in control of her limbs or her voice.

“Manifesting myself in you, not that anyone else has noticed yet.”  The deity added conversationally, “Theologically speaking, that means you are currently my avatar.  If any of my theologically learned devotees ever start being difficult, you should remind them of that, and that this is the first time I’ve done this in about five of your generations.  What I’m doing with you is a big deal and none of you should forget it.”  She stopped to listen.  “Learned Skilled Ordained Lammarac is giving a very sound sermon – I believe we can let him finish before we call attention to ourselves.”

“Ma’am, while we’re waiting may I ask a question?”  Eliane had noticed a change in what she was seeing.

“Certainly you may ask,” the goddess answered kindly.  “If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you and that will be that.  You’ve given me access to everything of you, so you should at least get to ask questions.”

“Alright then, why does everyone look so…blurry now?  With different hair colours all at once, and somehow with scales and fangs as well as skin, and,” she trailed off.  “I’m not explaining it well, am I?”

“What’s happening,” answered Rhenasanamofa, “is that you are picking up some of how I normally see living things, and you don’t have the experience or the information processing ability to interpret it and understand it.  The other side of the coin is that I’m finding my usual perceptions of the living world somewhat restricted because you don’t have the senses to receive the information about it that I do.  That fuzziness you’re seeing is the surface physical manifestations of each individual body’s possibilities if there were some tweaks in the way processes you can’t perceive work.”

Eliane pointed out, “Some of those possibilities don’t look human.”

“A lot of what your kind are and perceive themselves to be is because of a few internal processes being turned on or off,” replied the goddess.  “It’s more complicated than that, but your people need to do some more concept development so that you have the language for me to explain it better.  Change those process settings inside a human body and you could wind up with someone who looks like a different person, a different type of being, or whose body doesn’t work at all so they’re dead.”

“Is this related to the way different bits of the brain control different body functions?”  Eliane knew a very little bit about the subject, and most of that knowledge was that there were big discussions about how you could investigate the subject without slipping into monstrous behaviour.

“Partly,” replied the goddess, “but a lot of it is in systems that underlie gross body functions like that.”

“Wait, systems that underlie brain function…?”  That was new concept to Eliane.

“And liver function, kidney function, and the way your gut works.  Some of them are in the things that make cheese or inhabit your muck piles, but those are much tinier creatures than you.  So small that you can’t see them.  Ah, Lammarac is finishing.”  The goddess added brightly, “Let’s do this.”

They stood when everyone else stood for the blessing and then followed everyone in the row when they made their way into the aisle to walk towards the doors and the rest of the day’s business outside.  Great Uncle Banning and Eliane’s cousins had already moved towards the main doors with the press of the congregation behind them.  The goddess brought Eliane to a stop at the end of the aisle and had her wait.  When everyone else had moved on, the presiding clergy progressed down the aisles towards the doors, splitting into a group for each aisle to do so.

As it happened, and Eliane suspected that it wasn’t accidental, Lammarac was the principal Ordained on her aisle.  As he drew level with her, and Eliane had received some questioning looks from his attendants, the goddess said loudly, “Nice sermon, Lammarac.  Been working on your delivery?”  To Elaine it didn’t sound like her own voice, more like a chorus.  The priest turned to look at Eliane, his face went white, he dropped to his knees and then he prostrated himself on the floor in front of her.

Eliane heard him gasp out, “Divinity!”

Beside Eliane in her head the divine spark said enthusiastically, “Isn’t this fun?  Actually, he doesn’t look half bad from this angle – good muscle development…”

His attendants looked at him, looked at her, one of them swore, and they all copied Lammarac’s position on the floor.

Eliane commented to the goddess, “That looks rather uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”

“I am trying to get their attention,” returned Rhenasanamofa.  “Ah, here come the others.”

The rest of the presiding clergy arrived to see what their colleagues were doing, looked at Eliane, and also assumed the prone position on the floor.

“Now that we’ve established that you acknowledge my presence here today within this young woman,” said the goddess, “you may stand and look upon my avatar, the chosen bearer of my divine spark in this generation and thus my vessel in the prophecy.”

The clergymen and women climbed to their feet.  Eliane noticed that about half of them kept their eyes downcast.  Lammarac and the priest who’d sworn weren’t among them.

The goddess said, “Excuse me, who didn’t understand the instruction to look at this person?  She is fully clothed and neither of us has any intention of disrobing.  Your job is to confirm with your own senses that I am here and to be able to recognise her later when I have left her person.”  The downcast eyes were carefully raised.  “There,” Eliane could feel her face smiling as the goddess spoke, “none of you have been struck blind, now have you?”

“Divine lady,” that was one of the other senior Ordained, a woman with steel grey hair, “aside from being able to recognise the person of your avatar, what do you want us to do?

“Help her do what I need her to do.  The prophecy embodied in the Chambourian Verses is moving, at long last, and my divine spark needs to be in place to play its parts.  For now, it is my intention that the bearer of my spark will be based here.  You will facilitate this.  I desire that the bearer learns to read, write and speak Navreen in preparation for something else I want her to do.  She has certain other tasks that you need not concern yourselves with, unless she chooses to involve you, but you might ask her about her skills and interests before assigning her chores.”  The goddess seemed to be looking significantly at people as she finished speaking.

“Chores?”  That was strangled sounding male voice belonging to someone who hadn’t wanted to look at Eliane.

“Of course chores,” replied the goddess.  “She is used to physical activity and she has skills that the goose barns, for example, could use.  Almost immediately in fact.  After lunch will be too late.”  Eliane noticed some alarmed looks being passed between a few of the attendant clergy.

The divine spark commented, “Oh, so it’s an on-going problem, is it?  And some of you have been hoping it’ll get better without you doing anything?”

Eliane considered her skills and the goddess’s words.  “Their muck pile is about to catch fire, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.  Please save my geese, I’m very fond of them and I’ve put almost as much work into them as I have into you.”  The goddess smiled at her and then said to everyone, “Now that you all know what you’re supposed to be doing, I’ll go and leave you alone together.  Please keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that if I decide my spark’s bearer isn’t safe among you, I will have her removed to a place of safety.  And I’m the one who decides if her safety is threatened.  I’m sure that I’ll be dropping in from time to time, just to check up on you all, you understand.”

Then the goddess was gone.

Eliane looked at the very senior clergy looking at her, took a deep breath, smiled and said in her own voice, “Well, that was an experience, wasn’t it?  Perhaps we should do something about that manure pile fire before it starts?”

The thing that Eliane hadn’t expected was the overhaul of her wardrobe that happened later that afternoon.  “I know you’ve had those boots long enough to get them well broken in,” said her grandmother critically, “but are they going to be enough to get you to Prothiarn and back?  And where’s your best outfit?  You’ll need it for attending services while you’re there.”

Eliane asked, “Does it really matter?”

Her aunt closed the door and leaned back against it, then looked at her mother, Eliane’s grandmother.

Eliane’s grandmother took a deep breath and began with, “You know how we like to marry inside the family and we keep the Blood Books to make sure we don’t marry too closely?”  Eliane nodded.  “Well, as each of you get old enough, we go through our Book and work out who your possible matches are.”  Her grandmother took a deep breadth and went on, “You’re too closely related to everyone for marrying any of the available men to be a good idea.  Being married can be a wonderful thing, with the right person, and not being doomed to only have dead babies helps.  This trip to Prothiarn is your best chance to meet someone suitable that you like.  Clothes help make good impressions.”

Eliane looked at her aunt, who nodded in confirmation.  “So, I’m going to Prothiarn to deliver some cows and find a husband?”

“From a certain point of view,” agreed her aunt with a nod of her head and a twinkle of amusement in her eye.  “This is just us making sure that you have all the tools you might need for both jobs.”

Later that night, Eliane moved from a dreamless sleep into something that wasn’t really wakefulness.  The sky above her was clear and the light had all the qualities of midday in early autumn, even though the sun wasn’t visible in that clear sky.  The air temperature held the warmth of early autumn too, and somewhere close there were enough bees that Eliane could hear them buzzing.  In front of her, on her left hand, was a planting of an unfamiliar crop; ranks of tall segmented stems as thick as her forearm, each row separated from the others by a space wide enough for a person to walk down, each stem segment joint having both a panicle heavy with purple grain hanging from it and two broad green leaves thrusting up and out.  On her right, splendidly rainbow-coloured geese browsed through a short pasture heavy with unfamiliar flowers and seed pods.  In the centre of the scene, seated on a stool made of moving things that might have been vines was…the goddess.

Elaine prostrated herself on the mixture of pasture grasses and other plants, narrowly missing a blackthorn thistle with her face.  The broad-faced, brown-eyed deity continued talking to the red heifer she was stroking for a few moments more, then said in voice that echoed in Eliane’s mind, “Please get up, my dear.  I know you don’t remember our previous conversations, but in the future, please don’t do that every time you come here.”

Eliane stood and asked, “Our previous conversations, ma’am?”

The generous mouth on the wise, beautiful, inhumanely-proportioned face smiled.  “Yes, we’ve spoken a number of times.  Usually here,” Rhenasanamofa gestured to indicate their surroundings with the hand that wasn’t being used to rub the black-horned heifer behind the ears.  “It is the one of my workspaces that you are most comfortable in.  But not remembering our conversations?  That’s part of what I did to your mind’s perceptions so that you didn’t know that you are carrying my spark.”

“Why did you do that, ma’am?”  Eliane had always wondered why the identity of the spark-bearer was a secret.

The goddess sighed.  “I’m afraid that several of your predecessors weren’t very nice people.  I picked Iorcan to take up the mantle after those righteous mabheads massacred the dwimmerweavers, including the then spark bearers, because he was the only surviving descendent of my previous last spark bearer.  Although he was definitely born with magic, he wasn’t detected by the zealots’ magic hunters, and he never exhibited any magical ability afterwards.  I don’t know how he did it, but I suspect that he tied it up in something big.  His children didn’t have any magic either but,” the goddess glowed with enthusiasm, well Eliane hope it was enthusiasm, “but some of your family do show signs….  I suspect it’s to do with the cousin marrying cousin thing that you’ve got going on, something that did not come from me.  Your aunt, for instance, really can talk to developing cheese which is even more remarkable when you consider what she’s doing to achieve that.  Blood line breeding is so interesting!”

Feeling that the goddess may have gotten off the topic she’d been meaning to talk about, Eliane asked respectfully, “Is that why you hid your spark from us, ma’am?”

“Sorry, I’m afraid it is easy for me to drift off into subjects that are related to my bee-alda, my existential essence.”  Rhenasanamofa smiled and went on, “Iorcan’s idiosyncrasies were probably due to having most of his close friends and family murdered, but his daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter had no excuses for the way they treated other people.  My long-term fix was to breed for better temperament, as well as health, intelligence, and reproductive viability, but I needed a short-term fix too.  So, I made it so no-one knew who the spark bearer was, especially not the spark bearer themselves.  That took away the alleged root of the problem.”  She shook her head.  “There may have been a better way, but the substance and function of life are my sphere, not social engineering or outright mental manipulation that’s not aimed at reproductive behaviours.”

“And now ma’am?”  Eliane thought she knew what the answer was.

“After things went so badly wrong the first time, most of us got together and petitioned Hlactea, the patron of predictions and oracles, for guidance.  She was,” added Rhenasanamofa, “peeved that we asked for something that she couldn’t calculate with measurements and mathematics.  I recall that she told us that we deserved whatever it was that we were going to get.  What we got was a money lender’s clerk who only spoke and wrote Navreen writing out a hundred and one five-line verses of not very good poetry that gave us events, milestones and an order to it all.”  The goddess pouted.  “Hlactea and the Silence Under the Hills both seemed amused.  Anyway, my spark doesn’t get bred into the, the divine conceptus that we’re making for many human generations yet but there is a verse much earlier than that about my spark and Sluan’s spark doing something in the place where my spark will be living.  I’m not sure what it’s all about, but it must be important, or it wouldn’t be in the prophesy.”

“So, you need me to go to Prothiarn so one of my spark-bearing descendants can meet the bearer of the spark of Sluan,” finished Eliane.  “About that descendant thing, you know I’ve never been much interested in boys and stuff, don’t you?”

“Given how closely you’re related to all the possible men around your home, I count that as a good thing,” replied the goddess.  “I must say, I was impressed by your grandmother and aunt.  I thought they were going to tell you not to be swept off your feet by some strange young man, and to make sure you got back home unimpregnated.  Instead they practically told you to go looking for a good stud.”

Eliane flushed and protested, “That’s not what they said.”

“They might as well have,” retorted Rhenasanamofa, “and I am.  We’re after a good constitution with lots of disease resistance, intelligence, a good disposition, and a family background of nice, broad birth canals.”

“So, no-one with a big head,” snapped Eliane tartly.  Then she realised something, “Wait, I’m part of an actual breeding plan?  That’s…actually way more appealing than ‘just go out and find a suitable man’ is.  Do you have any physical conformation standards?  Desirable patterning and colouration?”

The goddess chortled.  “That’s my girl!”

Eliane woke in the morning with a clear recollection of the conversation in the night.  The trip to Prothiarn wouldn’t begin for a few days yet, so her normal chores were still to be done, but the appeal of finding a suitable husband was beginning to grow on her.  She had truly never been interested in any of the boys and young men she knew, all cousins in some degree, in any way that might result in children.  With lists of necessary and desirable attributes to check off, the whole concept seemed far more interesting and achievable.  She also recalled that parts of her wardrobe were going to be updated before she left…

She was up and getting dressed when her aunt tapped on her door.  “Don’t get fully dressed,” she said through the door when Eliane acknowledged her.  “We need to measure you up before you start work.  That way we can check the fit of your new shirts and chemise before you start shovelling out the cowshed, and we should be ready to start on the kirtle after lunch.”

Eliane opened the door at that and asked, “When was it decided I’m getting a new kirtle?  I barely worn the one I’ve got!”

Her aunt smiled.  “Oh good, you’re already decent.  You can come downstairs with me now.  Your grandmother decided in the night that you haven’t been wearing the kirtle you have because it wasn’t a flattering colour on you.  Not nearly as flattering as your best vest and jacket.”

“Well, it was picked out so that not all of us were wearing the same thing,” pointed Eliane.  “And I was the one who agreed to use the last of that particular bolt.  I’ll admit that I didn’t expect to get much chance to wear it at the time.”

“I know,” her aunt acknowledged as she began to usher the younger woman to the stairs, “and then we found that flaw in the cloth that we had to work around, and I was never happy with the way it sat on you.  It always looks slightly uncomfortable when you wear it.”

“Does it?”  Eliane admitted, “I just thought that because I didn’t like the way it felt it meant that I don’t like wearing kirtles.”

“That’s possible,” conceded her aunt, “but let’s make sure that this one does what it’s supposed to do so that you have a proper base for coming to a conclusion.”

The rest of Eliane’s day was normal, except for clothes fittings.  Elaine wasn’t a skilled seamstress, so she did what she was told while people who knew what they were doing did things with pieces cut from old sheets to get the fit right before they cut the dress cloth.  Cousin Liveen, who wore her hair in a bun and had a small purplish birthmark on her cheekbone under the outer corner of her right eye asked peevishly at one point, “But why didn’t you say that your old kirtle didn’t fit properly?”

“I thought it was because I didn’t like wearing kirtles,” admitted Eliane again, “and you all worked so hard on it, I didn’t want to be ungrateful.  Besides, you had so much to do at the time, I didn’t want to make things worse.”

“Goddess preserve us.”  Cousin Liveen covered her face with her hands.  “None of that means you had to put up with it for two years!  If you’d said something, there are things we could have done.  No-one in this family has to wear their work clothes all the time.”  Then she’d gone back to pinning worn-thin linen into place to get the fit right under Eliane’s arms.

It took three days to get the cows and heifers that were being moved together from all the subherds and for their human escort to assemble.  Great Uncle Banning was coming too, riding on the ox-drawn wagon that would carry everyone’s bags and the food supply.  The trip to Prothiarn, moving at the cattle’s pace, would take fifteen days, including a rest day.  The selection of cows and heifers included both light and dark phase animals, so the herd was a mixture of fawn and caramel coloured bodies all topped by heads carrying arm-long, inward curving black horns.  The ox was a light phase bullock, so his pale grey hide stood out from the others, but his horns were just as long and black.

There were more humans in the group than the task ought to need.  Learned Brother Ruudmund needed to go back to Prothiarn, of course.  Each of the family farms that had raised the animals being moved had sent along two people, so that was eight, plus Second Cousin Herome who was driving the cart because he didn’t trust anyone else with his ox, Smoke.  Smoke was coming because Grandfather’s First Cousin Elver had volunteered him and their farm’s cart to make sure they could carry everything they all needed to take with them, particularly as his granddaughter, Third Cousin Helire, seemed to have three times the luggage of everyone else.

Helire was much of an age with Eliane and wore her hair the same length, and within the space of two days everyone realised that Learned Brother Ruudmund couldn’t tell them apart.  “But you all have the same face,” he complained when Herome made a joke about it while they were eating dinner.  “There’s the male version and the female version, but it’s all the same face.  I mean, some of you have moles or birthmarks, and there are different haircuts or beards for the men, but after that, if you’re in similar clothes, I can’t tell you apart.”

Helire indicated Eliane and protested, “But we’ve got different coloured eyes!”

“They’re both dark colours,” pointed Learned Brother Ruudmund, “and there are social issues about me getting close enough to tell the difference.”

Eliane realised, “So that was why you didn’t use names much when you were staying with us – you couldn’t pick who was who.”

“Um, yes,” admitted Ruddmund.  “I realise that makes me a bad guest, but I really couldn’t.”

“When I first started travelling with the Learned Skilled Ordained Philyana,” reminisced Great Uncle Banning from his place from the other side of the fire, “I had trouble telling who was who because everyone looked different and the variation was overwhelming.”  He paused and then added, “Then I met people from down near the mouth of the river and different skin tones became a thing….”

Helire started wearing a fresh field flower behind her ear every day while Eliane knotted a bandana around her neck, and Ruudmund seemed less confused.

The divine spark was amused.  “Perhaps you want one with better pattern recognition that that?” it sniggered in the back of Eliane’s mind one morning when Ruudmund was temporarily confused before breakfast.  “Mind you, Learned Brother Ruudmund does seem to come with a slightly better than usual overall standard mental package.  Perhaps this whole breeding out thing should have happened a generation or so ago?”

Eliane didn’t know what to say to that so she didn’t say anything.

This is now followed by Part 3.

It began with the Deep Altar and priestesses.  The Deep Altar because it sat galleries down in a cave complex, occupying a cavern that was an analogue of the Devourer of All’s own Eternal Cavern.  Priestesses because men who made the journey to the Deep Altar did not return, The Silence Under The Hills being a demanding mistress who kept her lovers closer than life allowed.

After the destruction of the dwimmerweavers and their kin, including the bearers of the divine sparks, by those who thought dwimmerweavers were stealing power from the gods, the great project had to be begun all over again.  This iteration the Mistress of Time chose to place her divine spark in the senior priestess serving the Deep Altar and pass it through that worthy’s female line.  The wait began for the season to be ripe for the divine sparks to begin to breed and meld again.

The divine spark had the ability, when the bearer’s own higher brain functions had been suppressed by a dangerously poisonous cocktail of herbs, to allow the consciousness of the goddess to control the bearer’s body and thus to prophesise.  When that became known the surrounding petty kings and great lords came offering riches in exchange for answers to their questions.  Answers were given sparingly at first but the riches erected an altar on the surface and then a temple to house it.  Riches and prominence brought more varied candidates for clerical service at the temple and men were permitted to join the clergy.

At first the seer was always an old woman, childbearing done for years when she received the divine spark, and used to bearing the titles of age and experience.  Thus the first seers did not feel the sting of not being called by name.  Then came the year when two seers died and the position fell to a young woman of child bearing age.  It was expected that the Sun Emperor would come to claim his bride then but the man who would have been the Sun Emperor got himself killed in a bandit skirmish.  The tincture for foreseeing was an abortifacient and it was decided that rather than give up the income from prophesy, the seer’s sister rather than the seer would bear the next generation.  At the same time, the hierarchy that had developed around the temple would not bend to a young high priestess and so the seer no longer automatically became high priestess.

With the seer no longer in charge of the temple, the incumbents came under pressure to provide more foreseeings to the temple’s profit.  That required ingestion of greater amounts of the tincture and that lead to the later seers experiencing a reduced lifespan.

By the time the Sun Emperor did come for his bride, he was performing a rescue.

I have written this to aldersprig's second prompt.  It is set seven years after Tales Behind the Verses: Between Eighteen and Nineteen.

“Mummy.”  A tug at her dress along with her daughter’s voice brought the seer awake.  Now near the end of her fourth pregnancy she had enough experience to gracefully admit that advanced gravidity made her very sleepy in the afternoon just after lunch.  Jonness, her son, was in class learning history through stories along with his carefully selected classmates.  Carida, her youngest for another month or so, was having her own nap in her room.  This child was Endory, her eldest daughter, both the apple of her father’s eye and already the subject of his political matchmaking.

“Yes, Endory?”  The seer smiled at the fair haired child looking up at her.

“Mummy,” Endory was waiting as patiently as she could, hopping from one foot to another.  She was always in motion.  “I can make the leaves move.”

“Oh?”  That didn’t seem a reason to wake her but the seer had three years’ experience in listening to Endory and waited.

“I can move them without touching them.”  That was the Endory-style burst of information she had been waiting for and it was interesting...

“Then I had better come so you can show me, hadn’t I?”  The seer stood up from her garden lounge and offered her hand.  “Take me and show me?”

Endory grabbed the proffered hand and towed her mother across the lawn to a pile of leaves left behind by the gardeners.  “I have to look at them first and think about what I want them do,”

“Go ahead then and do it”, urged the seer.  “I’ll watch.”

Endory let go of her mother’s hand and crouched down beside the pile, looking at it intently.  Looking at the small figure, still for the moment but still busy playing, the seer was glad she’d resisted those who’d wanted to swathe her and her children in clothing too valuable to get dirty.

Suddenly, a handful of leaves from the top of the mound of fallen leaves spiraled up into the air above the pile, soaring like birds in a thermal.  Endory stood with them, “See Mummy?  See what I can do?”

“Yes dear.”  The seer hugged her.  “You’re a clever girl,” added the divine spark within the seer, “I didn’t expect anything like this so soon.”.

This is in response to lilfluff's first prompt.

“Master Dionis,” the soldier who had approached the pudgy, blond priest had the sun god Jokkiel’s flaming skull on his breast plate as a badge, “the Sun Emperor requires your presence.”

“Of course,” Dionis turned away from the small, low tent that contained the bedroll he wasn’t used to yet, “I’ll come at once.”  A priest of the Lady of Time without a position or a sheltering temple couldn’t afford to be slow when the man prophecy said was going to be master of the known world sent for him.

He knew where the Imperial tent was, of course, but he let the soldier lead the way.  The Sun Emperor, Jonan, had married the seer from the now collapsed temple, where Dionis had also worked and lived, yesterday morning.  Dionis didn’t want to arrive in their canvas walled nuptial bower before he was expected and unannounced.

A worrying thought occurred to him.  Perhaps the seer had complained about him?  He had been an instrument of the bullying campaign her mother and the high priest had used to keep her under their thumb.  Despite that, he’d thought they’d had a fraternal relationship – ordered to work together but understanding more about the work than the people who’d had power over them.

When he was ushered into the large tent he found himself in a small, partitioned-off section in the front of it that contained a round table with a map on it, five chairs, the Sun Emperor, a priest in Jokkiel’s robes, the thin faced and unhappy-looking man would been at yesterday morning’s trance ceremony and a hard muscled soldier of about nineteen.

“Gentlemen,” Jonan took a draw on the cigar that would have been a damnable habit except it kept the divine spark of Jokkiel within him suppressed, “Callev here will explain the details but I have a little job for the three of you.  Someone is stealing my citizens.”  He took another draw on the aromatic cigar.  “I want it stopped.”

The former high priest went discontentedly to bed in his tent.  It was his second night of not being high priest and he felt he had a lot to be discontented about.

The temple no longer existed – it had collapsed the moment the seer bearing a divine spark of the goddess within her had left the grounds.  She was now married to the Sun Emperor and her Imperial coronation was being planned.  With the seer gone, the temple’s main function was gone too and it was going to be rebuilt not the way it was but to guard and mark the way to the Deep Altar.  As no man had ever returned from the Deep Altar, a gathering of the goddess’ senior clergy had replaced him with the temple’s former Mistress of Works.  His old ally, the Mistress of Duties and the seer’s mother, had been sidelined as well but she was going to organise her other daughter’s wedding to the heir of the Duke of Ondo so he suspected she’d find herself nicely settled somewhere.  Most of the rest of the male clergy were moving to the capital to found an abbey under the Master of Studies and the Master Librarian who had both been invited to instruct at this university-thing the Sun Emperor was founding.  Some of the female clergy, like the Mistress of Infants and Oblates and most of the librarians, were going too.  He had been pointedly not asked.  The heads of the goddess’ other major temples had suggested that he might take up a travelling auditorial role but it was all very vague...

He dreamt.

He was in a night bound garden lit by starlight and fragrant with pale blooms.  Espaliered plants and staked flower spikes stood dark against the brick walls.  Formal beds in sculpted, graduated heights surrounded a central circle of grass that showed a studding of flowers, even by starlight.  The centre, the focal point of garden, the pride of place was occupied by a statue.  The former high priest could not have said what it was made of, particularly in this light, but its subject was portrayed on a greater than human scale, a creature of grace, womanly attributes and female beauty.  He was also not alone.

She moved through the garden, deliberately brushing the beds of plants to release the scents of leaf and blossom as she came.  Once he became aware of her he could only watch her come towards him, unable to move or speak.

As she reached him, her face cloaked in shadow, her voice resonated through the garden, “There you are, you foolish man.”  The glorious voice sounded almost fond, he thought.  “I’ve never had the opportunity to tell you how much I like this place, have I?”

He gazed, awed and gobsmacked, at the weapon suspended from a belt around her waist.  “No, divine mistress,” he sank to his knees and did not prostrate himself only because she had not left him room to do so without turning aside from her, “but I do not know where we are.”

“Oh, do get up,” she said with a touch of asperity, “if I wanted you to grovel, you’d know it.  I suppose you don’t normally see this place this way.”  She gestured grandly as he stood.  “This is the portion of your mind devoted to me and my service.  I must admit that I’ve always found your image of me very flattering.  I do hope,” she looked at him almost coyly, “that this meeting doesn’t prove too disillusioning.”

“Uh, divine lady, there’s nothing I can say to that statement that won’t sound all wrong.”  He paused and considered his conversational options.  “Should I have noticed you here before now?”

“I don’t think so,” she sounded amused, “I took care to wander through while you were concentrating on something else.  I think it’s good to know what those sworn to my service have running around in their heads.”

“Am I in trouble for the business with the seer?”  She was already here and it was now a real fear.

“I’m not making you grovel, am I?”  She still sounded amused.  “I would have preferred it if you’d treated her less like an inconvenient tool, but you did what I needed you to do.  She’s a dear girl who loves her family and her home.  If she’d been entirely happy where she was, it’s possible that not even true love could have gotten her to move and I couldn’t guarantee true love.  I will admit,” a touch of pensiveness entered her voice, “that I didn’t realise how isolated never being addressed by name can make a human feel.  It didn’t matter so much when they came to the task later in life and they were being called ‘Mother’, ‘Grandmother’ or ‘High Priestess’ anyway, but it has been a real issue the last few generations.  Particularly as your hierarchy was pushing physical isolation as well.  I must say,” her tone shifted again, to amused and intrigued this time, “Jonan does seem to have a way with breaking down that isolation.  Perhaps I should recultivate my acquaintance with Jokkiel...”  She finished with a gurgle of laughter.

The former high priest thought to himself that her mouth seemed wider under the shadows than he would have expected.  Then he wondered whether, in the current circumstances, he had any thoughts to himself.

“But, to business.”  She was suddenly all practicality.  “You, Ciri,” of course she knew the familial form of his given name, “are now a free agent and at something of a loose end.  Though I must say, you do seem to like filling the rest of your mind up with worries – can’t stand the unfurnished feel perhaps?”  She smiled that impossibly wide smile again.  “I have a little job for you.  The seer and the Chambourian Verses are important, but they’re not the only iron I have in the fire.  There’s an item I have tucked away in storage that I believe is ripe to come back into play.  I want you to retrieve it for me.”

“Divine lady?”  He was flabbergasted.  Whatever he thought of himself, he had never considered himself quest material.  Quests handed out by gods only happened in legends and surely not to middle-aged administrators and politicians.

“Ciri, trust me on this.  You’re not just in one legend at the moment, you’re in at least two.”  There seemed to be a lot of teeth in that open smile.  “I’m the goddess of time, I know what I’m talking about.”  Her mouth closed again.  “I could tell you exactly how to get there but you wouldn’t be able to follow the directions because you can’t do the things I can do.”  She took his hand, put something in it, and then wrapped his fingers around it.  “So you’ll have to do it the hard way.  Start by going north along the Broken Way until you find the symbol pressed into the gold disc.  The next step will come to you, I’m sure.”  She released his hand and stepped away.  “It will do no harm if everyone from the temples or with the Sun Emperor thinks you’ve left in a snit.  That would actually make it easier for certain useful things to happen.  Oh, and you might want to get rid of some of that unnecessary worry-clutter, it’s not really helping you, is it?”  She stepped back again and was gone.

He woke.  A particularly annoying member of a particularly annoying species of migratory cuckoo was making its piercing mating call from the peak of his tent.  It was light outside, but not by very much and the sounds he could hear nearest him were people threatening a certain bird.

It had been a strange dream born, he was sure, of wishful thinking.  Then his right hand, the one the goddess had held in his dream, touched a metal disc in his bedroll.  He pulled it out into the light.  It wasn’t a coin but it was gold.  On one side, pressed into the metal was a trident-like symbol with the tines and shaft touching the rim of the disc.  He turned the disc over and found the symbol was on both sides.

It seemed he was going on a journey.