The Big Meow

The realization made Rhiow lick her nose again, several times. “Well enough,” she said. “But why should you come to me with such a proposal. We have quite a lot of history together – “

History is the very point, sa’Rraah said. You have borne the Queen Herself inside you, in the flesh and in Her strength, for however brief a time — and lived to tell the tale. Such a passage, the cosmic irony of the merely mortal kitling bearing her Queen and Mother inside her, will have strengthened you in ways you wouldn’t understand – but gods would. And whether it’s by chance or some cursed plan of Hers, no one else would have the strength to bear Me in the same wise. And once again the absolute insufferable pride rang true, and nearly made Rhiow laugh.

“And what gift are you offering me if I fall in with your plans and actually do this insane thing?” Rhiow said. “Normally there’d be an temptation suitable to the size of the work.”

None, said the Lone One. Except that the worlds, and the Queen, will survive, and the normal state of play can be resumed after this interloper has been seen off.

Now Rhiow did laugh, and though she felt the Lone Power bristle at the sound, she couldn’t bring herself to care. “Fairest and Fallen, this still sounds entirely like a plot to make sure that the darkness does fall, by housing Yourself in me and then rendering me unable to lead my team against you and the greater darkness. Indeed, maybe that’s why you whispered Laurel’s name to me earlier – as part of the wider plot, to make me trust you when you broached this mad idea to me. Allow us a small victory – but knowing that was all it would be, the way one of us would lift a paw to let the mouse run and think it’s free before the final blow. A fine fool the Queen would think me if I fell for such a ploy after everything we’ve been through with you in the past…!”

Pulling sa’Rraah’s whiskers in such a way was reckless business, and Rhiow waited for the scorned fury and the lightnings to break loose, revealing the true intention underneath. But it didn’t happen. There was merely a long pause, and then the darkness said, with an outwardly affronted air, Whether you’re a fool or no, that’s between you and the Queen. But I tell you that She Herself has no better plan. Ask, and see.

And everything went quiet as that unseen presence withdrew.

Rhiow sat there in the dark of dream for some time, waiting for an afterword, some rebuttal from other levels of reality. But nothing came. At last she said to the Whisperer, Well, your sister’s voluble today. And you have nothing to say on this subject? No advice?

The silence was deafening. Rhiow couldn’t recall having heard anything like it before. It was not the waiting quiet the Whisperer allowed you to hear when She expected you to figure something out for yourself. It was straightforward uncertainty. Whatever words the Lone One might have for Rhiow in this pass, the Queen had none. And as for sa’Rraah, there had been more than mere indignation behind her riposte. The Lone Power was afraid, and – again, absolutely in character for her – unwilling to show it: for among a People for whom pride was normally no sin, sa’Rraah carried enough of it around inside Her skin for an entire species. Not even now, not even with worlds at stake, would She admit either Her own impotence or Her fear of what was to come.

So, Rhiow thought. So it’s true.

And after this sank in, Rhiow laid her ears right back at the unfairness of it all. So once more I’m expected to carry a whole world out of trouble by the scruff, she said to both the Queen and the Lone One. More than just a world! – or so it seems, if I’m not actually being tricked into the worlds’ destruction.

The unbroken silence did not help her composure. She was fuming. If we survive this, she shouted into the Void, I want a sabbatical! Do you hear me??

Silence still; but Rhiow thought she was heard.

She curled up and lay down again. “Now if I can just get some sleep out of this sleep,” she said to the darkness, “I’ll see what can be done…”

Nerves woke her up early, as she’d half expected. It was early afternoon, and outside the sun was shining on the palm trees and the bougainvillea flowers as if the world wasn’t about to end.

Stop thinking like that… she thought. She got up, stretched fore and aft, and sat on the window for a moment, watching a hummingbird visit the flowers one after another with methodical and singleminded thoroughness.

Her mind went back to the last things under discussion before she’d slept. Urruah and his solutions…. Yet she hadn’t thought that his solution to moving the Penn gate would work, either: and it had. That seemed ‘so tommish’, too… Now she had even more evidence that Urruah was on the right track: sa’Rraah’s somewhat grudging description of the plan as “satisfactory.”

Assuming that I too am not being played…