The Big Meow

Whether what followed took a moment or forever, Rhiow couldn’t tell; she was flung down writhing, her bones burning with the entry into her body and soul of something as dark as the moment before the First Light and only a little less than an eternity old. The agelessness of the divine Rhiow had experienced before — but Queen Iau had some regard for the People she had made. What vastly burst into Rhiow now was the Queen’s ancient rival, the breeder of all envies and resentments, not overly concerned about the welfare of anything merely mortal except as its being gave Her a chance to drive a claw into Her Mother.

Yet sa’Rraah did not dare damage Rhiow at the moment, for fear she should fail in the work now before them.Slowly Rhiow pushed herself up again as the Lone Power slid into congruence with her. With terror she felt, first the dark and cold drawing around and clothing her, and then an awful restless fire — all angers and frustrations concentrated together at the heart of the darkness, like the core of blasting pressure at the heart of some collapsed star: heat indescribable, an unbreakable inwardness, a fury at the world that almost since the beginning of things had refused to go her way.

Power, though, that She unquestionably had as well: and unafraid Rhiow drew on that, knowing that to survive what was coming, she would need everything the Lone One had to offer her. She thought of the possibility of a shield to hold away the pain, and instantly the pain vanished, even in the face of this awful onslaught.

Very well, Rhiow thought, looking up into that darkness that had been so painful to the sight. Now the discomfort at least was gone, set aside by something in its way far worse, that core of jealous rage inside her that burned like an ancient furnace. It had burned so since Aaurh the Mighty cast sa’Rraah out of the Pridelands and away from the Hearth, and it was the proximate cause of all the miseries the Lone One had inflicted on life from then until now. How dare She slight My primacy, sa’Rraah’s heart roared so as to be heard by all Creation: how dare She give you what She will not allow Me! You will suffer for that: suffer for it forever!

Rhiow was conscious of the blatant one-sidedness of the anger, and she held desperately to that consciousness: the last thing she could afford right now was to be swept away into sa’Rraah’s undiluted point of view. But there was nothing in the universe like that anger, and it was something she would use.

That you would use — ! said something from inside her, and strove to crush her down into resistlessness. I am the immortal here, I say how we shall deal with this —

Lone One, Rhiow said, pushing back, shut up or I’ll shred your ears! We have work to do. Mortality you needed? Well, now you’ve got it. So get busy manifesting yourself! They’re buying us the time we and the world need. Don’t waste it on playing hauissh-in-the-head with me: do whatever you have to do!

In a moment –

Rhiow glanced at the Observatory. Over that way the Father of the Saurians stood towering up over the building, even in the face of the Outside One radiating the essence of a settled power that was binding all things together as they were, running up straight up into space and far down into the Earth and into neighboring dimensions. As Rhiow watched, Ith threw down the blinding wizardly construct he was holding in his claws, and Earth and air together kindled from it in a single blaze. That settled to reveal a glowing and intricate network of bindings, involving everything from the subatomic to the macrospatial levels, a network of unbreakable intention that sank into the fabric of things, reinforcing it. But enough?

There was no telling, and from the look of things, Ith wasn’t too sure either. For a breath later right around the huge base of the Observatory a massive, shining serpent-shape was curving, the gold of its burning paling down to white now, the eyes glowing dark and determined against the fire. And off to the westward, toward the sea, light began to glow in the darkness —

In the spite of the Outside One, as if the horror was happening in some other world, the horizon began to glow, and the landscape to change. The sea dried up and vanished away at the edges of things, and the coastline stopped being the coast and became just another set of ridges in a vast plain flooded by light, as out past Pacific Coast Highway were now revealed the endless vistas of the True West. The light from the eternal sunshine of the Old Downside now flooded across the Hollywood Hills and washed up against them like a hot dry ocean, threatening the alien darkness that was flooding in from the sky.