The depths of night—Howl, the farthest from day, though rarely the darkest—found me on the roof of Ketka’s quint-house, leaning on the parapet. Overheated as I had been, I’d still grabbed what had looked like a wool bathrobe off of a hook in Ketka’s room to wrap around myself, and when it turned out to be more of a cardigan than a robe I’d counted that as a bonus.

A gust of wind rippled the hemline—on me, any Ketka-scale top was a dress, if a scant one—and tugged at the tangles in my hair, threatening goosebumps from my bare, sweat-damp thighs down to my toes. The gentle breeze that followed in its wake caressed me like a lover, turning what she’d called artistic undress into a provocative feeling of vulnerability.

I smiled wide at that thought, and at the syllables of the word provocative, which now seemed to rob the word itself of all meaning. It was a ridiculous thing to be thinking about, but my mind was wandering—of course my mind was wandering—because everything had gone right with the evening.

Ketka had been attentive and demanding and right in the zone where her desires were just right, fitting almost seamlessly where they matched up against mine. Not perfect, but so very close—and the imperfections were a reminder, anyway, that it was genuine rather than artifice.

Glorious.

I stretched, feeling the soreness and still half-expecting the stiffness and aches that I hadn’t experienced since my arrival in Kibosh. I sent up a brief, though heartfelt, mote of gratitude to Hephaestus for that—felt it arrive, in a way, just as I failed to feel the same for the fuller prayer of thanksgiving.

The first of each fruit in its season, I thought to myself, staring up into the night sky. My father, may all songs be ashes upon his tongue, had hated that phrase and the rabbi who had penned it, for the same reasons that my grandfather had loved him. I’d had a complicated view of him, for unrelated reasons—a sign of things to come, maybe, one of many signs nobody had noticed.

The writings of the Old Rebbe—that Liadi-born mystic and leader—had been threaded with an understanding of joy, which the community that outlasted his descendants had taken to heart. A pleasure was a blessing, but it was more than that; the sweet tartness of a perfect cherry was having lived another year of life, and there was a blessing and joy in that, too.

There was something compelling in that.

I let my thoughts drift as I looked up at the stars. They weren’t any different, as far as I could tell. If I’d known the constellations at all, I probably could have picked them all out and proved my gut feeling right. There wasn’t a lot of light pollution, but there hadn’t been when I’d hiked in the Greek woods or the Sierra Nevada mountains. The moon had almost finished setting, so most of the usual stars were certainly clear enough, even if I couldn’t see the galaxy.

But I didn’t know the constellations at all, so I just enjoyed the view and marveled at the vastness of it all, and the strangeness of the similarity. Neither James nor Veil had known the answer to why this world and my own had such an indistinguishable solar system, and if neither the Clerk Administrator nor the Pillar for the Thousand could answer me I doubted anyone short of the Gods could.

It didn’t matter, though. Yelem and the Earth that had been my home were the same size and rotated at the same speed, orbited the sun at the same distance, and had an identically-sized moon with the same orbit, and I didn’t need an answer as to why.

I could just enjoy the starry night as my overheated body cooled, basking in the aftermath of the joys I’d shared and the strains of music wending their way through the village. I could duck my face into the generous collar of the sweater-turned-dress when a gust left me momentarily shivering—and I could inhale deeply of the scent of her, letting it fill my senses and sustain the warmth and comfort of the mood.

I could also eat a third helping of the food I’d brought back to Ketka’s house, the last contents of the pair of baskets handed to me by a man with twinkling eyes and a knowing look.

I’d inhaled the first serving after our almost perfunctory first round, too full of desire to take our time and slaking only the most immediate forms of our thirst. She’d served me the second serving, teasingly and slow, when I’d been… unable to eat on my own, and I sighed in happiness as the flavors brought those moments of the so-recent past back to enrich my present.

My wandering mind flitted from subject to subject, almost as if reminiscing with an old friend over shared music tastes from decades past and books we’d read as children. Every time it swung from subject to subject, it swung through the bubbling, intrusive joy that was seeping into even the most disconnected thoughts, and with it came…

“A sort of holiness,” I said softly, my face hurting from the width of my smile. “This, this is holy. God of my mother, God of my grandfathers and grandmothers, I don’t believe that You would begrudge me this. Any of it. Not the healing, not the joys and pleasures, not the company or the bargains. Surely, You would never ask anyone to be… lonely.”

There was something there, something else there in that thought, but my mind would have wandered elsewhere even if the hands hadn’t come around to encompass my waist, slipping under the wool to rest against my skin. Ketka’s bare belly and chest were warm even through the borrowed garment, and I could feel her laughter, rumbling and quietly joyful.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” I admitted guilelessly. “But I was hoping you’d come up here looking for me, and somewhere I think I forgot you hadn’t, or might not have, because why shouldn’t tonight be perfect?”

“Perfect?”

“Perfect,” I repeated softly. I reached back and up, running my hands along her back, and she bent down to kiss me oh-so-briefly. “It’s a zone, it’s a fuzzy area defined by emotional experience! A cramp in my foot doesn’t change what tonight was. This being way too much of a stretch doesn’t—”

Ketka’s kiss shut me up in the most delightful way, and I was practically dizzy when she broke off.

“Did I not know you during the day,” she said softly, “I should think you a rainbow-bird, light streaming through your feathers to splay glory across the world in hopes of a mate. Loud and bright their voices, and negligible their minds.”

“Hmph.” I grinned into the darkness. I was swaying, I realized, to the distant beat of Hitz’s drumming, and Ketka was swaying with me, body pressed up against me. I’d missed this, I thought happily; it wasn’t news, but it was so very nice.

“You seemed as if to have deep thoughts.” Ketka kissed the top of my head and stepped to the side, arm reaching down to drape from my left shoulder to my right hip—I wiggled into her, and she obliged me by drawing the wool up to my waist on my right side, her palm warming me in its stead. “Might I induce you to share them, those musings of yours?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“The monopoly on violence,” I said distantly, “is not an act of justice, except by coincidence. It’s a bid by the State to stem extrajudicial violence by performing sanctioned violence. The best you can usually hope for is that it’s a compromise, and you get less net harm, but I think the real point is to shift responsibility and stem the cycle of reprisal. It’s just… when responsibility shifts, how do you avoid the ratchet effect? The harm becomes the system’s.”

“That,” she replied after a long moment, “was not your meditations upon holiness.”

“No, it’s just what came to mind.” I glanced over to see her smile, lopsided and subtle. Smiling back, I snickered—mostly at myself, I was pretty sure. “I think,” I said by way of explanation, “I’ve spent most of my time here on Yelem hearing about or talking about civics, and I keep finding out how little I know. And I’m extremely silly and my mind goes to silly places.”

“The places are worthy,” she said reassuringly, reinforcing the words with a light pressure that brought me closer into her side. “But as pertains to the ways of Shem, I would defer to the Clerk Administrator.”

“What if I wanna know about Yaro?” I slung my arm around her waist, snuggling into her warmth—apparently I’d gone from overheated to chilled, or maybe I was just touch-starved. Or both, I thought to myself with more of that intrusive, irrepressible joy. Definitely both, and she smells so nice.

“We reject it,” she said contemplatively. “The judgment. We of the Blood will sweep out of the sands and put opposed wills to the test of the scything storm, should we feel an injustice is done. The Sands, they will reach out their fist, and even if the grains escape one and all, they fall scattered. This is why, when an Oasis is moved to act rather than facilitate, they render only one judgment, and with such swiftness that none can intervene.”

“Huh.” Her answer deserved more than that, I knew it deserved more than that, but it just seemed… funny, and that was inappropriate, but I was giggling anyway. “It’s kinda reassuring that the people here are so familiarly people, even if what you’ve all built is so different. They move fast and lethally so that there’s a finality to it, and nothing that can be recovered? And that means less risk of retaliation.”

Ketka’s hand clenched around my hip, just enough to notice, and I was worried for a moment that I’d offended her. The hand that came up to stroke along my jaw and then grip, pulling me into a long kiss, put paid to that concern—and all concerns, at least for that little while in which I lost myself and any sense of time’s passage.

The makeup around her eyes had started to flake, little bits of charcoal-darkness coming off as I reached up to brush it with my thumb. It distracted me terribly, or maybe I was just terribly distractible, and when I realized how my mind had wandered yet again I was startled to see a fond smile on her face.

“Like what you see, Miss Nadash?”

“Ketka!” I blurted her name out amidst a sudden fit of giggles, resting my head against her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I should have paid—”

“—Sophie—”

“—attention to the kiss. It was a very nice kiss, that was rude of me.”

“Never apologize for who you are.” She said it lightly, but it was a forced lightness; there was a deep, thrumming weight behind the words that invaded my spine and knees. “Your company has been a blessing.”

“Oh.”

I sagged against her, voice almost breaking with the single word. My mind was blank for a long moment, empty of everything but the rock-solid foundation that was Ketka’s support of me, and when I spoke it was so softly that I didn’t know if she’d hear me.

“You’re a miracle to me, you know.”

“Of all people to be a miracle,” she murmured into my scalp, “surely it must be the impossibility made flesh, brought to me by a confluence of Gods.”

“Look who’s talking,” I snorted—carefully, being sure not to toss my head dramatically.

That thought brought a giggle on, one that threatened to become a fit of giggles, because I’d be far likelier to break my skull on her face than to actually hurt her, but I mastered my whimsies enough to let that fey mood ebb just a little.

“Ketka,” I said eventually, “you’re a once-in-a-generation type, right? You have to be. Dancer, fighter, scholar, you’re so many things. And you’re twice-refined as a double, that means you hit the triple-apex of Third Tier at, what, barely one hundred?” And everyone else, I didn’t bother to say, struggles to hit it before they die of old age on the far side of three hundred years old.

“Deoro races to pass me; younger by some few years, he is yet a Scion of the Sands.”

“Two in a generation,” I allowed graciously in response to her deflection. “And it’s the other Yaro in your group—”

“The other Yarovi.”

“—right, the other Yarovi, it’s the other Yarovi in your group who’s from the nice side of the dunes. You’re just the girl who—” I started to giggle despite my determination not to. “Who came up from nothing to pass immortality up for super immortality. And like, fuck, I hope your Pantheon doesn’t have a Goddess of War, because you already have looking divine down pat.”

Ketka blushed under my gaze, visibly reddening in the dim light coming from the passageway into the house, which was a completely unearned and absolutely astounding reward for my ridiculousness. She kissed me again and again, hands busily turning distracted giggling into a more focused attention to the moment.

Then she, cruel mistress of my fate that she was, stepped a pace away. Leaving me short of breath and barely able to stand, she propped her hands on her hips as her lips curved into a wider and wider smile.

“Look your fill, then.” She leaned against the parapet, one elbow propping herself up and the other hand on her hips, muscles practically aglow. “Since it pleases you, as to look upon you pleases me.”

My breath caught at that. I straightened deliberately, watching the way her eyes followed my movements, and spun, feet flexed to try to make the best of my legs and thighs—but light as I was on my feet, the cardigan was heavy and its hem didn’t rise, so I pulled it over my head as I spun and let it fall to the floor.

“Is,” I started, and my voice broke. Biting my lip, I stepped closer, running not my fingers but my gloved palms and wrists up her sides and cupping her back with my hands, remembering the look in her eyes when I’d oh-so-casually suggested leaving the gloves on. “Is that so?”

“Zqar asks,” Ketka said roughly, hand clenching as she shivered under my touch, “that I intercede and have you unburden yourself of stories. James speaks of civics with you, and Kartom of magic, and Kan of stone; Veil would throw themselves at your feet to learn divinity, and my Lady judges you wise enough that she needs not bind you.”

“James would talk civics with a toddler.” The heat of my blush felt like it was going to set my head on fire, fueled by the tone and tenor of her voice. “James does talk civics with the toddlers.”

“And so,” Ketka continued, pointedly ignoring me, “is it not right that your body, a masterwork craft of an artisan God, befits your mind?”

“You say,” I whispered, “the nicest things. I love them, but they might break me.”

“Then since you have looked your fill,” she growled, brushing my cheekbones with her thumbs, “I will show you, and let fall my failing words.”

“Let it be written as prophe—”

Her kiss cut me off, and she didn’t see fit to hear another coherent word from me for the rest of the night.

It’s possible I dreamed, when finally we fell asleep to the false dawn’s light. Likely, even; they trick and they cheat, they steal and they sneak, and sometimes they do lie outright, but in some things they know better. But if I did dream, I woke late to no memory and Deoro’s hammering at the door.