“Can’t you do anything to help us? You said you would grant the winner of The Selection whatever they wanted. Surely you can do something now,” pleaded Jennah with the wind.

“Yes, we will grant the victor whatever it is they desire. You are no winner, Child, and I am bound by honor, as is my kind, not to meddle in the affairs of mortals,” explained She to the comfort of none. “Now, wake up,” Her sweet voice whispered in Jennah’s ears, lifting the slumber from her eyes.

“Wait, no-”

Unlike the last time she awoke, no warm light greeted the girl with the mountains on her shoulders.

She was in a white room with white walls, a white ceiling, a white door, and a white bed… a bed to which she was chained.

Jennah raised her head as high as she could from the pillow and looked at her outstretched body. Her wrists and ankles were in leather cuffs, and leather straps flattened her stomach and thighs to the mattress. A camera was fixed in a corner of the ceiling, its lenses watching her. Jennah felt naked and exposed despite the clothes they had changed her into, whoever they were. Her bones chilled and rattled, and her hair prickled and rose despite the lack of airflow in the cell.

The last thing she remembered was coming down from the light, only to find herself gun-to-face with two soldiers intruding into the sanctity of her Temple.

No one visited Jennah, so she was left to marinate in a swamp of her guilt. Not only had she doomed the entire earth to certain death, but she had also pushed to motion the end of billions of lives all across the universe. They had put down seven temples on seven planets chosen amongst millions. This meant that billions upon billions of alien lives would be lost to a Selection they knew nothing of if their scientific advancement was as primitive as humans’.

Yes, she had not started the Selection. That was Them.

Yes, it would have happened eventually.

So why could she not feel any less guilty? Maybe if I’d stayed home, none of this would have happened.

Tears ran freely down her cheeks, she tried to wipe them away, momentarily forgetting about her binds.

She remembered her parents, her friends, and all the faces she had met in her travels. She had doomed them all to dissipation.

How did Do Mavaye expect her to hold the faith of so many in her hands? How did she expect her to lead humanity whole just because she stumbled upon the wrong place at the wrong time? She could not even wipe her own tears! Damn it.

The reminder of her helplessness only fuelled her sorrows. She could not feel the ground shaking violently and the bed creaking under her. Her tears and breathless sobs obscured the view of the door slamming open against the wall. It was too late when she opened her eyes, for soldiers were cramming the room around her, and a needle was jammed in her arm.

Jennah went back to sleep.

“Don’t tell me to wake up,” she told the wind. “Let me stay here,” I don’t want to go back. Jennah lazed in a bed of grass. She hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her skin. Butterflies tickled her shoulders, and one landed on the tip of her nose.

And why not laze? All was doomed, and she was tired, so, so, tired.

“But you have to, child. If only to-”

“Why do I have to?” Her eyes opened and the butterflies got startled and flew away. “Why do we have to do anything for you? Why do we have to play your stupid games and trials?” She stood up.

“Why do we have to play by your sadistic rules like some fucking NPCs in a game?” She did not know where to look and that further infuriated her. Do Mavaye was not just all around her. She was in her. Jennah could feel Her presence everywhere, but she had no point where to rest her eyes and no place where to direct her anger, and she was angry. So damn angry her blood boiled and her eyes bulged. So damn angry she was screaming her throat raw shouting at Her. So damn angry she did not care.

“Your ignorance is the reason for the trials, Child. By passing them, you will have grasped their meaning.”

“But we can’t make it to the trials.” The words came out mangled and broken, half question half statement.

What’s the point of the trials if we can’t even make it to them?

“I know, Child. Even if you don’t pass them, there is a purpose to your life still. You will live on. Remember, life is what you do with it, and you have much, much left to do.

“Remember what you read;”

All is one in the cosmic tangle, and life is all in one.

She smiled at her in the brushing of the grass against her feet and gently nudged her back to consciousness. This time, the girl surrendered without a fight.

This time when Jennah woke up, she was in another white room. She laid on something soft that was not a bed. The mattress stood at a near-vertical angle, putting her at eye level with a mirror covering the entire wall in front of her.

This time, a band ran over her forehead, and something was clasped on her neck. Wires connected her body at a dozen spots on her skin to monitors around her standing prison.

Where am I? She tried to turn her head around to no avail. God, this doesn’t look good.

She closed her eyes and let out one slow controlled breath after the other.

After her nerves had settled some, she concentrated her mind on the threads of Her being. Small trails floated in the room through the walls, through her. She followed them for miles in her mind, gripping at them and losing them to find them again.

Not much of Her in this place anymore. Jennah felt lonely; she had grown so used to Her presence. She was saddened to remember the beauty of this place millions of years ago when it had buzzed with life instead of heat.

Jennah tried again to follow the faint threads of Do Mavaye’s presence. She pulled and pulled for hours in her mind until she reached the tangle that was The Temple.

She was still in Morocco, somewhere east of The Temple. The realization came as a relief. The Temple was too far away to be of help to her, but its proximity was a reassurance nonetheless.

They did not leave her with her thoughts for much longer. A door opened behind her, and the drumming of footsteps echoed in the empty chamber. Her heartbeat crept up, so loud she could almost hear it.

Four men clad in military greens stood before her. The two soldiers from the Temple were not amongst them, Jennah realized as their faces popped into her mind.

God, please tell me I didn’t kill them. She had struck them harder than she intended, but that was her first time using the Temple, she knew. A learning curve was to be expected, she knew.

You didn’t, Do Mavaye whispered in her ears.

They did not give her time to savor her relief. One of the men, of medium height, with white hair and metal-frame glasses looked up from the digital screen he carried.

“Miss Jennah Miller, I trust that you understand why we have you bound as such. After last time’s incident, it is necessary for both your safety and ours.”

My safety? She scanned their bodies. They had guns holstered at their hips and they stood free while she could not even turn her head from their watchful gazes. She did not think that they cared for her safety.

“I understand,” she lied, “ I didn’t mean to hurt them. They were coming at me with loaded guns and I didn’t know who they were and what they wanted-”

“But you did hurt them. We found Lieutenant Gardy perforated with,” he checked something in his hands outside her field of vision, “46 wounds.”

“What? No, there were only two. I-” killed someone?

“What were you meaning to do then if your motive wasn’t to hurt them?” cut the man to the left. He was younger and taller, and he spoke meaner.

His question did not register in Jennah’s mind. Her mind was focused on gathering the shards of her broken memories. She remembered a pain in the back of her head, but after that, her vision and consciousness went dark. Mavareye, what did I do?

A vision appeared in her mind. It was like a dream where Jennah watched from above. A man sneaked up behind her and hit her in the head with the handle of a gun. A fury of stone spikes shot from the ground around her, piercing the air in every direction but hers. They pierced the soldier’s body in a second and retreated with Jennah’s collapse just as fast. The man was dead before even hitting the ground. His blood soaked his sleeping killer’s hair and clothes. His eyes and mouth were agape, forever frozen in a pained last cry.

Jennah looked into his eyes for an eternity.

An electric shock tensed her body and forced his lifeless body out of her mind. She almost thanked them.

“You raised several tons of stone from the ground with your mind and you …pushed it at the soldiers?”

“I… yes...” That was the essence of it.

One of the machines connecting to her body sounded, and a soldier of the remaining two turned to operate it.

“Yes, just as you controlled the stones from your bed yesterday and almost leveled us all with the ocean?”

Yesterday? Jennah panicked at not remembering what he referred to, again, at the possibility of having killed someone else. “No, I didn’t. That was…” The Temple reacting to the overflow of her emotions, grief, shock, guilt, and despair. Jennah remembered the needle to her skin and paled.

But can she explain? Can she utter the word, Temple? Goddess? Gods? Can she say it all to these men? Can she explain any of it? Should she?

“That was who, Miss Miller? Your subordinates? Kakovo eto, kogda oni brosayut tebya zdes'?”

“…what? I-I don’t understand you.” Do they think I’m some… Russian spy? Her face palled.

“I think there has been a misunderstanding. I am an American citizen on a solo road trip. My name is Jennah Miller and I accidentally fell into that tunnel trying to get my phone. That’s it. I have no subordinates or whatever it is you think I have,” she struggled against her binds.

Calm your heart. Breathe. Do Mavaye’s words anchored her in the raging sea overtaking her heart. Russian spy or bringer of doom? She did not know which was worse. Suddenly the gravity of her detainment hit like a brick to the head.

Before, she was talking to them from a place of divine knowing. She was looking at them from galaxies away. The politics of earth did not exist in her mind, but they did in theirs, and they were the ones in control. How could she forget that not knowing that higher beings existed out there and were the source of it all would make them suspect one another? Suspect her…

“But you have powers, powers we all have been witness to. Can you explain that?” asked the last of the four. “What exactly is this relic, Miss Miller? And how did you come to control it?”

To tell or not to tell.

It is your decision, Child of mine.

As if she had a choice.

*****

Jennah Miller officially lost it. It was on record too. Or at least she did for a couple of days until they were able to verify the accuracy of her translations.

They kept on pressuring her at first about the Russian affiliations she did not have.

Throughout her five-day-long imprisonment, Jennah was an exemplary detainee, which was by no means an easy feat. She was cooperative and as docile as a lamb, answering their questions with the patience of a gentle parent, not out of enthusiasm or wit, however, but rather out of shame and guilt.

Let the people know the hand that pulled the lever.

So she held on, during those five days. She held on to her sanity and patience throughout the repetitive loops of translations they kept firing at her, throughout their humiliating binding of her body.

She did not mind. Let the people know.

Luckily, it was not for nothing, for on the sixth day, they finally let her out of the mattress she ate at, slept at, and inevitably shat at.

The room had, she could now see, besides the bed a sink and a toilet she wished they had let her use. She was grateful for the commodities, albeit they faced the see-through mirror. Thank God for small mercies.

They did not let her out of the room, however, and was it not for her parents, dead of worry by now, no doubt, she would not have minded.

All was as good as dead after all.

But her parents...

They are well, assured Do Mavaye for the umpteenth time.

How is it out there? Must be chaos, asked Jennah of the other voice in her head.

It is. All are panicking. They know that something is coming… but they know not what it is. And not just your race, or your planet. Jennah pitied them for their anxiety and was sorry for her part in it.

Wait, they did not tell them?

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

No.

She stared at the two-way mirror, past the reflection of her body resting on its side. She hugged her knees to her chest.

She was disappointed, she could not hide it. She had expected that they would have told the world of what she had started by now. She would have preferred it even, but her jailers had decided to keep it all to themselves.

Fat good it will do them. Then again, fat good telling would do too.

She turned, lying her back, and looked at the ceiling. I keep thanking God, she thought after a while. Not that she believed in a god before: it was merely a habit she had picked up over the years. Is it true? Do you have a hand in how my life unfolds? In my fate? How freeing would it be to have someone else to blame for her sins?

Think. You already have the answer. Like sand slipping through her fingers, Do Mavaye evaded her once again.

Is this another one of those things you and your kind agreed not to tell us?

No, but it wouldn’t hurt you to think. The girl sighed.

Jennah thought back to the scripture. It explained in no certain terms what the Ethereals were and how life emerged. Even the initiation started out after life already was.

Someone is coming, three men, including the two from The Temple.

The girl tried not to panic, but her heart beat incredibly fast, and the collar around her neck felt tight and prickly.

A few seconds later, the door clicked and the hinges creaked. Sweat pooled on Jennah’s skin. What could this be now? No one other than the hateful four visited her in the last five days. This was out of order, threatening.

Footsteps carried her visitors to her bed in torturous slowness that had the seconds ticking loudly in her mind. Breathe. She could not tell if the command was Do Mavaye’s or her own, but she obeyed it all the same.

When the footsteps stopped and a shadow hid her from the light of the lamp, Jennah turned her head. It was indeed the two soldiers from The Temple and the mean bastard who brought her assignments. Her chest tightened and she felt small with shame. Those were the friends of the man she had killed.

“Miss Miller, how have you been?” asked the bastard. He did nothing to deserve such uncivilty from her, albeit only voiced in her mind, she just could not help but distrust him.

“I’ve been fine, thank you.” She did not bother to put on a smile.

“I believe you have met Chief Buyers and Chief Richardson before.” He gestured to the two soldiers.

“Yes, I remember them.” They looked fine. She was glad they were well. She did not want their blood on her hands as well, even if they were destined to die in a few weeks.

“Since you have been cooperative with us so far, we’ve decided to assign you two guards as we run a few tests on you instead of wheeling you around,” spoke the soldier, “I trust you will act in accordance with our generosity.”

“What tests?” Jennah could not help but panic a little as her mind conjured up images upon images of a horrible fate. Breathe.

“Just some brain scans, nothing invasive or damaging. So we can understand how you control The Temple. Nothing more.”

Should she have explained to them how it is done? How she wove the fiber of being ingrained in the stones to do as she wished?

No, The Temple is a sacred place. Its sanctity must be respected. That is one of the roles of a prophet, to ready The Temple for the trials. She will figure out a way to escape before the end of the 49-day summon period and mend The Temple back together, but she will not tell them about what it means to be a prophet. It is not on the stones for a reason.

You must do it before the 49th, Child, if you wish to pay your respects, for 49 days in Yo Jayaroye’s chosen planet is only 42 days in yours.

“Miss Miller, Miss Miller?” Jennah looked from the ceiling to the man.

“As I was saying, Chiefs Buyers and Richardson have orders to subdue you with as much force as necessary if you choose to be violent starting from the shock collar on your neck to the use of lethal force if they judge it necessary. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.” Jennah turned her back to them.

Take me out of here, to the records, please, Mavareye.

*****

Try it, urged Do Mavaye, You said it yourself over and over again. You have nothing to lose.

Jennah sat up and faced her guard. It was Chief Richardson. What’s the point of learning a skill I will never get to use? This is ridiculous.

You are ignorant of the powers you hold, and if you can’t weave the threads of being now, you should at least be able to read them. How do you imagine you will be able to escape if you are not willing to use the only weapon at your disposal? Who is he? said the waves crashing on the shore.

I thought you said you were not allowed to mingle in the affairs of mortals, so why are you helping me so much? Is our faith so hopeless that my fight is meaningless?

We are allowed to show you the basics of your existence, whether it helps or not. Now, who is he? The question was not so gentle this time. Jennah shook her self-pity and did as She ordered.

He must hate me. I killed his friend.

The girl closed her eyes. She inhaled slowly and exhaled even slower. With each breath she took she cleared her mind of all that cluttered it only to have it flooded in an instant.

It’s too hard, I can’t single him out. She flapped on her back.

Yes, you can. Again.

From that moment on, in her little respites of peace and solitude amidst all the tests and the scans and the translations, Jennah would start over for hours and then for days until she finally managed to single out a particular thread.

It was not a thread of Do Mavaye’s being, pure, distinct, and clear like a white beam of light; no, those were so blinding that she rather had to ignore. This was a thread of his being, her guard’s.

She pulled it closer to her, and what she had first pictured as a simple thread of the tangle that was him was actually several kinds of strands roped into one.

One, two, …there are seven of them. Seven kinds of strands make up this man’s Soul.

Split them, don’t worry, you are just reading them. It will not hurt him.

Jennah did just that. She focused her attention deeper and untangled the spiral of the thread. There were more of some kinds of strands than others.

This strand, it’s You! Jennah concentrated on one of the two groups of strands making up the bulk of Chief Richardson’s Soul. Which makes the other six-

My kin, finished Do Mavaye.

This one, asked Jennah of the second bulk of him, It’s almost as strong in him as you are. Who is it? But no answer came.

Jennah hoped Do Mavaye was not going to dare her to guess, or worse yet, go silent on the other line of their telephone.

For a prophet, the girl was completely ignorant when it came to the divine. She knew virtually nothing of the other Ethereals. Neither the Temple nor the archive had any information on them, and Do Mavaye seldom spoke of them. Thankfully, She broke her silence at last and said, That would be Yo Cav’toye.

Do Gharaye

Do Chawaye

Yo Cav’toye

Yo Jayaroye

And Zo Rook’ye

Thus were Their names. Emotions she could not name overtook her, and a door she never could perceive opened to her.

Jennah studies Them, how They felt in her mind, how They differed from one another, and what similarities They shared. She followed Them out of the tangle of the Chief’s Soul. She could follow Yo Vaw’koye into the wall, Do Gharaye in the air she breathed.

They were all around her, and They connected everything everywhere all at once.

How could it be? But she did not need Mavareye to tell her because she already had the answer.

All is one in the cosmic tangle. You are the thread that weaves the fiber of reality. Jennah concluded.

For the next several hours Jennah tried to learn as much as she possibly could about Chief Richardson. She analyzed him from a depth she did not know one could peer at. She would compare how much of every God was in him and where else in the room she could find Them.

After a long moment, and with the gentle push of a warm, warm hand, Jennah built enough courage to ask him.

“You don’t care much for change, do you? You like things to stay as they are. You probably eat the same food the same way every day, or almost.” She hugged her knees to her chest and went on, looking at him and seeing beyond him at the same time. “You like order- no. You love order, authority too, but not to have, to follow. Yes, well for the most part.”

He was looking at her with an unreadable face. He paid no apparent attention to the crazy girl with the crazy hair, babbling on the bed.

“I am not saying this to rail you up or anything. I am just trying to get to know you.” She waited for him to acknowledge her, but like he did not for the past four days he had been watching her, he did not heed her any mind.

“You are not very creative, and I don’t mean it as an insult. You prefer being free to be rather than being free to do. You are so very very much a fighter, a soldier.”

“You’re also the kind of man to take a bullet for a loved one, might even have had before. Did you?”

He flinched and squeezed his gun. Jennah pressed her back against the wall. “I am sorry,” her voice was small and her courage gone. “I didn’t mean to kill him.” She went back to silence.

Mavareye can we go to the records?

Her answer came in the slow embrace of sleep.

*****

“Good afternoon Miss Miller,” was Jennah's unpleasant wakening alarm. “Doctor,” she acknowledged the greying military physician with the metal-frame glasses.

“I trust you’ve slept well.” Jennah nodded. “I have some good news. We are leaving.” The girl’s attention peaked, her back straightened, and her eyes widened. “I can go home?” she asked in foolish enthusiasm.

“Not quite. We are going back to the Temple. So we can better gauge your control of it. We are leaving, now.” His words depleted her, however, expected they were.

Have courage, Child. That is good. Jennah supposed it was.

Jennah looked around her room, as she came to think of it. She had been here for almost ten days according to Mavaneye. She packed what was of hers, her hair tie and her resolve, and followed the men to the door.

Outside her room, Chief Buyers stood guard in a corridor of countless doors. The walls behind his sullen form were cracked paint over concrete, and the floor was dirty white tiles. The echo of her slippers slapping the floor carried them to the end of the hallway where they took a right for a while, and then a left for even longer.

This place is huge. Two soldiers, Moroccan this time, guarded a double-doored exit. The floor was dirtier here, and coarser under her feet. A small dune of sand sat in a corner, and a soft breeze whispered through the door’s hinges. The soldiers nodded at her three escorts and opened the door.

Jennah did not realize how much she missed the sun till she saw it and felt it on her skin. It looked glorious, coming down a lilac sky to hug a bed of golden sand. Tears rolled down her face.

“Climb up.” The girl peeled her eyes away from the star in tortured moves. I wonder when I’ll get to see the sun again.

Soon, comforted Do Mavaye.

Her new room was no different than the last. It had the same tasteless white plastered on every surface, and the same watchful eyes stalking her through the mirror, but something was different; she could feel The Temple. She could hear it hum under several feet of solid ground, but it was there. She was so tempted to reach for it, to touch it. She brought her hand to her collar and dared not reach its walls.

She sat down on her new bed. They will tire of me soon, they must. She had told them all she knew, or almost, and she had the scripture of The Temple to fortify her claims.

If she were honest with herself, she did not care if they did not let her go. As long as they let her visit The Temple, mend it, and put it back together, she would have done the minimum required of her. If they let her contact her parents, or even bring them here to spend the little time they had left together, she would die happy.

So why could she not elude this bad feeling in the shadows of her mind?

Her answer came a few days later as she sat at a four-seat table they had graciously brought into her new room. She put down the book she had been reading, another courtesy from her captors, and laid her head down in boredom.

Based on her routine for the past four days, some doctors will come into the room and steal away the bulk of her time. They will come with some fancy machines and computers and tell her to move specific areas of The Temple, this way, then that way, while they measure her brain's electric activity.

They would put electrodes all over her head while she manipulated the Temple (either exactly as they ordered, or she would be promptly shocked). Sometimes, they would put her in big fMRI machines and have her do her magic, but from how many times they had repeated the same tests on her, she doubted they worked.

Jennah sat straight and closed her eyes. She took a few deep breaths and banished The Temple of Do Mavaye and its Mistress from her awareness.

She focused on one thread and followed it to where he stood, watching her by the door. She did not need to see his gaze on her to feel it. He stood straighter, sensing that she was up to something.

Jennah put him in her hands. She spread out the strands of his Soul in her palm and listened to them whisper in her ears.

She let go of him and opened her eyes.

“You and your friend are much alike. No wonder you are friends.” She looked him in the eyes, but he continued to evade her inspectful looks all while looking at her, still.

“Same dislike for change, yes. Easy to please,” she went on. “You’re a protector too, a dam, but where he’s reactive, explosive even sometimes, you are calmer and heavier, but not kinder.” This time he looked at her, acknowledging what she said.

“You don’t mind dirtying your hands. In fact, you’re the man for that.” Someone stood outside the door. She could hear them pushing the pins of the electric door lock, but she did not look away from him.

“And you love to lead, to be in charge.”

Chief Richardson opened the door. She was expecting the doctor, a technician, anyone, just not him. Something is wrong.

Please tell me that’s not the case, Mavareye. She had never seen the two of them together since The Temple. They had alternating shifts, long shifts. They did not interact.

Chief Richardson whispered something in his friend’s ear. She could tell they were talking about her. She just knew it. Chief Buyers looked pissed. Those were not happy features on his face. He looked at her and said something. Richardson stepped back and then left.

He just stood there, ignoring the tension in the air. Something was wrong. He knew it… she knew it…

“What did he say?” The words were shy and tentative, nothing like her taunts from before.

Silence.

“I know it was about me. Is something going on?” she tried again, standing up this time.

“Sit down,” he commanded, putting his hand on the gun on his hip. The threat was plain and clear. How could she forget? She killed his friend.

Jennah sat down. Do Mavaye? Mavareye, please, what’s happening? but the voice in her head dimmed when she needed it the most.

She kept looking at him, hoping that he would change his mind, but he evaded her with unshaken resolve.

The minutes ticked away. “Copy, Sir.”

Jennah, defeated, rested her head on the table and tried to calm her raging thoughts.

“Fuck,” she heard him whisper after a while. He coughed, and she looked up. He brought his hand up to his face and lazily yawned into his palm looking her straight in the eyes. He lowered his hand, tilted his head slightly down, looked at the bed, and ever so slightly raised his eyebrows.

Mavareye?

It was so out of character. He had never looked or acted tired while he guarded her. Never. Or were her nerves turning to paranoia?

You can trust him. Her voice filled Jennah like the warmth of a campfire.

She thought for a moment about what to do, what she believed he mimed, when he did it again, not breaking eye contact with her, not even for a second.

Jennah got up, walked to the bed, and awkwardly laid on it. She faced the wall with her hands between her thighs, closed her eyes, reached out for the threads of Soul all around her, and waited.

And waited.

He stepped forward. Slowly and surely he marched towards her bed and then stopped. He leaned forward, reached his hand towards her mouth, and left it hovering a few inches from her face. She shut her eyelids tighter.

“Soon they are going to come in, sedate you, open your head up, and try to manipulate the Temple through your brain.” Her heart beat so incredibly fast it damn nearly stopped.

“I’m getting you out of here. Enough is enough.” She could feel the warmth of his exhales on the sensitive skin of her ears.

“When I say now, you hide behind me, and you don’t move. Open your eyes if you understand. The camera won’t see you from this angle.” She opened her eyes. His face filled up her view, drowning all her senses in his presence.

He nodded ever so discreetly and pulled back.

“Miss Miller is asleep, Sir. Doctor Philip can proceed.”

Soon, Doctor Philip with the grey hair and the little glasses walked in with four others. She could not hear them come in, but she felt them as well as she could see.

“Gentlemen, let’s get this over with.”

One of his four companions stepped forward, holding something that felt too much of Zo Rook’ye in his hands.

Chief Buyer’s hand edged closer to his side where his gun hung.

“What’s the commotion?” asked one of the newcomers. The five men turned to the door, as noises slowly made their way through its metal frame.

Jennah could feel people running around in the corridor, all headed east.

The door opened and a soldier came in.

She’s here, came the sound of comfort at last, Rawa. Do Gharaye’s prophet is here.