“At least I do think about them now and then. You’re a goddess, you can’t go out
in those-those rags!”
“I beg your pardon! This shift is just well broken in. It’s comfortable. And it
covers me … instead of leaving half of me hanging out, like that old tunic of
Ils’s that you never take off. Or that raggy goatskin cape with the ugly face on
it.”
“I’ll have you know that when my Father shakes ‘that raggy goatskin’ over the
armies of men, they scatter in terror-“
“The way it smells, no wonder. And that’s our Father. Oh, do put the vase down,
Siveni! I’ll just make another. Besides, when has Ils scattered an army lately?
Better give him that thing back: He could probably use it just now.”
“Why, you-“
Lightnings whipped the temple’s marble, scarring it black. Screeching, a silver
raven napped out from between a pair of columns and perched complaining in the
topmost branches of a golden-appled tree a safe distance away. The lightning
made a lot of noise as it lashed about, but even a casual observer would have
noticed that it did little harm. Shortly it sizzled away to nothing, and the
stagy thunder that had accompanied it faded to echoes and whispers, and died.
The temple convulsed, squatted down, and got brown and gray, a beast of
fieldstone and thatch. Then it went away altogether.
Two women were left standing there on the plain, which still nickered
uncertainly between radiance and dirt. One of them stood divinely tall in
shimmering robes, crested and helmed, holding a spear around which the
restrained lightnings sulkily strained and hissed-a form coolly fair and bright,