not meet her right in battle. Harran tried to stop her-for vile sink though it
was, Sanctuary was his home-and Siveni nearly killed him out of pique.
Mriga, though, had stopped her. She had recovered the conscious godhead every
mortal temporarily surrenders at birth, and was therefore in full control of the
attributes of wise compassion and cool judgment that Siveni had lost into time.
She and her otherself fought, and after Mriga won the fight, both saw swiftly
that they were one, though crippled and divided. They needed union, and
timeless-ness in which to achieve it. Neither was available in the world of
mortals. With that knowledge they had turned, as one, to Harran. They took their
leave of him, healing the hand maiming that Siveni had inflicted on him, and
then departed for those fields mortals do not know. Of course they planned to
come back to him-or for him-as soon as they were consolidated.
But even in timelessness, union was taking longer than either had expected.
Siveni was arrogant in her recovered wisdom, angry about having lost it, and
bitter that it had found nowhere better to lodge than an ignorant cinder-sitting
house-slut. Mriga was annoyed at Siveni’s snobbery, bored with her constant
anecdotes about her divine lineage-she told the same ones again and again-and
most of all tired of fighting. Unfortunately she too was Siveni: when challenged
she had to fight. And being mortal and formerly mad, she knew something Siveni
had never learned: how to fight dirty. Mriga always won, and that made things