Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ananke walked quietly through her Temple, ears twitching gently as she listened, taking stock of everything she heard. Mostly soft sounds, other than the busy sound of food preparation in the kitchens (and the sound of someone snoring rather intensely in the dormitory cavern). The faint sounds of pages being turned, pens scratching along paper as they wrote, and above all the Sand in its endless fall, its faint hush behind every other sound.

Despite her quiet steps, however, the goddess moved with determination. She knew her destination, had grown sure of it over the past months. A pure white form, bent industriously over a tome at a table...

So many possible futures; Ananke had chosen the one she wanted.

"Good evening, Lilitu," she said, her voice low and unreadable as she came up beside the dark angelic. "How go your studies tonight?"

"I would be delighted. There should, properly, be symmetry in all things; drops leading to ripples, the fall of a pebble leading to an avalanche. The planting of a seed; the fall of a forest giant." Ananke smiled, her wings fanning lightly as she leaned down to examine her acolyte's work. "This has taken you much time. I have seen you as you work."

"Caves are often of great symbolic portent - like eggs, like wombs, dens of concept and future." Ananke carefully examined the note that Lilitu indicated, a faint smile playing at her lips. "Sometimes monsters emerge from them, alas, but neither history nor prophecy is always kind." Her wings rasped against each other then, the sound just on the edge of unpleasant. A reminder of sorts.

"And this one? Which is it, do you think?" She tilted her head to one side. Such judgments were so often a matter of perspective.

"The seed, yes. And eventually the forest giant will tumble down, and its fall will create new reverberations. All things are linked, Lilitu. Some more than others."

She let her hand fall gently, then, touching the fox's white shoulder. "I would speak to you of such things. Of links, of chains, moments joined one after another, inexorable."

Ananke's own face betrayed nothing but soft amusement, and pleasure in her acolyte's knowledge and success - but her golden eyes were warm. "I can see many things, Lilitu - some may be true. Some are true, but not in this reality. Some are false in every plane. Every action we take causes possibilities to fall into place, locking away paths of existence. Time is no stream, nor even a sea in a storm. It is a labyrinth, looping, twisting, turning, endless. Each falling grain of sand echoes with the slamming of a thousand doors."

"There is one particular door I have seen, one that I have been waiting to step through for some time." And now she allowed a true smile, true affection, to blossom in her gaze. "A door of joining, of togetherness. When I saw you, I knew. Lilitu," she said, again, this time lingering on the name.

Ananke lifted her fingers, tangled them with Lilitu's own. "You understand? The seed that sprouted when you entered my service. It is beautiful. Could be... beautiful." Her voice dropped to a whisper, low and intimate. "I see what you cannot; it may be that I am presumptuous. Some have called me so. Some have been correct, perhaps." That faint smile again.

"My right, perhaps - but I will not lay claim to you as if you were an object. You are far, far too precious for such treatment," Ananke whispered, her breath warm against Lilitu's ear. "I knew when I saw you. I saw the possibilities branching out. But I did not exert my power to ensure the path I wanted most. What would such a love be? Empty. I did not want that."

"Then there is nothing else in any tome, in all the tales of history-past or history-future, that I could possibly desire," Ananke said, stepping back, encouraging Lilitu to get up out of the chair with the gesture. "I knew," she repeated, and the smile on her face was genuine, and almost un-Goddess-like in its odd vulnerability.