<Feeling uneasy?> Zyriko prompted.

As always, no one except maybe Suri's mother would know it from looking at Her. Currently, the Sky Goddess was moving from portal to portal, recharging them while chatting with representatives from the villages.

<A little, about Nyrkatess,> Suri replied, without interrupting Her verbal conversations. <I don't doubt that she means well, but...isn't it easy to imagine her looking disgusted? Reflexively, I mean, not intentionally. Or, saying something like, 'Hi! Let me make you less gross!' with the best of intentions?>

<Well, yes,> Zyriko conceded. <She did close herself and Villacqui away from the world, in their little ivory bubble, rather than go out and confront the ugliness. Still, I think that was more her choosing to dedicate herself to doing the absolute best she could for Villacqui, under the circumstances, rather than lacking empathy. A misfiring of powerful compassion, not an absence of it.>

<It's misfirings that I'm worried about.>

Zyriko chuckled, but not at Suri. Villacqui had just had her first encounter with the wildlife of the Keyic jungle, and...uh...Izenakee may have felt that jolt of horror. It was a kind of testament to Nyrkatess' success that Villacqui could afford to be so terrified of 'creepy-crawlies.'

<There's cause for optimism,> Zyriko claimed. <The Goddess of Empathy just invested a full day into her, and judged her worthy of that time. And, Nyrkatess had no less than the Goddess of Beauty and Glamor talking in her ear, about how to be properly fabulous.>

Suri hadn't been there for most of it, of course.

<There's no way to be certain if it will be enough,> Zyriko continued, <but here's how I see it: Someone who has felt adrift and misunderstood--a 'weirdo,' as she puts it--has suddenly found a place to belong, a place she wants to belong, and most importantly, role models Whose approval she desperately craves. She will follow Their example. And my read is that Nyrkatess has no idea how to pursue a goal halfheartedly.>

<I want to believe in her. And...'unreasonable standards are dangerous.'>

Zyriko snorted, at Suri this time. A year ago, She would have condemned Nyrkatess as being little more than 'not actively evil,' to everyone but Villacqui.

<Your Sisters would be so proud!> Zyriko teased. <Before You ask, yes, I'm also uneasy, for a different reason. It feels as though we're being sucked into 'mages equal gods,' but much as I don't like it, I see no way to avoid it. Our people have spent their entire lives praying every day for the Goddesses to send help, then the Sky Goddess returns from a mysterious trip with two companions who, apparently, look too magical to pass as ordinary even in the Garden. One of them can heal and clean with the touch of a finger, and both will probably stop aging within a few years. And all of this is before Nyrkatess starts glowing.>

Still, even if Nyrkatess proved unworthy of True Divinity, even if the taint on her mana lingered permanently, that taint was certainly not from bigotry. A domain in the far west would be liberated within a generation, without Suri needing to charge any weapons or attend any funerals, and there would be no need to worry about Tvokess intervention in any future campaign. For that, Zyriko would have been willing to bend his principles a great deal more than this state of affairs required them to bend.

<If a sufficiently skilled and powerful mage is indistinguishable from a goddess, benevolent or otherwise, then what is the difference?> Suri argued. <For better or worse, Nyrkatess is exactly what she said she is: a mage prodigy who is nearly a goddess. She was sent by the Goddesses to help. Why? Because the Red Goddess did hear those prayers, just as everyone believes. Nyrkatess looks too magical to be an ordinary human because she isn't one. The only choice you or I or Nyrkatess have is what kind of god or goddess We want to be. I have faith in Keekee's judgment--their intentions are pure. I just worry whether a single day was enough for Nyrkatess to...avoid gaffes.>

----

'Avoid looming over people,' Nyrkatess recalled. 'If they sit or kneel, or if they're children, get down on their level, or else they might be anxious about interacting with you, like the attendants.'

An inspection of the ground revealed no unmentionable horrors, so Nyrkatess steeled herself, and knelt in the mud. She couldn't help a cringe and grimace, hopefully subtle enough to escape notice, when her knees sank in far enough to soil the hem of her dress.

It didn't really matter. She would be able to clean it. As long as nothing crawled on her, it was fine. That's all she asked for. Well, that and no presumptuous princelings, but those seemed far less likely to be lurking in the mud.

Thankfully, they'd had the foresight to put their hair up, in buns, before going to the jungle. She could clean her hair, too, sure, but...buhuhuhuh.

...Seriously, though, would it be worse to have one of those idiots from the dock on her arm, or that monstrosity they'd definitely never seen? Hmm.

Something brushed Nyrkatess' leg, and her heart nearly evacuated her chest.

Ah. Just--just Villacqui, getting her attention. Right. The visit. Say hello.

At some point, Villacqui had knelt to Nyrkatess' right, and the children had gathered round a few steps away from them, roughly in a semi-circle, all staring in weirdly hushed excitement.

One boy, hanging near the back, was a latent blue mage, but Nyrkatess carefully gave no sign that she had noticed anything unusual about him. The last time someone had singled out Kovi for 'being blue,' he'd...he'd nearly...

With a quick, sidelong peek at diamond eyes, Nyrkatess smothered that line of thought. It would not do to allow her hatred for some faceless and nameless bigot of the Great Peninsula to show on her face, in the present circumstances.

Right, uh...

'Be proactive. Sit back only if people need time to adjust.'

"Hello!" Nyrkatess called. "Would anyone like a cleaning spell?"

It was encouraging that the children seemed anything but bored. Nyrkatess had worried that she and Villacqui might be underwhelming, compared to Suri.

"Is that the Goddess Language?" a boy wondered.

Nyrkatess blinked a few times, and a finger pressed to her lips.

"Ah! Yes, at the end!" she realized. Being inscribed with the Language felt bizarre. "I meant 'cleaning blessing.' If I touch you, I can make you clean!"

That opened the floodgates.

"Fix toys?!"

"What are those?"

"You're so pretty!"

"You talk funny!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Nyrkatess saw Villacqui covering a grin. Apparently, she found these children, and their easterner tendency to "schwa their vowels," as adorable as the ones living with Telf.

"One at a time!" Villacqui urged. "I'm Villacqui, and this is Nyrkatess."

Adults had caught up, now.

"I might be able to fix broken toys," Nyrkatess answered one of the questions. "As long as they're simple."

"But if it stopped working because it needs charging, you'll need to bring it to Suri," Villacqui added.

Nyrkatess nearly slapped her forehead.

"Ahhhhhhh! I see! I wasn't thinking about--Villacqui and I can't use magic toys, you know? It would seem like they're broken, wouldn't it?"

So, next was...

Nyrkatess raised her parasol off her shoulder, a little.

"These are called parasols. They're for shade, like that big sheet."

"Even Goddesses need shade?" a girl asked.

"Mmhmm! Before we came, Kennalaria--She's the Goddess of Beauty--She felt bad for us, since She dislikes muggy weather."

Some of the adults laughed.

"See? It's what we tell ya! You kids are crazy, wanting to be out in this heat!" an older man said.

Ignoring him, a girl around six or seven years old scurried up to Nyrkatess, holding out an enchanted item. It was a sculpture of a leaf with many little frogs on it.

"The frogs stopped squirting," she complained.

Nyrkatess took it from her. The item didn't seem to be damaged.

"It still works, but you'll need to ask Suri to charge it."

"You can't fix it?"

Nyrkatess shook her head.

"Villacqui and I both have white power. Only blue power, like Suri's, can charge magic items," she explained.

"Why don't you show everyone what you can do?" Villacqui suggested. "Clean us up?"

Nyrkatess smirked, and gestured for her wife to stand. Without these indirect, deniable requests to be pampered, would Villacqui even be Villacqui?

'Appearances matter. Everything is effortless. When prudent, be theatrical.'

Nyrkatess made the mud on each golden boot vanish with the tap of a single finger, then did the same for Villacqui's knees, and her dress. Finally, she tapped Villacqui's nose. A head-to-toe layer of gross, sweaty dampness peeled away like the rind of a meysifruit, restoring Villacqui to the state she'd been in before going through the portal, and earning a sigh of relief.

After this display, the children were suddenly much more interested in those cleaning blessings she had offered. Being cleaned? Boring. Being cleaned like that? All but one wanted a turn, and Nyrkatess included complimentary clothing repairs. Each eagerly thrust their nose forward for that final tap, often mimicking Villacqui's sigh in a childishly melodramatic way.

Nyrkatess had always enjoyed gardening. Coaxing blossoms out of the dirt. Unveiling what potential had been hidden away, beneath the soil.

By the time she was done with them, any of the children could have passed for a member of a third-rank white lineage, lack of mana impression aside. The thought of some bigot seeing this scene and feeling insecure was satisfying.

But why didn't Kovi seem to want a turn? A man who must be his father had been crouching next to him, having a quiet conversation, while Nyrkatess worked through the others. Once she had finished, he rose to speak.

"I am Yonen," he said, bowing. "My son, Kovi--he's nervous, a little, because where we used to live, the false gods, and the supervisors--they wore fancy black clothing."

Nyrkatess looked down at herself, and wilted. Literally the first thing she could have botched, the very first thing she'd done on her own initiative after saying farewells, after promising to do her best to worry about everyone, not just Villacqui, and she'd spared not a single thought for how this outfit might appear to the eyes of a four-year-old from the Limbot domain.

'Let's go talk to people who were enslaved by the Limbots while dressed in all-black!' she mocked herself. 'What could possibly go wrong?!'

It wasn't like their wardrobe lacked alternatives. She could have picked something green, or ivory, but she'd been too twitterpated to consider anything but strutting around in black.

"Not even Telf foresaw this," Villacqui murmured, from Nyrkatess' shoulder. "Good thing we're a pair."

Pure gold from boots to parasol, the New Moon Goddess glided across the mud to Kovi and his father, with elegance capable of wresting involuntary gasps from the same sneering mouths that called her 'tainted.'

'Nyrkatess, wife to Villacqui.' How badly she wanted to scream it.

She could only hope that Menelyn would forgive her for momentarily entertaining the idea that she should ever wear anything but black.

----

"Hi Kovi," Villacqui cooed. "Is that your mother, coming over?"

Kovi glanced over his shoulder, and nodded.

"It looks like you're going to be a big brother soon!"

"In a couple of Moons!" the proud papa said.

"Congratulations! Let's head to your mother, to spare her the walk."

Yonen snorted, and Villacqui gave him a quizzical look.

"Sorry, it's--the idea of, of one of the fakes walking to Elli, so she doesn't need to..." He smiled a little, shrugged, and shook his head. "I can't picture it. You're all...it's even in the littlest things."

That wavy-haired girl dressed in red was so vivid in Villacqui's mind that she could practically see her, standing right there in the mud.

When they reached Kovi's mother, Villacqui gave the same precise bow as always, most recently when she had thanked Telf at the portal. As she did, the dangling of her crescent earrings gave her a little jolt of...pride-confidence-responsibility-focus. She couldn't help but wonder if perhaps that was intentional; Suri seemed like the type to consider such details.

"I am Villacqui, and that is Nyrkatess," she said, for Elli's benefit. "The Red Goddess told me about Kovi. I wanted to meet your family, and Nyrkatess agreed to come with me."

Villacqui smiled at Kovi, and pointed to her head.

"She likes to wear black clothes because she likes my hair. See how I'm dressed like her hair, too?"

Kovi looked over at Nyrkatess, now a few dozen paces away. There was a bit of commotion.

"Oh. I see," Villacqui could faintly hear Nyrkatess saying. "Very, very poisonous. Wow. But at least he has four legs. Let's...let's put him down over there. No, stay here--I'll be back."

Yonen and Elli were alarmed.

"There's no poison strong enough to hurt her," Villacqui assured them. Nyrkatess would be able to cleanse anything immediately.

Both seemed not entirely convinced, but nodded.

"They tried to take me," Kovi said quietly.

And they failed.

"When I was a little girl, about two or three years old, the false gods stole me from my parents, and I never saw them again." Kovi's parents gasped. "But look: I'm alright! Can you guess why?"

Kovi thought for a second. "The Goddesses?"

"Nyrkatess," Villacqui said, and pointed. "She saved me. She's not here to take you away. She's here because we want to talk to a lot of people, and I asked to come here first, because I wanted to meet you."

Villacqui waited, while Kovi processed what she had said.

"She looks so...shiny?"

Indeed, words didn't fit all that well onto the supernatural.

"Nyrkatess is very, very powerful, like the Sky Goddess," Villacqui explained. "To you and me, that makes her look extra white and shiny, especially at night."

"Not other people?"

"Only people like you and me."

Kovi hesitated.

"I look blue?" he murmured.

"Not to me. My eyes aren't sensitive enough. But I look a little white and shiny to Nyrkatess, and you look a little blue to her."

"...Papa says it's why I can't make the frogs squirt?"

Villacqui also heard what Kovi didn't say aloud: 'I wish I was normal.'

She took his hand, and at the cost of critical vessel strain, made the tip of one pinky nail as immaculate as her own.

"Right now, frogs squirt, for no one," she gasped, chest heaving. "Need charging. That, you, could do. Not, your friends."

Kovi stared at his pinky, then at Villacqui, then at Nyrkatess and the clump around her, then back at his pinky.

"You're, like me," Villacqui insisted. "Not, false gods. You, and I, are special, not freaks."

Nyrkatess noticed Kovi looking her way, and waved. When Kovi waved back, she interpreted it as permission to prance over.

"Villacqui! There was a frog, and people were all, you know," she mimed recoiling in terror, "so I thought, 'Come on, be a big girl, you can handle a frog!' But Villacqui--My hands, they're still numb and--but I did it! I moved the frog!"

Nyrkatess concluded her hyperspeed story and awaited Villacqui's praise, puffed up with pride, with both numbed hands clutching weakly at the parasol resting on her shoulder.

"I could never have dared," Villacqui said, and that was the truth. "That was a good job!"

"Hm-hmm!" Nyrkatess hummed smugly. Leaning in, she dropped her cheerfulness, and murmured, "Seriously, don't touch the frogs."

Villacqui hadn't been planning on it.

"So, Kovi! Did you want to ask what you look like to Nyrkatess?"

Nyrkatess beamed at him, causing Villacqui to wonder how bright that smile looked to non-mages.

"Marvelous blue highlights," Nyrkatess confirmed. "It's like your hair and eyes, when they catch the light just right, flash blue for an instant. Original blue power, all your own! Did Villacqui tell you that your vessel needs to be awakened?"

Naturally, Kovi and his parents had no idea what she was talking about. Nyrkatess explained the process.

"...I could make the frogs work?" Kovi asked.

Nyrkatess held up her thumb and index finger, very close together.

"A little at a time. You're about the same strength as Villacqui." She pointed to his cleaned pinky nail. "Lucky! She doesn't use her power often! How about I do the rest?"

Tap-tap-tap, and he was almost fit for a ballroom.

"So, if you choose to have your vessel awakened, there's no going back. You would need to learn how to control your power, so you don't hurt yourself," Nyrkatess told him. "But you see that flower, over there?"

Nyrkatess had picked out a large, blue specimen near the edge of the clearing.

"Blooming so beautifully isn't easy, and some of the other flowers could be mean, if they're envious of how marvelous those petals are. It would surely have been easier, to stay hidden in a seed below the ground. But how sad that would be! If that flower had chosen not to bloom, if it hadn't done its best to be as marvelous as possible, the forest would be one blossom short, and we wouldn't be able to admire it, here, right now."

Once upon a time, Villacqui had hated that she'd been born with a vessel, but lying in bed on the first night, she'd thought, 'maybe being like her wouldn't be so bad.'

"Every flower ought to bloom, and not just bloom. Every flower should try to be the best possible version of itself. And anybody who would trample on a flower, or make fun of it, or tell it to hide its petals, or say that it doesn't deserve to try, or that it's not an illustrious cultivar--they go on my list of people I don't like very much. Hmph."

Villacqui needed to bite her lip to keep herself from pointing and bragging, 'that's my wife!'

Nyrkatess turned toward Kovi's mother, and mimicked Villacqui's practiced little bow.

"My Teacher recently taught me how to heal burn scars, and I would be grateful if you would allow me to try to heal yours? Only She could do it perfectly, but I can promise that nothing I do would be harmful."

"O-Of course," Elli stammered. "A lot of people from our old home have burns, too."

"I've heard of one other," Nyrkatess replied. "Thank you. I can check on your baby, too."

She laid a hand on one of Elli's scars, and her brow furrowed in concentration. Eventually, she grimaced.

"Your daughter has pulmonary at--. Er, that's--There's a problem with her heart that will take me a long time to fix. Can we go inside?"