The Sea is Full of Stars

Amboran Embassy, South Zone

the grand high priestess seemed even more saintly yet powerful in this strange place than back in Ambora.

“Well, child, I see you still have that holy glow about you,” she commented as Jaysu stood and bowed and kissed the older woman’s rings.

“I am embarrassed by it, Grandmother,” she responded humbly. “I do not think I am special compared to all others.”

“Oh, but you are, child! In such a short time of study you have achieved what few in our Holy Order have ever achieved in a lifetime. Your Mother was one of the finest of our sacred calling, yet she never attained it and it drained her. In the end, though, while unable to achieve it herself, she saw that potential in you. Do you remember her last kiss?”

“Yes, Grandmother, but I do not see—”

“No, let me explain. It might have appeared that she gave you something, something that shriveled her in the giving, but that was not what she did. Instead, what she did was take from you.”

“Take? What would she take from me at the moment of her passing?”

“Everything impure still within you. You had far less than most due to your origins, so it was possible. No one else has a low enough quantity, at least in this life, to be able to have it all removed, nor the innocence and total surrender to faith that would be required of them. You did. As you grow and meditate and let it develop, it will become a great power within you, a power that only your purity could wield, and a power one of your purity and innocence can’t wield.”

She was totally confused. “I—I am sorry, Grandmother.

You seem to be saying what cannot possibly be true. That I am without sin or corruption.”

“I believe that was your Mother’s gift to you, yes. Do not strain. You could not sin if you tried. It is best not to think on it too much because you have no way to compare. But I believe you are the only pure one on this entire world, and that the power this represents within you is a power that nothing can withstand. Again, do not search for the power or how to use it. It does not work that way. It will simply— work. You are still evolving to the highest form. I have no idea what it will be like when it is done, but it will be done. It will frighten some people, awe others. I admit to a bit of both myself.”

“Grandmother! I swear to you that you need not ever fear me!”

“That is not the kind of fear I mean. Well, we will see, and so will you. I do wonder, though, if we are not jeopardizing the most wonderful and wondrous thing ever to happen to our race by having you here, threat or no threat.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose we must discover soon enough which is stronger.”

Jaysu still didn’t understand much of what the Grand High Priestess was saying, but she did understand that it was supposed to be something good in a world clearly heading into nastiness, and she was happy for that even if it did seem misplaced.

Standing before the mirror in the old ambassador’s quarters, though, she did see the physical changes. Those couldn’t be denied. The snow-white wings were so much grander than her old ones, but they did not fold as neatly because of that which was an irritation. The hair, too, was billowing white, but her skin was a golden color that was, literally, radiant, and without any sort of blemish. She did not realize and could not think of herself this way, but to others of her race she was the absolute epitome of beauty, grace, and form.

In fact, she looked like a real angel…

Jaysu walked out into the main offices and down to the small gathering hall where they’d set up a large screen to show the proceedings from the larger but still very limited auditorium. There were many other Amborans about, mostly High Priestess ranks but even a couple of males who were there as trade and political attaches, and she felt their gaze and saw them shrink back a bit from her. She was sad about that; she wanted to be their friend. (This glow of hers was an off-putting attribute, she thought, not realizing that this wasn’t what was causing the reaction to her.)

The Ambassador was at the front, standing before a podium and staring at the screen. She had a cup of golden wine for her possible thirst, but at the moment was watching what flashed on the screen and making notes on a pad in front of her on the podium.

Jaysu looked over the old one’s shoulder, wishing she could read the notes, not to eavesdrop but to have the ability.

And, almost as soon as the thought came to her, she could! It wasn’t as if the notes assembled themselves into understandable words and phrases, she just knew what was written. She looked up at the screen, and at the scratches beneath the person who was talking, who resembled a large humanoid weed with a giant leaf on its head, and the scratches were gone, replaced with Doctor Varada 237A, Political Science, Czill Center.

She knew after arriving here of the strange little devices called translators that were implanted in a chosen few, including all the ambassadors, but she didn’t think they worked with writing, and she didn’t have one anyway.

But she could understand what was being said. Well, she could hear the words as if they were spoken in Amboran, anyway. The sense of it was something else again, and that didn’t come intuitively, at least not yet.

“… Just how Josich was able to integrate so completely and so quickly with just the right warlord at just the right moment we may never know, but we are faced with the fact of it. Since we have had few conquerors in the recorded history of the Well World, we have little to go on in any event, but the others were all apparently home grown, although some reprocessed individuals have become involved in various movements in the past as advisers or even warriors. Never before as a leader and catalyst, though. As to what sort of conqueror we have here, we do not need to extrapolate from Chalidangian history and sociology, nor would it be totally appropriate when dealing with this sort of individual. Fortunately, we’ve had others arrive from the same sector of the same galaxy who had quite specific knowledge of this very Josich and his family. We can, therefore, extrapolate a pattern from a previous attempt to do the same thing on a more, er, interstellar scale.”

Jaysu turned away, marveling at being able to read and understand such things, but finding him both confusing and boring. She knew there was someone of pure evil who was killing and enslaving many somewhere, and that this was a gathering of all the races in the region that might come face-to-face with it at some time, but that was about it, and it was all she wanted to know. Evil was present to test the mortal for worthiness and to allow for mortals to freely choose the correct or the incorrect path to immortality. Warriors fought wars, and priestesses fought on a different plane, against the evil spirits behind it all.

She still wasn’t sure what she was doing here. “Requested,” Grandmother had said, but requested by whom? Nobody in the embassy, that was for sure. Nobody here seemed comfortable around her. She longed to be back in Ambora among her own clan and with her own priestesses. This was an ordeal; until now she’d never realized just how horrible an existence this was, and she had new respect for the Grand High Priestess and the others who lived and worked here all or most of the time. No fresh air, no mountains or sea, no birds and insects and gentle breezes and great storms that freshened the air and watered the soil. This city and its gathering places might be necessary, but it was no way to live.

She wanted to go home!