Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction ❯ Trial By Tenderness ❯ Part 12 - Tangents ( Chapter 12 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Part 12: Tangents



The howling wind stamped through the courtyard as the first big summer thunderstorm vented its rage. Before the last class of the day at N.I.T., I sensed that the hot muggy May afternoon possessed all the telltale signs of an impending storm, not to mention the impressive cumulonimbus clouds perched on the horizon like a glaring giant. Walking home, I marveled as the twilight sun underlit pink pouches of mammanoform clouds, creating an unusual skyscape of soft bubblings. An hour later, my bedroom room resounded with the crisp sound of rainsheets pattering against the wooden walls and jalousied windows. Several times, the overhead fanlights and lamp flickered as loud jolts of thunder crashed into my eardrums. The paper in the shoji sliding door crinkled with each gust, despite the tightly fastened windows.
Urd was seated on a zabuton cushion next to me, ready for another session of tutelage, so I could make sense of the ancient tome that was bequeathed to me.
Why she waited until today, during *this storm*, was a mystery. The tempest was going off with an unsettling intensity....and my concentration became more unfocused with each peal of sound-chasing lightning strikes.
"Urd, why wait until *now* to do this? Do you know how hard it is to study during a storm?" I wondered aloud.
"For a mortal...yes. But not for me...I *like* these kind of storms. They unsettle the brine of an otherwise boring, humid, season. But I didn't think it would bother *you* so much!" she answered.
"Well...it does!" I exclaimed.
"Cevn, I decided to wait a few days. I just wanted to make sure that your eyes could handle the strain of reading," Urd explained with a wink.
"If my eyes could stand the strain of having to look at you, then they must be okay!" I thought, struggling to check my temper. Then I appreciated the gap between thought and mouth...if I had said what I was thinking out loud, Urd would have interpreted it *way* differently; at total odds to the spirit in which it was intended.
Then I realized what she had *really* said...
Once more Urd had surprised me by being considerate instead of selfish. She didn't seem too ardent with the prospect of having to explain each section to me. I couldn't fault her for this reserve. For my part, I was uncertain about the task of having to try and apprehend divine knowledge. Philosophers had coined a term a millennium ago, homeoorotepeanea, to describe the inadequacies of the human mental capacity when faced with comprehending the mind of God. Now, I was about to embark on such an adventure.
It felt odd, this sudden transition from teacher to student. I had returned to my teaching role at N.I.T. several weeks ago. Dr. Kintaro personally welcomed me back; stating perfunctorily that everyone was worried about "N.I.T.'s youngest and newest faculty member." I was considered a faculty member because I wasn't just a N.I.T. grad student doing teaching assistant work...
"Cevn! Pay attention! I'm not going to waste my time tutoring you if you can't keep focused!" Urd chastened me with a scowl, reining my mind back in from its meandering.
"Well excuse me, ma'am! This storm is totally goofing up my concentration," I snapped back mock-formally.
"There you go again, making excuses! I suppose *I'm* the real problem?" she wordcurled, fluffing her hair with a practiced motion and looking at me seductively. She hovered close to me, pursing her lips as she leaned in until her face was inches away. I could smell traces of an exquisite perfume wafting from her neck.
"Urd...*don't*! You know that I'm sensitive enough around women, especially with...uh...attractive women like you!" I stammered nervously, my panic fueled by her proximity.
"Come again? Whaddya say, honey?" she said, smiling demurely as she cupped a hand to her ear. She had heard my little slip-o-the-tongue!
"Stop it! You don't need to make it even more uncomfortable for me--otherwise I'll never hear a single thing you try to teach me!" I quickly countered, trying to depower my embarrassment.
"Oh, I could teach you *a lot* of things, y'know! Why don't you just give it up and admit to me about *why* you are so squeamish around women? Especially attractive women...like myself! Better yet, why don't you just give 'it' up?" she taunted. "Remember...*you* said something about 'attractive', not I! Besides, I'm the Goddess of Love! Maybe I could help you fix whatever's wrong with you!" Or should I?" she offered.
Sincere or not, there was no way I would tell her. Once more, I was being told that I was "wrong" for having such a paranoid orientation towards women. This, in my esteem, was proof of her condescension and ignorance.
"Are you kidding? I wouldn't entrust you with my secrets if you were the last person..er..Goddess on the planet! I barely know you, and...you have this reputation of turning things around on people," I replied with a touch of intolerance. Urd flashed an indignant shade of red at this.
"You must be suffering short-term memory loss! Remember six weeks ago when *somebody* operated on you for a whole day and restored your eyesight! Or have you forgotten already?" she snapped as she pulled back away from me in a huff.
"Look...Urd, I don't mean to be unappreciative of that! You have no idea how obliged I feel towards you and Skuld! This in itself is a scary concept...because there's nothing I can do to repay you. I mean, I can't offer anything that you can't already do for yourself...except maybe provide you with some kind of perverse amusement," I reflected, telltaleing my inadequacies.
"You? Amuse me? Give me a break!" she said, looking at me with a curious face.
How could I explain myself to her? I tried to simplify it.
"Urd, there is a big difference between sharing my innermost pain and losses with you...versus being a helpless patient who needs a miracle. I don't think there is a miracle that can heal what is inside of me," I said, expressing my hopelessness.
She looked at me and shook her head sadly as I continued.
"I have to get to know someone *a lot* better before I can talk to them about that kind of stuff. There are always several sides of the story: what I feel, what I think...and what is my truth. But, I need someone who help me get to *the* truth. *My* truth is constantly subject to revision. I've had too many betrayals in the past...so I've learned to practice discretion," I finished explaining.
"Well, I *am* going to find out anyway, one way or another!" Urd said in a chafed voice. I felt totally threatened by that misgoverned observation. My insides felt like they were being turned inside out; my feelings exposed to the view of any casual observer. My breathing quickened in pace as my anxiety crashed the floodgates of my restraint. I stood up abruptly, ready to bolt. I just wanted to get away from the threat. From Urd.
"Urd, leave my privacy alone! If you're so interested in personal hells, why don't you and Mara go have a chat," I slashed aloud impulsively as I backed away from her and stalked out of the room. I dashed through the living room and opened the doorway to the porch. Keiichi and Belldandy looked at me in surprise as I stormed by them.
"They must think that I'm being crazy again," I thought. I shut the door and stood out on the front porch, listening to the soundscape of the heavy rains. Keiichi slid the front door open partway and asked me if I was all right.
"Yes, as far as someone can be...someone whose heart has been torched to a cinder by the flames of abuse!" I answered back dejectedly with a hint of irritation. Keiichi looked at me, unable to fathom my cryptic response. I noticed this, and tried to assure him that I was okay.
"Hey, it's okay, K-1! I just need to spend some time by myself and calm down. You know. Urd!" I explained. He smiled at me and asked me if I was planning on getting soaked.
"I'll set an umbrella out for you, just in case it gets really windy. By the way, Megumi and I are going to spend the weekend at home with our folks. You sure you can handle being alone with these three?" he said with a wink.
"Yeah, if someone puts electrical tape over Urd's mouth!" I jested. We both laughed at this.
"Geez...thanks for throwing me to the tigers, Keiichi. Er...I mean *a* tiger. Or is that tigress?"
"Are you referring to Skuld or Urd?" he quipped.
"Actually *your* girlfriend!" I teased back.
"Ehhh?" he said, then laughed when I shook my head "no".
"The way it's been raining, you might not have to be the sole mortal domestic here. There's no way we can drive through this rain!" he said with obvious disappointment as he walked back in the house.
My mood took a downhill turn too. I really didn't care about getting wet; in fact I wanted to run out into the storm and scream.
"This happens every time!" I perjured to myself in disappointment.
"Every time a woman tries to spend any time around me and wants to know me better, my sensibilities precariate like a plains gazelle being chased by a panther. I always flee...or I drive her away," I exclaimed in frustration. The old memories tuned themselves to my lament; I recalled all the others who thought that my avoidance of women was "weird", who had often questioned my sexual orientation. Many times, I had been accused of being gay because of my tentativeness around women; unmanly in the eyes of others. Especially the machoman types. If they only knew how much I wanted to be in love or have a girlfriend!
I knew full well what was fueling my anxiety. Irrevocable years of childhood sexual abuse. Not to mention the engirded pain resulting from the loss of the woman that I loved completely. But there was nothing I could do...but perplex with greater pain, despite years of therapy. I started feeling depressed as the old identity of being crippled inside once more asserted itself. I felt like a whole part of my identity had been walled off from me: completely inaccessible despite my best efforts.
The worst part was I *liked* Urd in some intangible sort of way. I knew that there was no way that a Goddess would deign me as eligible for her affections. So romance was obviously out. Yet, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Like the Death spirit of ancient Persia; who was so beautiful that when men beheld her, their breath was sucked out of them...and then they died.
Urd was like this...and more. I knew that she was unattainable; she was an idol star while I was the trash man. All I could hope for was to cross her path.
Touching lives, but never intersecting...
I argued with myself. I didn't have a crush on Urd, so to speak; but I definitely felt *something* a-stir when I was around her. My own feelings betrayed me with even more fear.
But what was even more attractive about Urd was her multifaceted personality. She was so many things *at once*. For each defect of character, she had a corresponding asset. I secretly wished that she could discover that her defective characteristics were actually just coverups for her positive attributes. Her stubbornness was actually just a distortion of perseverance. Her impulsivity was actually just an overamplification of carpe diem.
"She's a lot like me, before I found recovery," I reflected. Then I felt disappointment again; all these years of recovery...and my uncertainties still won me over to the hell of loneliness.
"Why do I always feel one way and act the complete opposite? If I would like her to be my friend, why can't I just try and trust her, instead of fighting her off?" I tried to shrug out my thinking because my emotions were spiraling in vectors.
I heard the front door to the temple slide open behind me. I was entranced with the rain streamlets coursing off of the eaves, falling in straight and flaxen lines to the ground just in front of the wooden porch. It was raining so hard that the other buildings in the temple complex were obscured. The city lights were a faint orange glow, diffused in the cloud-rain. I sensed that someone was standing next to me, watching the rain. The rain soothed my heart and helped me regain my serendipity.
After several moments I heard Urd's voice.
"Cevn...I'm sorry," she said softly. She stepped closer to stand beside me. I almost sidestepped away from her in reaction...
We stood silently watching the rain.
"Why is she doing this?" I anxiously wondered. I fought with myself, wanting to simply walk away and leave her. Or maybe she would leave, which would disguise my evasive inclinations.
But she stayed, and after some minutes of emotional battling, I turned and looked at her. I wordlessly peered into her light emerald eyes, watching her emotions play across them. She seemed to pierce a part of me with her soft-hard expression. I realized that this apology was out of character for the prideful Urd. It definitely merited a complement of some kind.
"Urd, I really appreciate that," I thanked her sincerely. She seemed to gather herself, still looking at me in the eyes.
"Cevn, I don't mean to be so pushy. I just...have never met a guy like you. Most mortal men act like nothing could ever bother them! Especially women!
"And Gods? Well, I could tell you all sorts of stories about prideful Gods and divine arrogance! I've come around...to just expect the male half of the Multiverse to behave confidently around women," she disclosed.
"But you...you obviously aren't confident," she concluded.
I heard this and hung my head. This speech rang rich with familiarity. I had heard it dozens of times, from dozens of women. They might as well be saying, "you're not a *real* man!" It was always the same...always humiliating in a shamebursting way.
I started to turn away and Urd noticed my reaction. She reached and rubbed my arm lightly. I instinctively shrugged her hand off.
"I didn't mean to question your manhood, Cevn. I think you're a really great guy. Really! It's just that I'm not used to someone who is as...real...as you are. I know that you must have had something dreadful happen in the past. And I've never been in a position to have to, you know, deal with someone with that kind of past," she admitted.
"Bullshit!" was my initial mental reaction. "She's only seen the lives of a hundred or so billion people, now concealed in death's timeless nights. Not to exclude the fact that she's a Goddess!"
Yet, I eased into a fleeting comfort in response to her awkward attempt to explain and apologize. It amazed me that she was able to intuit my reaction. Urd sure could be empathetic if she wanted to! For a moment, I warmed up to the idea that she might actually care.
I felt a little lightcrack of cheer shine on my soul.
"Let's leave my baggage here on the porch and go back to my room to check the book out, huh?" I said with a smile. We walked back to my room and started over.

* * * * * * * *

When the storm abated its fury, Urd opened the book to an early section and explained the God's Language portion to me. I was uncomfortably aware that I seemed to be able to identify parts of the symbolic language as she translated. Was it that 'extra' part of my intellect in action?
"This section describes the divine principle of 'infinite regression-nonlimited chaos-wassenterum-cyclical path'. These symbols have seven levels of context and the 49 potential interpretations all interlink at the prime numeric intersects. Thus, the gestalts are fluidic," she explained, pointing out symbols as if it was child's play.
Pseudogarten.
"Urd, let me try and make sense of it. If an infinite regression was supposedly viewed from a static noninfinite position, a point existing outside of its attributes, this position could instead interpret infinite attributions as acausally nonlimited rather than regressive, right? Then the concept of wassenterum would apply as a moral construct. That would imply that continuous chaos *could* have a moral index of some sort...thus, the moral implications must be interpreted in the context of being cylindrical, as in an asymptotic moebius. This would only limit it to two dimensions, a dualism. Yet, the seven levels of context for the symbols invert into the sets of prime and odd numbers. The 49 potentials," I interpreted with a dash of wild intuitive leaps.
"...must fold within themselves to yield voided-prime situations, whose dimensions are not cocile, but elastic...'fluidic' as you said. It is describing an attribute of the elemental properties that distinguish certain essences of the space-time continuum from Yggdrasil!" I concluded...my leap of thought rocketing into the mists of cognition. I looked to Urd, expecting the obvious criticism of my fallacious reasoning. Instead, Urd looked at me with obvious admiration and a hint of puzzlement.
"Cool! I don't know how, but you really understood it!" she exclaimed, sounding like her little sister. She turned away from me and stood up, seemingly in deep reflection.
"That's impossible...a mortal cannot possibly understand that! One of *us* would take several attempts to inculcate it. What's more, he extrapolated on his own that it had something to do with Yggdrasil! And I didn't mention *that* part!" she whispered to her self in an astonished voice. Loud enough for me to hear.
She shook her head with curiosity as she turned back to face me.
I felt a shading of fear at what I had just overheard. This strange capacity of mine that allowed me to 'know' obviously unknowable facts was at work again. It was like a new part of my mind was opening up...like a florette in the Ides of March. Yet, I felt an obvious mental strain while interpreting what she had translated.
I needed to call this heightened mental capacity *something*, so I decided to term it "metallect".
"Urd, is that symbol.." I pointed towards a squiggly thing in the middle of the page "...a representation of the fact that transneutrinos have weight in abstract and cosmogonical dimensions?"
She looked at me in surprise.
"*How* did you know that? It's an elementary concept...but you didn't wait for me to interpret it!" she asked, obviously discomfited by my apparent ability to read this symbol of the God's Language. She turned a few pages, quizzing me. I knew about half the symbols that she pointed out. She obviously enjoyed the question and answer game we were playing--praising me for correct answers and teasing me when I missed a symbol.
We spent the next half-hour working on translating some parts of the book. Urd patiently explained to me some of the more abstract concepts that I didn't discern the first time through. The rainstorm diminished, then ceased; soon we heard Keiichi and Megumi leave the house in Megumi's car.
"This is amazing! By my guess--based on how you just performed during our little quiz--you seem to have a novitiate-level awareness of the God's Language. In other words, you would be halfway to Skuld's level!" Urd assessed me.
Skuld! The instant Urd mentioned her name, I flashed on how she and I had shared a day of captivity under Mara. During that time, Mara had tried to 'blend' us. I remembered drifting in the vast starpool of Skuld's feelings and thoughts. They were the complete opposite of what I experienced under Mara's mind, during her possession of me. Dark and light, malevolence and innocence. If I could remember what Skuld's mind was like when I joined it, then perhaps...
"Urd! I think I know what happened! Somehow, I retained some or all of Skuld's knowledge about the God's Language when Mara tried to combine us!" I said excitedly. I looked at Urd, feeling like a child seeking approval from an adult.
She looked into space with a thoughtful countenance, resting her hand under her chin. Then she pointed at me with faux dramatism.
"That has to explain it!" She started laughing, and I looked at her with a "what's so funny?" face. At this point, any humor was suspect; my emotions were askance about this situation. My mind was turning renegade on me, albeit in a positive way.
But renegade is renegade. Was my own mind...*mine*?
"Mara screwed up again, heh heh! By merging your thoughts with Skuld's, she..haha..opened the door for you to learn the God's Language. She's soooo inept at times! Looks like we received an unexpected benefit! You must have somehow tapped into Skuld's language acquisitions," she explained between giggles. I didn't share her lightness of mood.
"Urd, this is pretty scary! I mean, aren't mortals supposed to *lack* an understanding of the God's Language? What is happening to me? I'm playing music that you call the God's Music! Now I can read cryptic symbols you call the God's Language! What if I...? I..I think I'm losing it, Urd!" I said, gulled with alarm.
Not that I hadn't lost it before, but this was getting pretty out of control. My emotions raced from consternation to apprehension and back before I knew it. My own mind was being usurped...eclipsed by something new...something *different*!
"Whoa! Slow down a bit, honey! Has it occurred to you that all of this may be at the hands of the Almighty, for some purpose only He can understand?" she offered, trying to reduce my all-too-evident anxiety.
"How? And so what if it is? I already feel out of control enough without Kami-sama being added to it," I fretted. As soon as I said this, I remembered what the NA program had taught me about powerlessness. By admitting powerlessness, one begins to walk the pathway towards understanding what true power is all about. My weakness only conceals my strength. Surrender is letting go of the weight that drags on...and joining the winning side.
I checked my fears and closed my eyes, seeking the calm center inside of me. It was obvious that Urd was really trying hard to help me. I acknowledged this and decided to appeal to her.
"I'm definitely going to need help now. I don't just mean just with this Enigma Book...but with myself as well. I need to understand what is going on inside of me. Why my mind seems to be hyper intelligent sometimes.
"About the book...by understanding parts of it, I'm open to misinterpreting it. Plus, I still don't comprehend everything you're explaining to me unless I try to intuit it. I can't just rely on simply understanding what the book says, I need to seek but what it *means* for me. I hope you're ready to dish out more assistance than you might have bargained for," I said with humble solicitation.
"You think that I'm not going to help you, Cevn? Nnn nnh! I want you to learn. You need us to teach you. We Gods only undergo education for the most basic symbology, then we inculcate the rest during Prime through ThirdTier and then finish in Transcend Inculcations," Urd explained. As if I could understand what that meant. She must have noticed my confused expression, because she elaborated, "What I mean by 'inculcation' is that we directly induct gnosism and awareness of the Divine kind, which is considered cultivation as well as education. To compare with typical Earthrealm educational divisions...Prime through SecondTier's sorta like your K-12 grade school, ThirdTier's like frosh-senior college, while Transcend is like your graduate-post doctoral type university setup. It takes us 14 Decas, or 140,000 Earthrealm years to complete Inculcation, if we elect to finish a full Inculcation."
"Then it's hopeless from the start. I don't have 140 millennia, and I definitely don't have the intelligence of a Divine being as yourself!" I argued.
"You're going to need to *study*, Cevn, because you can't Inculcate," she explained.
"I'll do everything I can to help. But it's going to cost you in the end!" Urd said, making a sly face.
"Oh great! What does she have planned?" I thought as I turned to a new page and found a chart with a set of symbols.
"What are these, Urd? Why are they organized in a chart?" I observed the symbols and then an interpretation clarified.
"They're 'chaos-redirected fuzzy deductive-inversion set principle-non anattma defense tangents'," I said, satisfied with my definition. I looked at Urd for confirmation. She looked perplexed for a brief second...like she didn't have an answer to give me.
"Urd, what is *Vanagdrasil*?" I asked.
Her face registered an earthquake shock at my query. She asked me to repeat what I just asked her. I rephrased my question...and Urd looked at me with an even more stunned expression than before. She recovered quickly and smiled with affected innocence.
"It's nothing important!" she said unobtrusively.
"What?! Just now, you looked like you were going to have the divine equivalent of a Goddess heart attack, Urd! Don't tell me that Vanagdrasil is 'nothing important'! I don't buy it! Level with me, Urd!" I demanded. She floated up in the air suddenly.
"I..I have to go! Seeya tomorrow!" she said, floating out of my room without so much as a backward glance or a good-bye.

* * * * * * * *

Belldandy and Skuld were discussing Urd's latest transgressions against Cevn and the recent "bear in the woods" episode, when the subject of their dialoguing entered the room. Belldandy looked at Skuld, who nodded her head. Skuld noted contentedly that Urd was very distressed about something.
"Good! Maybe you figured out how screwed up your recent actions were, sis!" she thought to herself emphatically.
"Hey guys, I need to talk to you, like *right now*!" Urd said, her voice tremoloing with certain panic.
Belldandy looked at her older sister.
"Well that's good, because I've been meaning to talk to you too, Urd!" she replied.
"So you know?" Urd asked her sisters.
"Yes!" they both replied in unison.
"Whew!" Urd exhaled, feeling a huge burden being lifted off her back--she would be able to discuss this new development rationally with *someone*!
"By the way, Urd...what was in that canteen that you gave me to take on our camping trip?" Belldandy asked, her face fixed with a cross expression.
"Eeep!"
"Why does she have to bring this up *now*?" Urd thought, exasperated. She decided to ignore Bell's question.
"Well, Urd! Are you going to explain yourself to us?" Skuld asked sternly, hands on her hips.
"That's not important right now, you brat! I have to..."
"NOT IMPORTANT?!" Belldandy shouted.
"Do you realize that your latest attempt to dose us with some love potion almost forced Keiichi and I to have sex in the woods!" she said with disgust and anger. Skuld reacted to the part about sex with an expression that bordered on nausea. She felt a rising wrath against her older sister. *Both* of her older sisters. One for wanting a mortal man...in a mortal manner. The other for trying to make her desires come true...against her wishes. But her anger towards Belldandy was tempered...while her ire towards Urd rued unabated.
Belldandy had related to Skuld that Keiichi had told her that he wanted to wait until 'the right time' before bringing sex into their love. At that time, Skuld felt a new level of cautious respect for Keiichi when she heard this. Then Belldandy had told her about Urd's callous attempt to disrupt their chaste relationship. Skuld was angry at the betrayal by Urd.
"Urd, in the past, you've often said your job was to help me. But how can you be helping me when you try and force Keiichi and I into an area that neither of us are comfortable with in our relationship? Why are you so obsessed about our sex life?" Belldandy said accusingly.
Urd became defensive and tuned out her sisters.
She looked at Belldandy and felt sorrow for her younger sister. Bell was so uptight about the one thing that brings the most pleasure to mortals. Kami-sama *had* to load up sex with a profound ecstasy, otherwise the Earthrealm mortals would never pursue sexual reproduction. Of course, being a Goddess, Belldandy was capable of experiencing any form of pleasure in the Multiverse. Rumor had it that sex was right up there with Sharing.
But the real reason for Urd's interest was curiosity. Urd had never seen a Goddess and a mortal have a sexual encounter. She certainly hadn't experienced sex in her existence...and never would.
"God's don't have sex...they share totalities!" Urd observed, fondly remembering some of the Sharings she had had with her two ex-boyfriends. But something else bothered her. After living on the Earthrealm for over three years in a mortal form...mortal ways were starting to rub off on her. She was beginning to feel forbidden feelings of attraction towards men...one man in particular at the moment.
"This feeling has to be avoided at all costs!" Urd corrected herself. "I can't afford to feel an attraction towards anybody!" Once more she sadly reminded herself that she was the Norn of the Past. But being immersed in mortality had changed them all. This immersion justified why Skuld was assigned as an Earth Trainee, so that she could be exposed to mortality with all its gross and sublime temptations. This immersion also explained why Urd had been banished to Earth so many times in the past; she was still easily consumed by her appetitive nature.
Then she remembered why she had come in the room....
"...why don't you ever learn, Big Sister! If I..."
"But, I gotta talk to you about..." Urd interrupted Skuld.
"URD!" Belldandy warned, "Stop changing the subject! This isn't about *you* and what *you* want! This is about you being accountable for your actions! I was so upset about what you did...it took me *six* weeks to reach a state where I could confront you rationally! And I *knew* it was you that caused this mishap!"
Belldandy was momentarily confused about Urd's indifference; Urd seemed to think there was something more important than the matter at hand. Usually, Urd became belligerently defensive or evasive when this subject came up. Belldandy reviewed how many times Urd's sisterly attempts had ended in failure. This was getting to be an old game between the two of them, which added to her frustration with her older sister. Yet, Belldandy was sometimes inadvertantly amused with Urd's childish endeavors.
"Her behavior would be more appropriate at Skuld's level of maturity," she thought wryly, looking at both her sisters.
"What?" Urd asked testily, unnerved by Belldandy's sudden grin. She remembered what Kami-sama had said when He suspended her license. Belldandy had echoed that sentiment. Urd wanted to explain herself to her sisters, but she felt backed into a corner. So what she said instead was evasive.
"Everybody here has their quirky little attachments to the mortal way of life. Skuld's addicted to ice cream and mechas. You're fond of tea and knitting. I have sake...and you and Keiichi's love life. That's just how it *is*! If you and he would have made love during your camping escapade, you would be much better off...not to mention less bi..." She cut herself just short of saying "bitchy".
"Whoa!" she thought, picturing how Belldandy had gone off her rocker the last time Urd called her *that* word. Their house had lost a third of its roof *that* time!
The three sisters argued for several minutes, ignoring the knocking on their door. Urd insisted that she had been trying to 'help' Belldandy and Keiichi. Then she made the mistake of admitting that she was watching the two in the woods in her mini form.
"You did WHAT?! Urd, that's so...perverted!" Belldandy reacted with anger. She was absolutely livid now. Once more, Urd had completely disregarded her privacy! It seemed that Urd was unable to identify boundaries or apply common sense to situations. Belldandy was astonished when she tried to imagine Urd observing them in the forest. She couldn't even conceive of doing such a thing herself.
Then she felt embarrassed.
She blushed as a particular memory emerged...of her spying on Urd and the Cherry Blossom Spirit when she was just a little bit older than Skuld...
"Okay, so I guess we're even!" she thought reluctantly.
Urd saw Belldandy's crimson blush and flinched, expecting her sister to explode with rage.
"You always try and force things, Urd!" Skuld shouted. "But...I guess you really lucked out this time, because your potion saved Keiichi's life. I hope you think about what would have happened if the bear had come on them ten minutes later!" Skuld added with a visible shudder.
Urd paled at the thought. Once more, Skuld had leapt beyond brattiness to frosty analysis. Urd couldn't argue that point with her. Belldandy felt an icy chill run down her spine...she hadn't even considered *this* possibility!
"Thank you Lord!" she said under her breath. Then she leaned forward and fixed her sister with a stare. Belldandy stared right back.
"Urd, sometimes I think your purpose in my life is not to help me, but to teach me acceptance and forgiveness. You must understand, Keiichi and I *will* become sexual in the mortal fashion...someday. That's a given." Belldandy said, smiling inwardly at the thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Skuld making a face of disgust.
"When we do, I *might* just tell you about it. When and how that happens, however, is up to the *two of us*! Not to you...not to anyone else! I would suggest that you reflect on the fact that it is quite evident that the so-called Ultimate Force is purposefully preventing you from causing me or Keiichi to make changes in how we are together," she explained, reaching the end of her patience.
"I can understand that your limitation as Goddess of the Past forces you to only be an onlooker, but..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, Belldandy! I get so sick of this 'Goddess of the Past' garbage! At least I'm doing it out of what I think is best for my younger sister! Even if she doesn't care about *me*!" Urd replied, shifting from defensiveness to bitterness to tenderness in a flash.
Belldandy's anger withered away at Urd's raw admission. She knew that Urd's motives were sincere and coming from a place of love most of the time; even if the way she manifested them into action was totally lunatic. Urd was saying that she was trying to create a sexual bond between her and Keiichi...for *her*! Belldandy felt herself flowing into the familiar warmth of Urd's protective feelings towards her as elder sister.
"Just like I feel towards Skuld sometimes," Belldandy recognized the trait in herself. Her heart responded with pardon.
"Well, once more, all is forgiven, Urd! But you must be more careful!" Belldandy said charitably.
"And *much* more honest!" Skuld said less-than-charitably. Urd reached over and pulled on the youngest Goddess's nose.
"Gotchya!" she said. Skuld unsheathed her mallet and playfully swiped at Urd with it.

***Knock knock!***

"Hey, someone's knocking," Urd said.
"Duhh!" Skuld commented, making a screwing motion near her temple with two fingers.
Belldandy slid the door open to see Cevn standing in the hallway. He looked pretty anxious about something. Just then, Urd remembered why she came in the first place.
"You guys..." she said in an announcement voice.
"Hey, I need to talk to you about something!" Cevn said worriedly. Urd motioned Cevn to be quiet with a downward motion of her hands.
"That's why I came here in the first place to talk to you guys! I got to talk to you about something. In private! *Girl* things, Cevn, which I'm sure you don't want to hear about!" Urd fabricated as she pointed thumb-over-shoulder at him. She gently but firmly pushed Cevn out of the doorway and slid the door shut. With a flourish of her hands, she soundproofed their bedroom with a silence chamber spell, to keep him from prying out their secrets.
Cevn looked at the shut door with confusion.
Belldandy and Skuld were caught off-guard with this statement by Urd...and her extra precaution of sealing off the room's acoustics.
"At last, Urd's going to cop to why she is so interested in sex!" Skuld thought enthusiastically. "I gotta hear this!"
Belldandy looked at Urd with a worried face...she knew the heavy burden Urd had to carry with affairs of the heart. She was preparing herself for another intense session with a miserable Urd.
"You're not going to believe this! He knows the *God's Language*! And he mentioned *Vanagdrasil*!" Urd said, flinging her hands in a dramatic gesture. She watched calmly as her two sister's faces registered deep shock.
"Hah! I *told* you it was important!" she reminded them with a triumphant tone to her voice.
Belldandy didn't believe her. It was so outrageous. *Too* outrageous. She felt her heart pounding in her breast with she bubbled over with anxiety and dismay. Skuld looked at Urd as if she was outright lying.
"Urd, that's a...heh heh! That is the most *stupid* lie I have ever heard you tell! And you've told some big ones...like all the 'special ways' to restore Goddess powers...which were all attempts to get Keiichi to do perverted things with Elder Sister!" Skuld accused, then laughed sassily at her.
Belldandy agreed with Skuld...but she had a reservation concealed within her own doubts about the veracity of Urd's statement. After all, there had been so much that was unusual about Cevn-san.
"But what if...?" she wondered for a moment. Yet...each Goddess had a protective program that would prevent them from sharing forbidden knowledge to a mortal.
"Our voices would literally shut off before we could speak about secret matters," she remembered.
"Urd, if he *does* know, you know we can't confirm it! We have to do everything in our power to prevent him from thinking that Vanagdrasil exists!" Belldandy stated gravely.
"You guys, he just said it out of the blue. He was reading that goofy book and then he just up and asked me about it. Just like it was nothing important! I was just as freaked out then...as you were just now!" she mentioned, hardly believing it herself.
"This is totally major!" Skuld said. "If he finds out..."
"Then the spiritual balance of the mortal world is at risk!" Belldandy completed Skuld's unspoken concern. She stood up and pulled Skuld to her feet, then the three walked down the hallway to Cevn's bedroom. Skuld almost wanted it to be true; a part of her was excited by every new discovery about her mortal friend.

* * * * * * * *

Inside, Cevn was reading the Enigma Book. Belldandy gave a start when she noticed he appeared to be *actually reading* it. Skuld sat on a round stool to watch with cool curiosity, while Belldandy stood and Urd floated.
"Cevn, what are you doing?" Belldandy asked.
"I'm trying to read this. Why did you go all of a sudden, Urd? And why did you kick me out of your room?" he asked.
"We had to have a little talk about your acquisition of the God's Language," Urd answered as she and Belldandy found pillows to sit on.
"You mean he can really read it?" Skuld said excitedly. "C'mon, read a selection for us!" she prompted him. In response, Cevn picked the passage that Urd had taught him earlier. He translated it, then explained it. Bell and Skuld were surprised at the accuracy of his explanation. Urd was still a bit amazed at this new talent her mortal charge was demonstrating.
"That's really very good, Cevn-san!" Belldandy praised him in a measured parental tone of voice, trying not to sound too concerned about the downside to his aptitude.
But she was *very* worried now...
"This is all your fault!" Cevn teased as he pointed to Skuld, who was looking at him with a prideful smile. He then explained how his mindmeld with Skuld had left him with a basic knowledge of the God's Language. Skuld reacted to this with a pleasant thrill...once more she had helped her new friend!
"Well, that's all fine-n-dandy!" said Urd impatiently. Then Cevn dropped the bombshell.
"What do you three Goddesses know about Vanagdrasil? And don't try to mislead me by pretending ignorance, because I *know* that you know!"
"You see, *that's* why I was so impatient to talk to you!!! And you both were busily accusing me of being selfish!" Urd said, looking at her sisters indignantly.
"You still are!" Skuld replied. She noticed that Belldandy had an introspective look to her eyes while Urd was still caught up in her righteous attitude. Skuld pulled on her hair and chewed it. She realized that she was feeling vicarious about Cevn's abilities...and was astonished when he confirmed in his question what Urd had mentioned earlier. She knew he wanted to know about Vanagdrasil.
"That's where *they* live!" she blurted out. Cevn looked at her with rapt curiosity.
"Hey, does anyone mind telling me what this is all about? I feel like I'm a lab rat about ready to be marched into a Skinner box," he asked. Skuld heard this and felt sorry for him...it must be hard to be a mortal *and* involved in all of this.
"Vanagdrasil is where the Demons come from. Where they live!" Skuld answered before anyone could interrupt her. Before she could interrupt herself.

***Dead silence***

Urd almost fell off of her levitating pillow. Belldandy had tried unsuccessfully to get Skuld's attention by waving her hands, hoping that Skuld would keep mum about the subject. She stopped in mid-wave and slowly lowered her arms in resignation. Skuld had been so excited that she had missed the fact that she had disclosed privileged information.
"*How* could she say that? The protective program should have taken her voice away..." both Urd and Belldandy asked in stereo, looking at each other with mystified expressions.
"Ooops!" Skuld said with a look of innocence, covering her mouth with a petite gloved hand. She smiled to herself at her little mistake...then she remembered the penalty for disclosing any information about Vanagdrasil to the mortals.
Her face blanched with fear and tears traced lines down her cheeks.
"Oh...NO!!! What have I done?! I totally totally screwed up! Do you think He heard?" she shouted with desperate trepidation. It was obvious that she didn't know about the prevention program because she had never been in contact with prohibited information.
"*Somehow* she must have learned about Vanagdrasil!" Belldandy observed to Urd.
"Yeah...I hacked into the protected information subsystem of the Yggdrasil Mainframe and learned all about it! And you guys just think I'm some little girl who can't do anything on her own!" Skuld said with a momentary flaring of pride.
"Well, now that *someone* has potentially got her license suspended by revealing secret information," Urd said with her hands on her hips, "...we need to ascertain how *he* found out about it!"
Urd was definitely feeling a harrier mood come over her. She possessed a slight sadistic streak now and then towards Skuld. But after being sounded out by Bell and Skuld earlier in the evening, Urd was more than a little surly. Besides, as the eldest, she knew, more than anyone else, how grossly irresponsible Skuld had been by revealing the secret nature of Vanagdrasil. She looked at Skuld with a half-smile, half-scowl.
Belldandy went over to console her younger sister, who was crying with despair.
"That was a big mistake, Skuld! How could you forget? You must have also known that it's prohibited to speak of Vanagdrasil in the presence of any mortals, right? she asked, torn between sympathy for her sister and concern about the repercussions that could result from the grievous breach of regulations Skuld had just committed.
"I...I just wanted...snff...to help everyone! Waahhh! Why can't I just *help* once in a while?" Skuld stammered through her tears. Urd looked at her youngest sister and unexpectedly dropped her vicious regard when she realized how *upset* Skuld was. Skuld had the panic-stricken expression of a cornered rabbit facing down a tiger.
Urd reminded herself that Skuld was very young...and right now, a *very* frightened child. Even if she wouldn't admit to the 'child' part at the moment.
"Oh Skuld, my poor sister!" she said with sympathy as she hugged Skuld. Belldandy looked at Urd and mouthed a single word.
"Prometheus..."
Urd went pale as she remembered the one of the more renowned incidents when a God had done what Skuld just did. Prometheus had received eternal torture for prematurely revealing the secret of fire to the ape-mortals. This had resulted in the extinction of the Neanderthals, and threw back evolution scores of millennia. Needless to say, the Lord was *very* pissed off...
"What'd she do? What'd she do?" Cevn asked with a worried expression. Confused, he had been a passive observer to the drama...but the force of Skuld's heavyhearted exertions had elicited a reaction of strong concern for the youngest Goddess.
The three seemed to ignore him.
"Belldandy, Skuld!" Urd called their attention. "He was reading this page when he figured out about Vanagdrasil!" she said as she pointed to a page in the book.
Skuld followed her finger, and saw the page Urd was pointing at. She suddenly lost the impulse to cry as her mind clicked in...she recognized two of the symbols on the page. She had seen them in Mara's lair when she tried to commit the shapes of the Demon's Language symbols to memory. She didn't have a clue as to what they meant, but she *knew* what they were. They were definitely evil.
"You guys! I saw these symbols in Mara's lair. Mara was using them to make some kind of mandala! They're part of the *Demon's Language*!" Skuld announced, hoping her insight would redeem her in the face of the possible forthcoming call from the Almighty.
Belldandy pored over the page. There was nothing on it that she could recognize.
"Is she going to be okay?" Cevn kept insisting about Skuld. They ignored him.
"TELL ME!" he shouted.
"She'll probably get her license suspended," Urd answered, trying optimistically to avoid mentioning the worst-case scenario. Which was the only scenario, as far as history was concerned. Each incident had resulted in a horrible retribution from the Lord. She shuddered at the thought, then tried to lighten the mood.
"If that happens, at least I won't be the only one dealing with a handicap around here!" Urd offered, feeling somewhat relieved with the thought that Skuld might get off lightly.
This statement brought a downcast look to Skuld's face.
"Skuld?" Cevn asked. "I don't know what a license suspension entails, but I do know that you were courageous enough to put your captivity to good use and learn some of these symbols," he said, hoping that a compliment would take some of the edge off of her despondency. It did the trick, because Skuld broke out a little smile, the first one since her little 'slip'.
"You see this page? We know that it's written in the Demon's Language...thanks to Skuld. If I'm interpreting this correctly, it's an 'energy matrix delimiter for the stable-chaos regulation of cybernetic ontogeny' of the defense subsystem of the Vanagdrasil Mainframe!" he explained. Belldandy looked up sharply from the book.
"*They* have a Mainframe? How do you know that?" Urd asked, clearly overawed by his statement.
"How *could* you know that?" Belldandy wondered inwardly. Cevn looked at her, then Urd, then Skuld.
"I don't know, but my guess is that I learned it the same way I 'borrowed' my awareness of the God's Language from Skuld."
"How's that?" Urd asked with deep curiosity.
"I don't want you guys to think I'm a Demon if I say this...but I was possessed by Mara when she kidnapped Skuld. I have this new knowledge in my head, or maybe my whole being." he said, referring to his recently acquired 'metallect'.
"*What if* I 'borrowed' a working knowledge of the Demon's Language from that experience, the same was I did when I was merged with Skuld's mind?" he hypothesized aloud.
"Makes sense," said Belldandy. She was feverishly conflicted between trying to comprehend what this meant for all of them and her huge concern for Skuld. No God or Goddess had ever been able to understand the Demon's Language. It was rumored that the Almighty could only recognize a very few limited symbols and concepts. But other than that, zilch.
Now Cevn shows up, courtesy of Urd. A mortal who can recognize both Languages. She was confounded by the concept; because the realms of the Gods and the Demons were mutually exclusive...almost *totally* segregated. All that was allowed by the Ultimate Force was brief contacts between Gods and Demons on neutral grounds such as the mortal's Earth-plane. The UF had arranged for the brief series of contacts between each God and his or her Demonic Doublets. And there was the virtual tournaments between Gods and Demons...an attempt to channel the combative instincts of both sets of divines. Any other interactions came within the pretext of War; this had to be ratified by the collective Assembly.
Gods and Demons didn't know each other's languages. Gods and Demons could never visit each other's realms. No one besides the Almighty had ever seen the Dark Lord. Any knowledge of the Demons was made available *only* by the whim of the Lord.
In all of her existence, Belldandy had no experience of the Demonic side of reality, except for the meetings she had with her Demon double, Velpser. And the heated competitions between her and Mara over mortal souls and the like.
"And the virtual games," she remembered, the old feeling of juvenile animosity momentarily resurging. She couldn't comprehend what it would be like to have any link between Gods and Demons in any other way.
"That's just the way it is!" she had thought with conviction. But now, there seemed to be a possible link. This could change everything. She looked at Urd and Skuld and recognized that they were also feeling very troubled by the fact that their long-held convictions were being challenged.

***Ring!***

"Uh-oh!" Belldandy thought.
Skuld jumped with a fullbody shudder, then cringed into a huddle as she heard each ring of the phone.
None of them wanted to answer *that* phone call, as they all knew what it meant. Finally, Belldandy gamely volunteered to answer it.
Skuld watched her sister leave the room, then turned to Urd and clung tightly to her oldest sister.
"As if you or anything else can protect me from His wrath, Big Sister!" Skuld thought with heavy despair. Still, it felt so comforting to try and hide in Urd's sisterly embrace.
"Yes?" Belldandy answered innocently, trying to sound like she didn't think anything was amiss.
"It is *I*!"
"Oh...my Lord, how can we serve you..."
"Cut the crap, Belldandy! Put Skuld on the line. Now!!! I'm really not in the mood for games. I'm *pissed*!" the irate Voice commanded. Belldandy felt a geyser of panic well up...she almost dropped the phone. She remembered the last time a God had violated the Vanagdrasil Prohibition. That God was simply swept from existence by Kami-sama. Gone forever. Banished down Urd's Well. It was rumored that he had become a Demon or even a mortal.
"Poor Mephestopolis," she thought. Terrified, she carefully put the phone down and went back into Cevn's room. She made the sign for "phone" with her hand and motioned for Skuld to answer it.
Skuld cowered, looked frightened out of sanity. She didn't want to leave the room and answer that phone!
"Skuld, you gotta answer it! It's the Lord, for chrissakes!" Urd said.
"You're already in enough trouble already, don't make matters worse!" pleaded Belldandy in a soft consoling voice.
"P...please, could you come with me?" said Skuld in a small little-girl voice. Bell and Urd closed on either side of her and escorted her into the living room. They set the phone on its side on the table, knelt tailor-style on the floor in the most humble aspect they could manage, bowed...and listened.
"Skuld, I have been notified by the Yggdrasil Mainframe Sysop Guild that you have violated one of our most sacred prohibitions. I am really disturbed by your actions! How did this come about? You aren't even *supposed* to know about Vanagdrasil!" said the booming Voice.
Urd tried to answer for Skuld, but Kami-sama cut her off.
"Silence, Urd! Skuld broke the regulation, *she* must be the one to explain!" He said forcefully. Urd was literally thrown backwards with the powerful ire in His voice.
Skuld was crying almost uncontrollably; Belldandy put a comforting hand on her trembling shoulder. She caught her breath and tried to explain the circumstances between sobbing fits.
"Well, I was..snff..just trying to help out Cevn, Urd's mortal charge. He was..snfff..reading the book Y..You sent him, and then he mentioned..snff.. V..V..Vanagdrasil to Urd, a..and..."
"Neh? What book? I didn't send down a book!" the Voice said uneasily.
Urd gasped.
It suddenly dawned on her, that previous discussion with the Almighty when He called to inform her of her own license suspension. He didn't know then, either! She felt deeply guilty that she had forgotten this important fact. If they had known...this whole episode might have been avoided. Urd felt a tear come to her eye as she blamed herself. She would have to admit her mistake.
*Another* one.
Urd reached out and pressed the mute button on the phone and whispered to her sisters in a low voice.
"You guys! When He called to inform me of my license suspension, I asked Him about the book. He doesn't know a thing about it! But I forgot about it...because I was so distraught about my license suspension! I'm sorry...this is all my fault!" she said with self-censure.
"That's okay, Urd, we'll deal with that later!" Belldandy answered, playing along because she didn't have a clue about what Urd was trying to say. She reached to turn the phone back on.
"Don't you cut Me off!" the Lord said vehemently, cutting her off in mid-reach. All three Goddesses flinched at the intensity of His displeasure.
In Cevn's eyes, they all were on their knees in formal attention position...just like Japanese samurai from the feudal period in the presence of the Shogun. Out of a pure desire to survive this interview, all three bowed low until their foreheads touched the tatami. Their attitude of humble respect spoke volumes.
"Their Lord must be something!" he thought, even more worried about Skuld.
"Continue!" the Almighty insisted after waiting a minute.
"I...I'm a..a..afraid...Your Eminence!" Skuld admitted, then cried some more. The impassive silence on the other end of the phone grew deafening. With great effort, Skuld concluded her explanation.
"This book..snff..that he has, it mentioned Vanagdrasil. Cevn asked about it and without thinking..snff..snff, I..I..I told him it was the home of the Demons!"
"Enough! This book you keep referring to...does not exist! It must be a fiction, a hallucination wrought within your minds. There is no such thing.
"Now...about your transgression. The mortals are never...NEVER, I repeat...supposed to know about the existence of Vanagdrasil and its connection to the Demon Hierarchy! Do you know why, Skuld?" the Lord said in a commanding voice.
Skuld looked down at her knees with fear.
"Because they are more prone to believe in the existence of our Demon counterparts. If they had any reliable evidence concerning the existence of Vanagdrasil, the Earthrealm mortals could fall into *madness*! What's more, it could upset the Balance. We represent what the mortals deem the highest good. They call us Gods, Angels, Benefactors, Preservers...they call our realm Heaven, Nirvana, Penglai and many other names. We must maintain the Balance!"
"YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!" He screamed over the phone so vehemently that all three Goddesses shook with each syllable.
After a pause He announced His decision.
"Skuld, Goddess Second Class, Limited. Because of your inexperience, I am reducing your sentence from total reality dispossession." Belldandy and Urd both sighed visibly with relief, as Skuld momentarily looked at them with a puzzled expression.
"She's in way over her head...she doesn't even know what she has been spared!" Belldandy realized as tears of gratitude filled her eyes. She had nearly lost her baby sister!
"Because of your callousness, your license is hereby totally revoked and suspended for an indefinite amount of time. In fact, consider it a *perpetual* license revocation, Skuld. We can only hope that the grave consequences of your revelation can be reduced by the Yggdrasil Mainframe. You've just diverted several *million* Sysops from their assigned routine duties...to fix *your* screw-up!"
Unnoticed by all, Cevn had been standing in the hallway, listening. After hearing Skuld's sentence, he felt a wash of bitterness towards the injustice granted to his young friend.
"What the hell, I might as well make Skuld my younger sister too!," he decided and walked into the room.
"Your...Holiness. How can You justify suspending Skuld's license when *You* just violated the same tenet?" he asked. All three Goddesses turned and looked at Cevn, astounded. They whispered "Shut up! Shut up!" to him.
"How could Cevn understand the spoken God's Language the Lord was using? It wasn't like He was speaking in Japanese or something," Belldandy thought in a panic. She quickly got up and tried to put her hand over his mouth, while Urd and Skuld looked like they were ready to faint from shock.
"That was...just some static in the line...my Lord!" Urd hurriedly explained. Cevn struggled with Belldandy and pushed her hand away.
"I heard everything You said! And *I'm* a mortal. In fact, You disclosed much more about Vanagdrasil than Skuld ever did!"
"WHO IS THAT!?" the Voice boomed over the phone.
Urd looked at Cevn with eyes that seemed to say, "it's your funeral!" She was shocked to the point where nothing made sense any more. She looked at her sisters, who were stupefied.
"He's as good as dead!" Urd muttered aloud.
"I'm Cevn...er...Mortal, Graduate Class! Remember me, the guy that You assigned to Urd?" His touch of humor in his introduction lifted Skuld's spirits enough that she managed a nervous titter, despite being overwhelmed by her license suspension.
Cevn turned accusatory. In his mind, this whole thing reeked of hypocrisy.
"I still want to know why You are so concerned about keeping this balance You keep talking about. It seems to me that *You're* out of balance, otherwise You would be praising Skuld for telling me the truth instead of yanking her license. What's more..."
"HOW DARE YOU!" the Voice shouted. Cevn ignored it. Belldandy mouthed to him, "Please shut up!"
"What's more, if there are guidelines, no one is above them. Not even You! Have You thought about what is going to happen if You strip Skuld of her license? That leaves only Belldandy to perform the role of three Goddesses. We've had some very bad experiences here with a Demoness called Mara lately. By revoking Skuld's license, You place all of us in a precipitous...actually a dangerous position."
"My decision stands! Who are you to question Me?!" the Voice shouted over the phone.
"If You're Kami-sama, then everyone should be able to question Your actions. To question authority. If not? Well, okay...be that way!" Cevn said with disappointment. He decided to go for broke.
"But You're going to hear me out! I just want You to know that You have to *live* the example in order to *teach* it! You cannot withhold yourself from taking responsibility; You need to admit Your own mistakes. If You don't, how can You expect others to do the same?"
"SILENCE!!!" the Voice on the phone commanded.
"Fine! Go ahead and fry me to a crisp! Turn me into a deaf-mute mandrill! Whatever! But I just want *You* to know...that there is no balance where there is hypocrisy! Harmony is the reprieve that withstands the most ill-committed injustices!" he shouted, then walked over and hung up the phone.
Urd fearfully expected it to be over any second. A lighting flash from above and Cevn would be reduced to a small pile of cinders on the floor. Skuld couldn't believe that Cevn had spoken to the Lord that way. Belldandy was almost paralyzed, looking at Cevn and back at the phone with incredulity. Cevn sat back down on the floor and leaned tiredly against the wall, his eyes closed, expecting the worst.

* * * * * * * *

After ten tense minutes of absolute silence, punctuated only by Skuld's sobbing, Urd spoke up.
"Well, I guess that's His answer!"
"I...can't believe you talked to Him like that! *We* can't even talk to Him like that!" Belldandy said, looking at Cevn with awe.
"He needed to hear that. Besides, He totally screwed up in the same sense that Skuld did...no offense intended, Skuld. Then He acted like a jerk and pulled her license. He *knew* that I had Him in a corner and He still wouldn't admit it! But forget about Him or me! What was really most important in my mind....was that Skuld needed a big brother to stand up for her," Cevn said intensely. Skuld looked at him with a flash of disgust, while Belldandy and Urd reacted with facefallen expressions.
"That's what big brothers do...they stand up for their younger sisters!" All three Goddesses looked at him with unreadable miens.
"Could this be what having a big brother is like?" Skuld thought to herself. "Cevn had defied the Lord in order to protect *me*!" Skuld tried her new powers, only to find that her suspended license was already in effect. She could only create tiny translucent words on the wall. She couldn't even levitate a pencil on the counter...
She felt a surge of disappointment. She had never been censured by the Almighty. Her clean record was ruined, she reflected with dismay. She felt that she was treated unjustly, even though she did make a mistake.
"Aren't mistakes supposed to be corrected, not punished? I didn't *mean* to do anything wrong...I was just trying to help!" she said resentfully. Yet she felt some satisfaction at Cevn's confrontation of the Lord. Even though he had failed to overturn her suspension, he had pointed out the contradiction in it. For some reason, she felt giddiness in the midst of the shock to her system. Skuld started giggling when she tried to imagine the Lord sitting up in Yggdrasil, fuming over being called out by a mere mortal.
"What...are...you laughing about, Skuld!" Urd asked.
"My little sister is turning into a nutcase, just my big sister Urd!" Belldandy exclaimed, feigning a private dismay. She tried to figure out what was the source of mirth that brought on Skuld's laughing fit.
"Don't you see...the Lord got pulled up, tee hee, on His own mistake. And He couldn't do anything about it!" she got out before succumbing to another fit of laughing. "Cevn had Him!"
Try as she might, Urd couldn't help but join in.
"Belldandy, don't you get it? Didya see how pissed off He got on the phone!" She imitated the Lord's voice. "'Who is this?'...'How dare you!'" then burst into bellylaughs. Cevn and Belldandy both thought Urd's mimic of the Lord was hilarious.
The giggling was contagious. Soon, all four were laughing. Urd slapped Cevn on the back, complementing him on "telling off the Lord." Skuld looked at Cevn with renewed respect and gratitude. Belldandy smiled at them all, feeling a secret joy on behalf of Skuld, then playfully tousled Cevn's long hair. Skuld tapped him several times on the head with her mallet, shouting "Bug! Bug in the system!"
"I don't know how, but you got away with it!" Belldandy said to Cevn. "Wait until I tell Keiichi about *this*!"
Skuld stopped laughing and turned to Cevn and in mock fashion, executed a very formal bow to him. This brought another round of laughter. Cevn responded by imitating the Lord's voice with sarcastic pomposity, then broke up with laughter at the end of his 'routine'.
"Just don't do it again!" Belldandy warned as the giddy levity wore down.
"Are you going to be okay, Skuld?" Cevn asked.
Skuld tied on a smile and nodded. Urd had watched with approval as Skuld thanked Cevn.
"It's about time she stopped being so uppity with mortal males," Urd noted quietly to herself. She had often thought about what it would be like for Skuld to have an older brother. Perhaps Cevn could provide that for her.
"I wish *I* could have him as a..." she thought, then halted her drifting whimsy. Smiling inwardly, she went back to the sister's bedroom. It had been a long night.
"Skuld's really going to need some TLC in the next few days, if she takes her license suspension as hard as I think she will," Urd told Belldandy before she retired for the night.

* * * * * * * *

"Do you know what the implications of Cevn's acquistion of the Demon's Language are? He could teach *us* the language! It would change *everything*!" Urd told her sisters, excited about this new development. She was trying desperately to keep Skuld's mind off of her suspended license.
Each sister was seated on her futon bed. Skuld had a blanket tightly wrapped around her; she was starting to feel very morose about her license suspension. Belldandy noticed how hard her little sister was taking the loss of her license.
"And her powers," Belldandy reminded herself. Skuld had a perfectionist streak in her, but she was still a child in many ways and could react with extreme sensitivity.
"I can't believe I *lost my license*! And I was just learning to use some of my powers..." Skuld said dejectedly. She had a blank expression on her face and a hollowness in her eyes that troubled Belldandy and Urd.
The phone rang again, and all three stiffened. Not another call from the Lord! They looked at each other...all were reluctant to take the call.
"I took the last call, it's *your* turn, Urd. Skuld's in no shape to answer the phone," Belldandy said.
"Why don't we wake up Cevn and have him take it," Urd suggested, as she was half-heartedly dreading picking up the phone.
"Very funny, Urd!" Belldandy said satirically. Urd looked at her sister with pleading eyes...and Belldandy sternly pointed at the door.
Urd picked up the dining room phone with a foreboding.
"Urd! What took you so long to answer? What's going on there? Damn, I must have let it ring 40 times!" an exasperated Keiichi said. "Where's Bell-chan?"
Urd sighed with relief. She briefly considered calling Belldandy to the phone without mentioning Keiichi, so that she would think it was the Lord wanting to talk to her.
"No, not even I'm that cruel!" she said to herself in a whisper.
"What?" the voice on the other end of the line said.
Urd went to the sister's bedroom and pointed to Belldandy.
"Keiichi."
Belldandy rushed to the phone, relief written all over her face. "Keiichi, what are you doing up this late?"
"Well, it's being here at my parent's house that's the problem. Megumi's asleep...and there's *nothing* to do here. I couldn't get to sleep, so I thought I would call. I really miss you, Bell-chan!"
"Oh, I miss you too!" Belldandy said with joy. She noted pleasantly that he had been gone only three hours...and he already missed her! She told him about all that had transpired that evening in the compound.
"Skuld got her license *suspended*! Holy shit...you can't be serious! I leave the house for one evening and chaos erupts over there!" he said with a mixture of concern and humor.
"I'm going to wake Megumi and come back home!"
"Keiichi...wait! Stay with your parents! If you leave now in the middle of the night, they might get worried. You don't want to cause them undue concern," she requested. Belldandy didn't want to become a wedge between Keiichi and his parents. She had decided this a long time ago, early in their relationship. She had never met his parents, because Keiichi was extremely apprehensive about revealing her existence to them. But she knew that they must be nice people...after all, Keiichi was a wonderful man!
"Hmmmm, okay! I guess you're right!" she heard him acquiesce.
"We'll take care of Skuld. She'll be okay once she gets used to her license suspension. We're keeping a very tight watch on her tonight," Belldandy offered, answering Keiichi's unasked question.
They exchanged kisses over the phone and wished each other a good night. Belldandy hung up and returned to her room.
Skuld was still awake, looking for all the world like a little lost girl. She was hugging her knees, pulling them to tight to her chest. Her shiny blackcat-colored hair was disheveled, and she was staring downward at nothing in particular. This neglect of her hair worried Belldandy, because Skuld was much more attentive to her hair than either she or Urd. She kneeled down near Skuld and heard soft sniffling. Looking into Skuld's face, she saw that her eyes were reddened from crying.
"Skuld, is there anything I can do?" Bell asked gently.
"I..I don't know! I..snff..don't really care, either. The Lord suspended my license. Nothing can..wasnff..change that!"
"But the important thing to consider now...is how *you're* going to live, Skuld. Your life isn't over just because your license was revoked. Look at Urd...she's had her license taken away many times and she's still sassy and spirited," Belldandy offered. Skuld looked up and rolled her eyes as her mouth formed a faint smile at the reference to her eldest sibling's long history of being chastised.
"Yeah, but I don't want to grow up to be like *her*! Besides, she still has Earth Spirit powers...I don't even have those!" she said.
"But you do. You must have some powers, otherwise you'd disappear. You just need to practice harder. And I know for a fact that you won't be like Urd. You'll grow up to be *you*! Just consider this as a...frizzed hard disk on the system, so to speak," Belldandy consoled.
Skuld was slowly feeling succored by Belldandy's kind and patient suggestions. She stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on her elbows. She knew that she could rely on her sister for an emotional boost. Belldandy talked with Skuld for as long as she could until she felt utterly exhausted.

* * * * * * * *

Once more, I couldn't sleep the whole night through. It was almost 4am. It seemed like I had gone to sleep just a few minutes ago, although it really was between 1 and 2am. I thought about the whole proceedings of the night before. I had been crazy enough to confront the Lord, the Being that the three Goddesses served.
I felt uneasy about Skuld. The moon illumned part of my room through my open windows, creating ghosted shadows of light. The air was cool after the rainstorm, and I had vented the jalousies to take advantage of this.
I wished I could do something for Skuld, something to take away just a little of the sting of her suspended license. I wracked my brains for a few minutes.
"They're Goddesses! How could I give them anything of value when they could just conjure it up?" I wondered. But finally, it occurred to what I might be able to do. I quietly slipped out of my bedroom and into my music studio room. I meditated for awhile, sensing in my soul images of Skuld's disappointment. The words "Trial by Tenderness" kept emerging in my thoughts. Then I tried to grasp the images of a happy young girl that I had experienced during our merged thoughts. They came to me, and I started playing one of my synthis...

* * * * * * * *

Skuld was sitting in her darkened bedroom. Save for a candle that was burning in the corner, the room was pitch black. Both of her sisters were asleep, softly breathing slow tides of dream. She was thankful for Belldandy, who had tried to stay up with her and cheer her up. She wished they were both still awake, so she could talk to them.
"But nothing can undo my lost license!" she thought gloomily.
"What if it suspended...forever!" she conjectured with panic. The worst case scenario of total loss of powers for the rest of her existence...
"I'm not going to think about *that*! No no no! No way!" Skuld vowed in a low voice of defiance, challenging the incline her thoughts seemed to roam towards.
Both Belldandy and Urd rolled over when she said this, reacting somnambulately to her voice without waking up. She dejectedly stared at the candlelight flickering against the wall. It amazed her how many patterns the light cast on the wall. She could speed them up or slow them down as she wished. Watching the candle gave her some solace...she could lose herself in the imagery on the wall. Even though her outlook seemed as black as the shadowy interior of the room, there was a radiance that was as necessary as the darkness.
Then she heard soft music coming from Cevn's Studio. It was soothing, it was nurturing. Skuld smiled to herself as the music lifted her spirits even more out of the despair she was feeling.
She remembered her anonymous act of a month ago. She had no idea that it would manifest in such a bountiful manner.
"It's like he's painting reality with soundcolors," she thought contentedly.
The God's Music. Skuld literally felt her sadness being drawn out of her. The music was steadying, yet vibrant. She rolled over and fluffed her pillow, and then listened closely as the sounds cascaded like dancing trees around a lion's den in the middle of ceramic snow upon a timeheld silver ripple...she yawned and drifted into sleep.

* * * * * * * *

"It's finally beginning to resemble my lair in Vanagdrasil, somewhat" Mara noted with delight. Mara's lair in Vanagdrasil was a source of deep pride for her. It had been recently awarded the prestigious "Most Outstanding Aura of Malevolence for a First Class Demon's Lair, Millennia 2314." She remembered how hordes of sycophantic Demons had visited her lair, just for the honor of basking in the evil ambience.
She had recently added a side room filled with video arcade games. This was another unexplained fetish that had stuck with her as the result of living with the mortals so long. She remembered her stay in the abandoned video game parlor, just prior to the Ninjette fiasco and the Urd Angel/Devil War. She couldn't stand the sight of a video game for a long time afterward, but then returned and took all of the machines a few weeks ago. The cacophony of light and sound provided great contrast to the deep silent malevolence of the other areas of her lair. She was attracted to the noisy generation of the games, as well as the themes of sheer violence and murder that many of them employed. Video games had been one of her favorite discoveries since staying in the Earthrealm this past three years. They had provided her with entertainment as well as a vehicle to express her anger. If she lost a game, she would simply blow up the machine with a point of her finger and go on to another one.
The summoning mandala for Isilblius was almost complete. The circular pattern was much more complex than she anticipated...her attempts to recreate it had been invariably unsuccessful. But these mistakes allowed her to fine tune several mandala elements; such as the placement of blood, the knife-like stone needle section, the hacked pieces of flesh that filled the interior of several Demon's Language symbols and the triad of skull-candles.
Mara thought with diabolical glee how Cevn's blood was splattered all over different locations in the mandala.
"This is so ironic...that it's *his* blood! A Demon's blood must be used in the summoning; of course there are no Demons who would willing part with a drop of their blood. So I got me some!" she said with hubris. She had drawn his blood for the purposes of cloning; but when she tested it, there was undeniable evidence of components that matched the qualities of Demon blood. She had just barely drawn enough...the designs used up all six pints!
"If I would have accidentally spilled any..." she reflected, unenthused about the possibility of being forced to possess and kidnap again. Memories of the abortive kidnapping ushered a series of resentful thoughts.
"That blessed Belldandy and Urd totally wrecked my plans when they rescued their bratty little sister and that weakling pseudo-Demon mortal!" she shouted. Using the B-word to curse at the two sisters was proof of how pissed off she was.
"How can I get even with them?" Mara said to a sere-hawk. An industry of baneful machinations raced within her mind. Hands clasped behind her back, she paced to and fro, kicking the odd Demonpets that got in her path.
Frustrated, she sat in her main throne chair and did her denticure. As she was sharpening her canine fangs, she hit on an idea. Her frown slowly turned into a broad grin at the thought.
"*Molten charnel*!!! This would be so awesomely perfect! Even if it doesn't kill him, I would be *totally* stoked to see those three Goddesses squirm under the duress!" she yelled into the walls of her lair with enthusiasm.

"Ha aha hha ha ha!"