79 Time Out of Memory V.i

Their ability to exercise their freedom transcended mortality. When they die and pass through Ellanher's keeping, they retain awareness for long enough to decide whether they may now return to the earth in peace or require another lifetime.

Because they had this unforeseen capability that did not need to be regulated by a higher power, Amalasuintha and the other deities left the third breed of humans to be as they were, their chosen god holding loose dominion over them.

The ages passed, and they were largely marked by Ellanher's existence, which was as a pendulum. His people's inherent malleability had allowed them to force open the gates of progress. What their forebears began, they adapted and built upon. Civilizations flourished, cities rose, but as their components were rooted in nature, theirs was also nature's fate: civilizations declined, cities fell.

In the heart of Ellanher, whose body was of the earth yet undying, there gradually grew weariness. Always, everything around him was in flux, and yet, viewed from the distance of centuries, nothing truly changes.

It was the same shining hopes and noble dreams that would give rise to golden eras, the same hubris and complacency and indolence that would lead to ruins.

He was not like his mother, who saw in this just another manifestation of the cycles of life; nor was he like his father, whose unassailable righteousness allowed him and his siblings to justify any result as either necessary or correctable. He was ultimately not even like the people who'd chosen to follow him, for they were blessed with death, and with forgetting.

Without conscious knowing, mortals cleanse out of themselves in the course of their lifetimes all that were preventing them from returning to their source in peace. To do this, they had no need for memory, and Ellanher knew better than anyone that remembrance would bestow the opposite effect.

Memories held one back and bogged one down. Layers upon layers of memories – changing yet the same – these can be a burden to an existence that was not allowed an end.

Though youngest among the deities, Ellanher was a power unto himself. He needed no permission to accomplish what he must to ease his own burden, and immediately upon reaching a decision, he set about to act.

Through their link, Amalasuintha was immediately alerted of what her son meant to do. She came to him, yet instead of asking for his reasons or urging him to stop, she merely offered him advice.

She said, "Go only where you will be welcome, to whatever end. Few places like this exist, and fewer still the mortal hearts that could withstand the assault of your very presence. There are those who will not relish the reminder that there are beings who stand above them. Even among your people, ones such as this exist and hold sway. We are deities so humans may turn to us when they're in need, but we are also deities so that we may be kept at a distance when not. Find one who will feel towards you not awed, as this will devolve into subservience, nor threatened, as this will morph into hostility – find one who will feel for you, at best, indifference."

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Ellanher took into account Amalasuintha's counsel and set forth in search of a place and a heart that could welcome and withstand his presence.

Many seasons passed, short by divine reckoning, but an age in mortal terms. The god walked the earth and bore closer witness to yet another society's decline. He saw how otherwise-decent humans could so easily be influenced into committing atrocities by those who had mad visions and persuasive tongues. At the same time, he saw commendable acts of resistance.

From similar events in the past, Ellanher knew resistance fails when fear is made into a weapon and too many cower at the mere whisper of it – or turn their eyes away, pretending all in the world is well since they were not the ones being directly affected. On the other hand, it was almost always the case that resistance succeeds when enough people see the ugly truth for what it is and refuse to be deceived by the pleasant lies they were being fed.

It was when the manufactured fear finds no weakness in the shield that they realize: they were capable of not only resisting the tide of evil but also of rising higher and pushing it back.

To this end, there was one mortal who was doing much to turn what could otherwise be utter destruction into a stable foundation over which society could rebuild. Her name was Herleva, and she was the place and the heart a weary god had been searching for.