And that is when I screamed and ran away to another galaxy.
OK that was not my fault. Naha told me all about demons! She said they were full of POISON and they can make me die and they are as bad as NOTHINGNESS and MAELSTROM except they have killed way more gods and that is why I ran away!
But Ia came and got me and told me I was being stupid and rude and I should stop. He told me how enulai are, yes, demons who have agreed to keep an eye on godlings so they don’t do bad things, and how that is only fair because it is the mortals’ planet, after all, even if we have earned the right to be on it by fighting for it and dying on it and making children there. (Demon children!) And he said the demons will not kill me unless I do bad things to mortals, so don’t do bad things and everything will be fine.
I was still scared until Ia finally got mad and made himself scarier and so finally I went back to Fahno and said I was sorry. Ia is mean and I do not like him at all, and it’s not fair that he’s so strong because I don’t think he should be, I don’t care how old he is.
Anyway. Fahno accepted my apology and told me I could stay with her and her family while she tried to find another enulai for me. I was happy then because I would see what it was like to live like a mortal! And that is when I realized Fahno had said it to distract me so I wouldn’t be so scared anymore, but she meant it, too, so that is OK. It worked and I was happy again.
“You really are just a child,” she said after all this, shaking her head.
“Well, of course I am,” I said. Mortals were very strange.
After that Ia said he was tired of dealing with me and went away. Arolu took me to another part of the house and showed me a room that had things for me to use while I was staying there. One of them was called a BED and it was for lying on during sleep! But godlings do not sleep so I asked Arolu what I should do instead.
“I’m sure you can find some way to occupy yourself,” he said. “But do it quietly, please, because the mortals of the house will be sleeping.”
Then he told me about the house’s library, and I was really happy because I had heard of books! I sat down to teach myself to read and promised to be very quiet all night. I was, too, once Arolu left. OK, I got bored and made up a song to sing but I sang it in sounds mortals can’t hear. The song went Hey hey hey hello hello hello how are you I am fine I have a name it is Shill. But nobody heard me.
(I liked Arolu. He was big and his voice was always warm and he had lots and lots of long black hair, which reminded me a little of Naha. I asked him if anybody ever got lost in his hair, and he sort of blushed and said that was a question only a wife should ask. I didn’t know what that meant.)
Some time passed. It was not even a year, but it felt much longer. Time in the mortal realm is very strange! All the mortals went to bed and got very quiet, so I dissipated my body and went to go look at them. Mortal sleep is not very interesting to watch. They just lie there and fart and dream. One of the bedrooms in the house was empty, but there was a familiar smell all over it. I wasn’t sure what made it familiar, so I went back to wandering through the house.
And then I got annoyed. Everything was boring! The mortal realm was supposed to be fun! I decided I just wasn’t seeing enough of it, and jumped out the window to go exploring.
The city we were in was called ARREBAIA. It told me its name with the wind and the mortals’ thoughts. It was really old! Way older than me, but everything was older than me so that didn’t matter. It had big stone walls all over the place, holding dirt in terraces for the mortals’ gardens and streets and markets, and it was full of heavy old cubes and pyramids that the mortals lived in. It was a perfect city for playing in.
So I ran down a pyramid! I ran up a cube! I jumped into a penned-in place and there was an animal called an ALPACA! I petted it; it liked me. I ran down the street with my arms out, which made the mortals turn and stare, but I did not care because it was nighttime and I missed Naha. (I was really fast, anyway, so the mortals did not have to look at me for very long.) There was bright shiny moonlight on my skin and nice cool air and I think I ate a bug. It tasted awful! There were all sorts of things everywhere, and they were amazing! I loved them all.
But then! I heard something!
Something jumpy and beaty and steady and off-steady. I did not know what it was! It was way over on the other side of town, not too far from Fahno’s house, so I ran back as fast as I could (and maybe I folded spacetime a little, but just a little, so that is not cheating). The beaty sound was coming from the forest outside town, right where its edge stopped against the city’s outermost terrace-wall. I hopped over the wall and went into the trees, which was hard because the trees were big and tangly and wet and I was making so much noise that I worried I would scare the beaty sound. I turned into a lizard, and that made it easier. The smell of humans got thick, and then I saw a campfire through the trees, and the beaty sound was a feeling too now, all heavy and pounding down in my lizard-guts.
Then I got through the trees and gasped—because it was another city! A little bitty city, just a few buildings and they were empty, just a few streets and they were made of dirt, just two terraces and they grew wild, not planted or lived on at all. But it was a real city, because it was fierce and angry and it said who are you so I said who I was and then I asked who it was. It had a little bitty name, too: YUKUR. Arrebaia means “the city of the conquerors,” but Yukur is just “the men’s place.” Still, I told the city that Yukur was a very pretty name, because I wanted to be nice.
Yukur sort of huffed and told me I was not supposed to be there because I was not really a boy, but it was maybe OK because I was shaped like a lizard, and anyway I was a godling so it could not stop me. I could tell that it did not like me being there, though, so I made my lizard body into a boy lizard body, and promised I would only wear a boy body, or no body at all, while I was in the city’s limits. Then it was happy, and I was glad, because I had done the hello thing right again.
I skittered down a wall and up some steps and then jumped into some bushes when people went by: two boys, all aflutter in their pretty robes and long hair, rushing up the steps like they were late for something. I could hear one of them whisper to the other, “It’s Eino tonight!” I didn’t know what that meant.
(I know you know, but I am telling the story! Shut up! Interrupting is rude.)
The other boy giggled and then they both were gone up the steps. I followed them but it was slow because I was only a little lizard. I decided to be human instead, but since I had said I would be a boy, I made a boy body. Every boy I had seen since coming to the mortal realm—except Ia, but he was weird—wore heavy drapey robes and long hair, so I made myself like that, too, and ran after the two I had seen. It is hard to run when you are covered from neck to toe in robes, though, and when your hair is four feet long, and also when you have stuff between your legs that dangles and flops around! I did not like any of it, but I had made a promise. Eventually I figured out that I had to hold my head really high and gather up my robes, and run in this weird very straight way or I would hurt the dangly bits—but if I did all this, I could run like those other boys.