Cass took a moment, as she quietly sipped her tea, to reflect on the strangeness of the situation. They had started out their afternoon experimenting with inter-dimensional travel, nearly destroyed the universe by accident, faced self-inflicted hell, been rescued, and were now having a quiet afternoon tea on the Moon, with its goddess. Even by post-solar-change standards, this was a little strange, yet their current circumstances were so prosaic that everything preceding this seemed less fantastic as result.
Besides, it's good tea, she thought to herself. Good tea makes anything comfortable. Since her change she'd had more of a preference for green tea than black (though she still didn't have a handle on the nuances of tea-ceremony, unless she exploited her genre-bending to make it work,) but this was still very good.
She looked over at their host, and found, to her surprise, that she now looked different. Not completely unlike what Cass had first seen her as; she still had silver hair, and she was ornamented with lunar-themed jewelry. But she wasn't so tall as she had appeared at first, and her face was different; somewhat less stately, a little more rounded and cheery. And her skin...it was gently luminescent, patterned with the image of the lunar surface. Judging by Lucas's expression, she had also noticed.
"Um, sorry if this is prying," Cass said, "but...you look different."
Their host smiled. "Not at all," she said. "I do, but if it bothers you..."
"N-no, it's fine," Lucas said, a little embarassed to realize that she'd been staring. Cass nodded. "It's not a problem," she said. "I was just curious as to why."
Selene nodded. "Of course. This is my physical incarnation. In the Far Realm you saw me as a somewhat...less defined version of myself, so that I was filled in by your own perception, as you noted. I don't try to take on this form out there; it feels...out-of-place, like going to a party in your underwear."
"Depends on the kind of party..." Lucas mused. Cass shot her a look, but Selene smirked a little. The anime-woman chuckled softly, shaking her head. "And," she said, "you'd said something about being only partly a goddess, like Nadine...you mean you're a changed? But you knew Lucas followed you before the sun's change? How does that work?"
The moon-goddess shut her eyes, took a long sip of her tea, and sighed gently. "I am," she said. "And, I am not. I have existed since the molten Earth gave birth to my world billions of years ago...and I was also born thirty-four years ago, on the Earth."
Lucas leaned forward, intrigued. This was the kind of thing she'd been hoping to learn more about, when they'd first set out on this quest...
Selene laughed gently. "I don't know exactly how to explain it," she said. "You might say that in becoming what I am now, I 'tapped into' the experience of these billions of years...but that would imply that there was a time when I was not the moon-goddess, and I'm not sure that's true. Or you might theorize that I, in my human existence, was a dormant Selene until I was awakened by the sun...but I'm not certain that's entirely correct, either." She smiled wryly. "I'm afraid I don't know for sure how it all fits, myself - I don't perceive myself as being one thing and then becoming another, so much as always having been Selene, or Luna, or Neruite, but having, for a time, a second life as my human self. Now the two are one, and I'm no longer certain whether that was ever not the case."
The angel-girl raised an eyebrow. "That sounds a little confusing."
"It is and it isn't," Selene said. "Confusion requires a certain amount of conflict, but as I am one being, I don't really find myself inconsistent with myself. It's only when I think about my other...my previous existences that I realize that I don't fully understand myself."
"Other existences?" Cass asked. "Were you human in those?"
The goddess shrugged. "I...don't remember," she said. "My memory isn't perfect, and with four and a half billion years of existence...things can get lost in the shuffle. It's possible, I'm sure, but I don't know. I don't perceive them as separate people any more than I think of Celine Andrews as a separate person from myself, even though I was different in many of them than I am now. Like I said...I don't know quite how to explain it."
Lucas thought about that for a bit. She'd talked a bit with other angel-changed who were part of "chorus" groups...that was odd enough to think about, and even they had some difficulty explaining it to others. But one thing they were clear on was that their individual identities were separate...they weren't hive-minds. This sounded stranger still.
"So," Cass mused, "is your having been human why you're...um, more involved? I mean, you're the only god we've actually seen."
Selene giggled. "Of course!" she said. "I like humans. Even when I haven't have been one." She stopped and thought about that for a moment. "Well, I guess there isn't a better way to put that, in mortal language," she said. "But yes. Our worlds have danced with each for the whole of my existence...it's only natural that I should relate closely to the people of my dear sister planet. Indeed, it might be that that's why I ever was human."
Lucas looked around at the veranda, taking in the scene. It was all very tasteful, elegant in its simplicity, and it looked like it might have been a small Mediterranean villa on Earth, except for the moonscape beyond, and the fact that it was carved from polished lunar basalt instead of marble. "Where are we, exactly?" she asked.
The goddess smiled. "Curious as ever," she said. "We are looking from the north-eastern rim across Mare Crisium. It's almost at the edge of the disc, from an Earth-view scale."
Cass thought for a moment, then laughed. "The Sea of Crises," she said. "Clarke's 'The Sentinel,' or Heinlein's Luna City?"
Selene laughed as well. "Whichever you like," she said. "But for a long-overdue reunion, Clarke seemed appropriate. Besides, it's a lovely area." She frowned slightly. "I'm afraid the tea's gone - would either of you like some wine?"
Lucas grinned. "I didn't realize the Moon was such a great importer of Earth products."
Their host chuckled. "Well, I couldn't exactly grow tea and grapes here myself, you know. Maybe some day, but not now. And I had to have something to serve my guests."
Cass raised an eyebrow. "You mean you could...I mean, it would be possible for this place to support life?"
Selene grew quiet for a moment, turning and gazing out across the mare. She breathed slowly and deeply, as though she were almost asleep. "That would be a change indeed," she said, almost in a whisper. "A Moon teeming with life? I have been an avatar of fertility to many peoples, but I have never been fertile... Grass and soil and sea and sky, a twin sister to the Earth? Trees and flowers designed to live in two-week days and nights? Or perhaps there would be creatures that could live on the rock and dust, on the surface as it is now? I do not know. I have not even thought of other life here in many thousands of years...not until my daughter led me bounding across the lowlands and scrambling up a crater rim..."
She trailed off. Her guests stared at her, a handful of different questions raised. Lucas broke the silence first. "If..." She hesitated. "If you want that...why don't you do it? I mean, it's not as though it would harm anything on Earth...I think..."
Selene turned back to them, and for a moment she seemed unfathomably ancient, far older than her actual physical appearance would suggest. It was something about her eyes, Cass thought. Then it passed, and she sighed a very human sigh. "Understand, please," she said, "that in a very real sense, I am the Moon. I have been asleep for a very long time, longer than the whole history of the human race. Even now, or in previous existences, I am not and have not been fully awake. Maybe I never will be...or maybe my morning approaches at last. I don't know. Nor do I know what will happen then...but perhaps we shall find out."
She shook herself out of her half-trance and looked them in the eye again, smiling apologetically. "Which is to say," she said, "that I can't simply do that, not yet. I'm not even completely certain I want to. I'm very old, and I'm wary of hasty changes as anyone my age would be. But perhaps it's time for that after all. We'll see. Many things are changing."
"Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to business," she smiled. "As you two are the first humans to reach the periphery, I have a job I'd like you to do. And that's a job, not just a task to be laid upon you."
Lucas laughed. "Look, I still owe you from-"
"No you don't," Neruite said. It wasn't even an argumentative denial; it was a statement of fact. "I was asked to help you because you and I go back a ways, even if you never fully realized it, and I'm happy to have done so. Debt was never a factor. But this is a job that ought to be done, and I think you'd be suited for it."
The angel-girl smiled. "Okay, what's the job?"
"I want to make the periphery area safer," she replied. "You two are the first humans to visit, but it's quite possible there will be others, and they may not be as readily able to figure out what not to mess with as you were. It's very lucky that nothing went seriously wrong today, and if more people are going to be coming through, steps should be taken to make sure it stays that way."
Lucas nodded. "No kidding. But how do we do that?"
Selene frowned. "That...what I'm not certain on," she said. "I can tell you what I can do, but it's not much. The Moon is my sphere of influence. Within it, I am a goddess; outside, not so much. On Earth I'm still a force to be reckoned with, if I choose, but where you were today? That's whole planes of existence away. The most I can effectively do there is open doors to and from my sphere of influence."
The angel-girl thought for a moment. "...how many?"
Selene raised an eyebrow. "I don't know that I would say there's a limit," she said. "Why?"
Lucas grinned. "I think I've got something."
