There was a pause as Lucas digested this information, gazing out over the endless waters. Putting aside the question of how it was that she was even worthy to wield this power...humans themselves (or, perhaps, sentient life in various guises, here and elsewhere in the Universe? She didn't know,) existed to be an agent of change in the Universe? To make it "interesting?" Was that really what she had just seen? It certainly seemed like that was the meaning of this vision. But...there was something about the idea of people existing to serve the purpose of someone or something else that just rubbed her the wrong way. Were people like bacteria in the digestive tract, then, tiny little creatures allowed to exist solely for the benefit of some unfathomable larger entity, living out their entire little lives in unknowing servitude to it? That notion clashed with everything she believed in!
But then, if this "water element" that was her sword, the same element that had originated life in the first place, was a fundamental force for freedom...how did that work? How could something that created humans deterministically be the very thing that drove the world towards a freer state? Or was that even right at all? Was she understanding any of this correctly? And how did the gods fit into all this? They were still bound in ways that mortals weren't, yet they were capable of aiding - and using - mortals to work around their own restrictions? And who did make these rules, anyway? Or were they somehow "fundamental" just as the "water element" was? This was all so confusing...
She turned to Venus, feeling flustered. "I...I still don't understand," she said, sighing. "Don't get me wrong, I'm going to do everything I can to...to use this power rightly, but...there's so much of this that's just so confusing, and paradoxical, and...and unnecessarily obscure!" She bit her lip, not having meant to go into rant mode. "Um...sorry."
Venus nodded, smiling slightly. "You are still very new to this," she said. "And Selene, bless her, is perhaps a little too closely affiliated to your race to be able to explain things with sufficient clarity. I will explain to you what I can."
Lucas frowned. "You mean she's biased because she has a human self?"
The Woman shook her head. "Not biased. Colored. And even when she hasn't had been human. She sees things from closer to a human perspective than some of us. It comes with dancing so closely with your world, I think. The sister of a mother learns the ways of the children herself, to some extent. As does Hermes, your 'uncle'-who-isn't-really-an-uncle for the sake of the metaphor, as closely as he affiliates with you. Even to Mars and I, here in the inner circle of the Sun, your minds are less alien than they would be to Jupiter. Now: what is it that you don't understand?"
The angel-girl thought. "A...a lot of things. How is it that we can exist for the sake of fulfilling a purpose for the Universe and yet have the Universe moving us closer to freedom from fate? Or is that the right way to put it? Why does it even want us to exist at all, why does 'interesting' matter to it? If there is some kind of consciousness...on that level, how can it even relate to us mortals? Is it a 'who' at all? Is it what makes the rules you guys operate under? Why does it allow you to circumvent them? How does any of this make sense when half of it seems to contradict the other half or itself?"
Venus laughed. It was a warm, earthy laugh, but graceful. "Oh, so many phrasings of the same basic questions! But that's Mercury and his languages, always enabling shades of distinction even between the same essential things. Hmm, to start...I think you misunderstand us, Lucas." She took a deep breath, her bosom gently rising and falling. "In a sense, we are 'the rules we operate under.' I cannot contradict my own nature. I would not be myself if I did." She paused. "By my hands, by my nature, women suffer the pains of their cycle and the pangs of childbirth - but also the physical intimacy and pleasure of womanhood and the joys of motherhood. To take away either would make them less what they are, less defined."
"It's the same with me," she continued. "If I were not true to myself, I would not be myself. If I interfered with humanity simply to suit me, I would rob it of what it is, and rob myself of what I would be - will be, am - when it is that. But at the same time, I can look at things from a perspective outside of myself and see the harm that will come if we don't act to stop it. If Lilly were allowed to die, for example. I cannot interfere myself because I cannot contradict my own nature, but I can understand the importance of even a small mortal life, and I desire to see her live, and I can employ others to do what I cannot."
"And you don't find that contradictory in itself?" Lucas asked, confused.
She laughed again. "I do. I cannot bring myself to interfere, yet I desire to interfere because I see the potential for greatness in Lilly. My inability to contradict my nature leads me to contradict my nature. Contradiction is life, Lucas. We are all at least a little absurd. Even humans can find themselves simultaneously wanting a thing and not wanting it. But you are less strongly tied to a fundamental nature than we are, and so you are freer to choose between one thing or the other. A little less defined, and a little more flexible."
"Huh."
The Woman nodded. "As for your questions of 'why' - why you exist, why you are moving away from fate and toward freedom, why you, of all the small creatures on all the small planets, matter - I cannot tell you truly."
Lucas tried to keep herself from grinding her teeth. Not this - not this of all things, the old "you're not allowed to know that" cop-out... She took a deep breath to calm herself and spoke slowly and measuredly. "You're not allowed to tell me that? W-why?"
The Woman shook her head. "It is not a question of 'not allowed,' Lucas," she said. "If you learn nothing else from me, learn that. It is not even a question of my being unable to tell." She paused, thinking it over for a moment. "Selene is probably afraid to do this," she said. "She must still think of your time in the Outer Realm. But I think you can handle a glimpse. Give me your hands, Lucas."
The angel-girl blinked. "I, uh...you need to hold my hands to explain to me?"
"You'll need something to hold onto."
Lucas felt a lump in her throat as she thought of the time Venus had reminded her of, of being held prisoner in her own mind...if Selene was worried that this would be a repeat of that...she trusted Neruite's judgement implicitly, but...she couldn't bring herself to believe that Venus bore her any ill will. Did she trust her enough to risk it? ...Maybe. What was more a factor was that she wanted to understand, or at least to understand why she couldn't be told. She held out her hands, and Venus clasped them.
Then the world slipped away with a roar. The figure whose hands she was now gripping tightly was no longer a woman as she knew women, but a figure of bright flame, with wings and eyes in strange places that moved in impossible ways, and the very shape itself a doorway into another space, so deep that it gave her vertigo just to look. She turned her face from the figure, but that was even worse - the very air itself was like clouds of colors so bright it hurt to look, expanding and contracting in fractally intricate patterns, the space around them tapering up and in and up like a Baroque cathedral dome, like standing at the bottom of a staircase and seeing it spiral out of sight infinitely high above, as fleeting lights highlighted geometric shapes in the air, in endless hyperspatial transformation, and through it all a sound like rushing wind, like roaring water, like the voices in a choir of innumerable multitudes, filling her ears and her auditory centers and worming into every crevice of her brain, permeating every thought..."Stop it! Stop it!" she yelped.
As quickly as it had come on, the vision passed. Lucas fell to her knees, panting, still clinging to Venus's hands, as a wave of nausea passed over her. She caught her breath and let her stomach settle, and got to her feet, legs wobbling. She blinked, and found that her eyes had teared up. "Was that...what was it?" she asked.
Venus smiled sweetly, with just a hint of a smirk. "You had a glimpse up the ladder of Creation," she said.
"A-a glimpse," Lucas murmured, trying to process what she had seen, and failing utterly. "A-and...and that's why you can't explain? Because if I really knew, I'd go mad from the revelation?"
The Woman frowned and shook her head emphatically. "Certainly not! The Truth is not a thing that breaks and destroys - only falsehood and injustice are destroyed by it. No. You would go sane."
Lucas blinked, gaping. The idea rattled around in her brain, but she found a point it could attach to. "Like...like being 'knurd' in the Discworld series?"
She could feel Venus probing her to understand what she had said. The goddess thought it over for a moment. "Not quite," she said. "There, it presupposes a world where the truth stripped bare is cold and harsh. But the basic idea - to see things in full reality, stripped of all pretense, loss of detail, and subconsciously-enforced metaphor - that's not so very far off-base." She smiled. "But if I may respond with another reference to a book, 'You're a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I'm quite fond of you. But you are really just a little fellow, in a wide world after all.' Humans are a little people, after all - existing in four dimensions and just able to theorize the existence of others but not quite to comprehend them. You're not built to handle that kind of thinking. But some of the answers you want are only found in higher realities - and the answers to the questions they might raise in realities higher still."
"How far does it go on?"
Venus laughed. "That is a good question."
"You don't know, then?" It was beginning to dawn on Lucas that even the gods - or at least, the ones she knew - were limited in more than just what they were and weren't allowed to do. "But...there has to be an end to it somewhere, doesn't there?"
"Perhaps," the goddess said. "But how would I know? Or any of my fellows? We're only a level above you on the ladder, after all. I can comprehend more of the truth than you can, but not all of it."
"I...huh," Lucas said. "I guess I just assumed you were privy to...to the whole shebang. But even you don't fully understand the Room of Fate, come to think of it..."
Venus nodded. "And if you could see it the way I see it, you would know how much more of it there is to not understand."
Lucas nodded thoughtfully. "Then I suppose you don't know why we're important, or how it is that the forces responsible can relate to us, either."
"Not as such," the goddess replied. "I am in this Universe, but I do not surpass it. Whatever the answers are, they lie beyond it. But I can tell you this: even what you cannot know for certain, in full, you can understand a little of by analogy. Lucas, you like to think of the gods reaching down into the lives of mortals, as an ideal. But I think in your idealism, you miss this point: that is the story of everything." There was something in her eyes now, something that transcended her divine nature, bringing her down closer to Lucas even as she was lifted up towards something that Lucas could neither see nor imagine.
"Even as you first looked into the sky and wondered what lay beyond it," she said, "we reached down to you and brought you fire and language and song to help you make your way in the world. So it was with us and that which is above us. All up and down the ladder, this paradoxical scene is reenacted, where the greater descends to reach the lesser, as the lesser reaches up to find the greater. Even you, mortals, take the animals that you like and bring them closer to you - not wild beasts, but pets and companions - and you look further and further down until you find things so small that you aren't even capable of perceiving them without special tools. This is your microcosm of our macrocosm. As above, so below - that is the rule of all Creation."
