Jon sat in her room, staring out the window at the sky and thinking about what she'd witnessed. So that was what the Enemy looked like... She had felt cold looking at it, and unsettled...frightened, even. It was like looking into the face of meaninglessness itself. If she was understanding what Becca had explained about this, that wasn't far from the truth. Something that tried to un-define everything that had concrete reality...and here she was, keeper of one of the fundamental shaping forces of that reality, with her hometown under attack by this Enemy, and there wasn't a damn thing she'd been able to do about it. If-onlys nagged at her...if she hadn't epically discharged the stone in one frivolous wish, or if she'd been a quicker study at learning magic, then maybe she could've done something. But no, she didn't have any magical power to speak of, and the stone couldn't help her - heck, it might even attract their attention. So she'd just holed up in her room, wondering if her friends were safe...Karyn, Brittany, Tim...and waiting for somebody else to save her home...and someone had, and then it was over. She sighed.
And then there was the other issue...the sudden, mind-boggling experience of meeting with...with Her. Jon had no real idea who the woman that had brought her to Lilly was, but...there was a sneaking suspicion in the back of her mind, one that was simultaneously terrifying and a little exhilarating. Brittany had mentioned the existence of gods before, and there was something about the Woman that just felt like that was the category to which She belonged. Not so much because She had abruptly brought Jon across space in the blink of an eye merely for the purpose of talking to someone, but...the slug-girl had the strange feeling that being in Her presence had somehow touched something inside her, had made her feel...feel...
...she didn't know. She wasn't sure she really wanted to know. There was so much she was trying to come to grips with in this crazy new world she'd brought about, the last thing she wanted to think about was feeling like more of a...a...anyway, there was so much else to take into consideration...the way She'd reminded Jon that she was responsible for what happened to the world next...as if Jon hadn't been reminding herself of that for months! And...and what Lilly had said to her...Lilly knew. ...did she? Had that been real, or a dream? If she did know, then...
...then...she probably owed Lilly an explanation. She was unsettled at the idea of trying to explain all of this to the little squirrel-girl, but...well, she supposed if nothing else it would be good to get it off her chest. She just hoped that Lilly was doing alright, whatever it was that she'd been upset about...
Earlier.
Lilly huddled on one of the tree-guy's branches, staring down at the ground and wondering what she was supposed to say. Her mom told her that it was more polite to look someone in the eye when you were talking to them, but that was hard here because his face was a good deal further off the ground that she was tall, and he couldn't look down at her the way she could look up at him. Besides, he didn't seem to mind her climbing him...it was just...what could she even say? With everything she'd learned today...how could there be any going back to the way things were?
She stared down at the way his roots worked their way into the soil. On a branch a little further up, Sakura stretched and yawned. Finally, Maxwell spoke. "So tell me...child...what is troubling you?"
Lilly bit her lip. She didn't know if it would be right to just spill all of Jenny's secret, even if he didn't feel like he would tell it to anyone else. But...she did want to...to get it off her chest to someone, and she didn't want to make her mom and dad worry...or get Jenny in trouble...
"I-I..." she stammered, her tails twitching. "I...got hit by a spell, an'...it made me...made me know the truth about things," she said. "An'...one'a my friends..." She cringed, trying not to remember too vividly. "One'a my friends was...was a really bad person!" She tried to keep from crying. How could she ever have guessed? Jenny, her friend, the sweet and noble magical girl, a person like that? A...a murderer? It was impossible...except that she knew it to be true.
"What do you mean...by 'was?'" he responded. Lilly couldn't help but feel a little soothed by the sonorous, creaky voice. It sounded exactly like she thought a tree that could talk would sound. She frowned. "It was...before she changed, she was...was a diff'rent person, an'...an' she did...awful things...to a buncha people..." She couldn't help crying now, but at least she managed to keep her voice steady. What amazed her was that...she felt like she was crying for Jenny as much as for any of those people.
"Then she is not...like that now?"
Lilly balked. Was Jenny like that? Now? Of course not! That...that was the problem! That her friend, who was nothing like that, could have been that! That even though she seemed nice now, she was really this murderer... "N-n-no..." she stammered, sniffling. "Not...now...but she was! She really was...even tho' we didn't...she didn't even know! But she was, really...it was like she was a whole diff'rent person, an' now she's someone else, but...she was them, really...an'..." She swallowed, hard. "...an' she must...must be...she can't jus' be someone diff'rent alla sudden!"
"Lilly," Maxwell said, "many people have been...changed into someone different."
The squirrel-girl frowned. Of course lots of people had been changed... "Yeah, but not inside 'em!" she said. Though she wasn't really sure that was the truth...after all, she had been...she hated to think about it, but she had used to be Julian's little toady, back when she was Billy...but even that was hardly the equal of...of...
"I mean before the Sun...was changed, child. Long...before. Throughout history, God has...turned bad men into good ones. Slave-traders have been called to...help abolish slavery, persecutors...to spread the very beliefs...they tried to oppress...murderers to make amends with...the families of their victims. Whatever your friend...may have done, Lilly...there is nothing she cannot...be redeemed from."
She sighed. He couldn't really mean that...not if he knew what she knew, not if he really knew what Jenny did...but he seemed like he meant it. And...well, he was a grown-up, and she was just a little girl...and Lucas seemed to think he was smart... She thought for a minute. "You really mean nothin'?"
"Nothing."
She stared at him, trying to figure all this out. "An'...an' y-you...you think God did this?" she asked.
He smiled. "I think He may have...we cannot be certain one way...or the other, but I think...He may have. Perhaps He is using this to...shape your friend into...what she should be."
She sighed. "But...she still did it...all of 'em did..."
"But God took it on Himself...child. For them, for her...for you and I. If He has forgiven them...then who are we to hold that...against them?"
She leaned down from the branch, trying to look him in the eye without losing her balance. "You...d'you really think so?" she asked.
"I do."
Lilly tried to think through the idea. It was difficult for her - no matter what the spell had showed her, these concepts all seemed so huge and distant and part of the grown-up world to her that it was difficult for her to really grasp it yet. The idea that this...even this, the things that she knew Jenny had been guilty of, in her old life...could just be wiped away...it couldn't be that simple...could it? But she had changed so much herself...but she had never been anything like that to begin with...it was all so confusing, and it was hard to think straight when part of her just wanted Jenny to be the person that she'd thought Jenny was, and another part of her was harboring resentment at the feeling of betrayal she'd been left with upon learning the truth...
It was too big for her. She was trying to be too grown-up, when she wasn't really ready for it. But that still didn't mean that she could just forget everything she now knew...but...well...she didn't know. Maybe Lucas had the right idea...maybe she should trust the tree-guy...? She still wasn't sure how she felt about Lucas, either, but this man felt trustworthy to her...
"Huh," she murmured. "Um, thanks f'r...for listenin'," she said.
Maxwell smiled. "Any time, Lilly," he said. "I would be happy to...talk to you again."
Lilly smiled in spite of herself, nodded, and was about to go when Maxwell spoke again.
"Lilly," he said, "remember that...if she ever does learn...what you know, then...what she will need most of all...is a friend who understands her."
