I want to write this down before I forget it, Ash. It was such a strange thing to happen, but then again, any encounter with Elma is strange by definition.
While Seth was busy disseminating the new church teachings (and he’d better be careful of treading on Archbishop Venesti’s toes), I had a little visit. As you might have guessed from the intro, it was Elma.
“I have to warn you,” she said. “Something is going to happen. Something unprecedented. And Ashtara’s response to it will infuriate the Cantor. She’ll slander his n’aashet n’aaverti and call for him to be expelled from the forest. She’ll say he was never of the forest to begin with, and speak of his origin as the visible sign of his hubris, his ambition. Which it is, but I don’t agree with her actions.”
This was curious, especially considering that I had never heard Elma speak in such a long string of coherent sentences. “If you don’t agree with her actions, why don’t you just stop her? She’s your nau’gsh.”
Elma laughed. “The point is that I don’t want to influence her. She’s so weak. That’s why I stay away.”
I didn’t get it. I told her so.
“When I pulled her out of the forest, I was a headstrong young girl, so full of myself that I could make her manifest in the manner of my choosing. It wasn’t for eight centuries, until I saw Ashtara, that I realized my mistake. You had it right. You planted him yourself. You made him grow twisted, you made him grow in rock. And now he’s the strongest. Poor Elma’ashra is useless. And so I stay away from her, to make her think for herself, because she’s even more useless if she doesn’t.”
I held my tongue, all the while thinking that Elma was simply not a nice person. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but influence the Cantor’s sometimes merciless way of thinking. The problem was that the Cantor’s thinking was rigid and absolutist. Elma’s thinking, on the other hand, was so far out-of-the-box that it had become a tesseract.
“Before I go, I will urge you again, take Gyre. Your fear of your past keeps you from coming into your fullness as a prophetess.”
I told her just what I thought of that idea, including many colorful expletives.
“Take the blue Gyre if you must,” she continued, ignoring my refusal as she always did. My surprise must’ve shown upon my face, because she said, “Of course I know about that. Why do you think I keep Elma’ashra from having a second branch?”
This seemed to me to be a complete non sequitur.
Elma sighed. “If I let her have two branches, she’d fruit, and then she’d insist that I’d take the blue Gyre too, and then my vision would be colored blue. I don’t want that. I need my vision to be clear. But you – you want to see into Ashtara’s blue world, isn’t that so?”
The conversation had become rather one sided. All I could do was gape.
“You’ve been slacking,” she said, moving towards the door. “If he evolves, and you don’t, he’ll only move further away.”