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As Ezi flew off, I commented, "We may be in a lot of trouble."

Aresh nodded, but said, "At least they can't just read our minds outright. Given what they were taunting you with, they probably would have mentioned what I did last night, if they knew about it."

"This sounds good. Real good."

"Later, maybe."

We made our way to the temple. It was more packed than I'd ever seen one. Of course, I had never seen a turn-of-the-century celebration before. A young priest (a civet) was giving a lecture, and the audience was listening remarkably carefully - far more than any temple service I'd seen.

"And lastly, we come to those gods who refuse to be given names, and we are not entirely clear on what it is that they contributed, but we know they are distinct. One was apparently a checker of some sort for Gerrimul and Vankreo, though we are not sure why those domains needed checking against each other. Another contributed only small portions of the original creation, and did not become involved again until the animal forms wish..."

I spotted Renna and her father, Bold, coiled above in the lattice, and began gently nudging my way through the crowd toward them. I could have made it much sooner if it hadn't been for Aresh - this sort of situation was ideal for snake form.

"... Another advised Emm on something to do with the gender reversal wish. And then we get the big three. The three who by the official measure contributed the most of all to our world - the three gods who most deserve the term 'creator'. It wasn't the rock we stand on. It wasn't the water we drink, the air we breathe, the light we see by, the warm or the cold. It wasn't us ourselves, the plants or animals or even the diseases. It wasn't any of our emotions or our intellect, senses, or strength. It wasn't anything to do with interpreting the base world. It wasn't even something highly abstract like fixing the laws of geometry. All we know is that in the creation of this world, they did about nine tenths of the work, and nothing that we ever encounter gives us any hint as to what it is."

Towards the end of that, I finally reached Renna. She looked up, startled, and used hand-signs: "What are you doing here already? Did you leave work early?"

"No. It's complicated." I gave her a hug.

Her father noticed me, and said out loud, "Why, Famir!" I was petrified at first that everyone would notice us, especially it was just at that moment that the priest had finished speaking. I shifted naga-form and sprung up into the lattice so he could be quieter.

The priest called on a little fox with his hand raised. "Yes, Laitce?"

Bold said, much quieter, "That girl down there says she's my daughter. I don't remember her."

"She changed."

"People don't change that much, my boy."

"It was magic. She didn't choose it."

"There should be a law against that."

I took him to mean the act of slicing her belly open so she needed to be moved out of her original body, and replied, "There is."

The priest repeated Laitce's observations: "Yes, the tapestries are color-coded by how much they did, and those three are brownish purple, bluish off-white, and dark green. And you're right, the dark green we see elsewhere is not exactly the same. At least one of those has been involved slightly with every wish except two, but generally only a thread's worth. And I see my time's up. Any more questions?" A break, as someone up close asked something too quietly. Then he replied, "No, we don't. They really don't want names. We can refer to them by color, but that is most emphatically not a name. As for the rest, I can show you later. Thank you." He bowed and scurried off to the side.

I realized that the reason Renna hadn't joined me up in the lattice was that she couldn't. I returned to her.

She frowned at me. "So, how did you get here so early? Aresh won't tell me."

I opened my mouth, and nothing happened. A strong urge to make something up rose, and when that passed, an urge to say that I didn't know came. A moment passed, and the urges returned, stronger. I almost made something up, but Aresh said, "I'm really not sure. We were walking along, making good time. Your directions were good. We didn't want to be late."

I watched helplessly as her answer broke down my resistance and I concurred. "My part was easier than it ever went before. Remember, we weren't carrying baskets or packs like you and I did before. Plus, we just finished up walking across the continent last week, so I'm in good shape."

Renna shrugged. "Huh." And that was that. I wanted to shout at her not to believe me, that we had been enchanted not to talk about something, that it should be obvious; but she believed me. I gave a guilty look to Aresh, and she returned it.

Renna tugged my sleeve and said, "Want to step out? It's still an hour to local midnight, and then another two to global new year. We'll be inside enough."

Bold heard her, and scowled. "Can't you stay and listen to the priests, this one night of all nights?"

Renna swished her striped tail testily. "We've been here for six hours, papa. There's hardly anyone else here who's stayed that entire time. Even the priests. The next bit is a childrens' story I could tell myself, in more detail than they'll go into here."

Aresh volunteered, "I'll stay."

"Who are you? Someone else I've forgotten?"

"No, we've never met. A friend of theirs."

Bold began to slither down off the lattice. "I'm warning you, my memory's not what it used to be, so I'll probably forget your name."

"It's okay. Let's listen."

Bold sighed, and waved his hand, and we joined the general thinning of the crowd. I whispered to Renna, "Where's the rest of the family?"

"Mom and the kids got sick. Salma's coming down with it too, and Samik's almost better. Basically, we can't go home.

"Rotten luck. So... I take it today is not one of your father's better days?"

"Unfortunately, it is. He's been slipping, Famir. When we get back from this break, I'll probably need to introduce myself to him again."

I put an arm around her and drew her aside, out of the crowd. She put her head on my shoulder and didn't quite cry.

I softly said, "But he remembers the others, right? He remembered me."

"Mostly. He recognizes Toln on good days like today. His past is still mostly there, still."

She backed up and we left the temple. "I need to take a brisk walk, but I imagine you'd really rather not."

"I can slither, and you can walk around me."

She laughed, and we began doing that. We talked about a variety of things - getting a new call pendant for each other, possible wishes to make, what Night had been learning. I still wanted to tell her about the enchanters, and still couldn't. But it did make me think of something. "I realized earlier tonight that I'd been nurturing attraction to Aresh. I've stopped."

Renna stopped, crouched down and hugged me. "Me too."

This was the furthest from fidelity either of us had ever admitted going. We normally pointed out attractions to each other to dry them out and keep them from growing.

"Which version?"

"Original, like you."

"Well, it helps you're not a man anymore."

She got up, and took my hand. "Speaking of which, where did she sleep last night?"

"As far as I know, she didn't. She left not long after you and when I left in the morning she hadn't returned. She alluded to it later, vaguely. I'm sure she'll have an interesting story for us, when the time comes."

A long moment passed, and Renna asked, "Is it just me, or do you have a feeling of dread? Like something really huge is going to happen."

"Well, in a sense, something huge is going to happen. We're going to get a wish. In a way, everything's going to change, and we don't know how."

"I just hope it's not a big one this time."

"Really? Don't have any improvements you'd like to make?"

"Since when have they really been improvements? Sure, the park and hospital were nice, but even they had their downsides."

"Magic..." I realized what magic had done to me lately, and decided not to pursue that line of argument any further.

"Well, yes. There is that. But even then, the wish was just to be able to discover it. Can you imagine if we were always coming up with new magic? As it is we've spent 2 wishes temporarily blocking forms of magic that got out of hand. Only 200 years until teleportation is possible again, and will never again be impossible."

"Fine. Dessert."

She laughed and swung our hands high. "That was the worst! Seven absolutely fabulous desserts in your life, when you ask for them? Half the literature of that millenium is about the psychological trauma of disappointment."

"And the other half is about wasting it as a child, and wishing you had it when you were starving, or on the other hand wishing you'd just gotten on with it and not died with things unfinished. The metaphors write themselves. Maybe so. What's your least un-favorite wish, then?"

"Undoing the earthquake of 699. Fixed a major problem, let people be. Yours?"

"Well, I'm partial to the first wish. What are we here for, who are the gods, why is it all here?"

"The results from that were kind of mixed."

"Yeah, but think of the garbage that went before it. We'd still be thinking all that stuff if it hadnt been sorted out to the extent it was."

She squeezed my hand. "Famir?"

"Mmm?"

"I love you."

"I love you too."

And there was silence.

~~~~

The temple was only slightly more packed in the hour before the turn of the century. We'd missed the childrens' hour and advice on wishes, and came in time for the songs. Neither of us was particularly good at singing, but we weren't terrible either, and the tunes were all familiar. Then the counting, led by relay from the astronomer. One hundred. Ninety-nine.

Renna's hand clasped mine strongly enough to be quite painful. I pulled her close, taking her still-unfamiliar little snout and kissing it; her hand relaxed a little. She spoke privately into my ear, fighting to be heard over the noise. It took a few repetitions in some cases, and I wasn't sure why she spoke it instead of signalling. "I feel like you're the one constant. They won't take you away. What I am can change, but I know you're there. You're there for me, and you see past my form, whatever it happens to be."

I could think of plenty of other things that weren't likely to change, and I was quite curious why she didnt signal, but didn't quibble. I hand-signalled, "I always will be." This was almost a test. Was she really Renna?

To my slight relief, she signalled back, "And I for you."

Twenty. We just joined in the count, then. I couldn't think of a worthwhile wish, and left it to others.

And very deliberately, the century turned. We could hear shouting from the streets, but those in the temple were quiet, watching the new tapestry unfurl. And the image was of... a thingy. Coiled, knotted, folded. I had no idea what it was.

There was a gasp and a lot of looking back and forth, and it dawned on me that the thingy was almost entirely brownish purple and dark green, and the background was bluish off-white - the same three colors as had dominated the initial creation and hardly been seen since. A worried murmur passed through the temple, and I was part of it, telling Renna, "Well, there goes your little wish."

The priest raised his voice and said, "The wish of year 2500 is that of Eleen Chrysanthemum Gissel of Hlie, Periten. She wishes: please, please, please really please, don't destroy the world. Also, I'd like a good toy, with lots of stuff to figure out, and prizes, and I guess everyone can have one, if they want, so they don't fight over it."

Nervous laughter rolled through the congregation. This was the first wish worded in such an off-hand way - even the other childrens' wishes had been fairly tightly worded, so you wouldn't know they were children from reading them.

Still, the priest kept his face reasonably straight, held up his hand, and without further fanfare a thingy appeared in it. He looked at it. "Well, the world wasn't destroyed, and we each got... this thingy." I chuckled that his word choice coincided with mine.

He then looked up and to the right. "I see that a few other changes have occurred, due to the expiration of our isolation from Periten: the list of wishers is now unabridged, and three languages have appeared on the list of translations; you all got to hear the second one just now, which was the language Eleen was speaking."

I looked, and stared. The third language had only four letters, and as I read it out loud, I realized telegraphy was obsolete.