“So that was intense, yeah?” I ducked the swat aimed my way with a grin. “What? We’re alive, grandmother dearest is pleased with us, fucking thank the ancient gods for that. And Gwen has her powers back and fate will drag her out to learn how to use the damn things so we have her when-“

Colors exploded across my vision, across my mind, across my soul as I stretched beyond my corporeal form to envelop the local cosmos. I saw the spinning of the world, time flying forward. Actions leading to results leading to the infinite and beyond.

The cosmos shook as I screamed, my mind unable to grasp all within my vision until I felt another form next to mine. Something was laid upon my shoulder, infinitely gentle and cruel as it pulled me in, encasing me in a shield to look through but not be looked through.

I tried to shift my perception to know the being that held me but could not. A voice whispered through my soul, “I am not encased in the flesh of your earth but of another colony of the Elder Gods. But I heard your pain while I Sight-Gazed and came to help.”

“I’m the Psyche,” I whispered in a voice louder than a nova.

The other being paused for a moment as if looking for an answer. “You may call me Celestine, I suppose. It is close to the meaning of my true name. My mother is a contemporary of your Grandmother, whose power you taste of.”

“Why is this not fucking surprising,” I groused before looking beyond the shield. “So I’m Sight-gazing? What’s that?”

“Time is not as linier a thing as most mortal beings believe,” Celestine said soothingly. “Like me, you can look along the timeline to what was, what is and what may be, though the later splits like branches of a blood vessel and the tangent seen is not always what becomes.”

What in the nine hells was that? I didn’t understand and said as much. The being behind me shook with a laughter that echoed within the shield. “You are young, but that will change. First time?”

“Yeah and my ‘teacher’ leaves a lot to be desired,” I answered honestly. “Fucker didn’t even warn me about this.”

“It is a rare ability,” Celestine told me with a squeeze to my shoulder. “Zoth-Ommog can Sight-gate but it is not his primary ability. He works in the present, as he is a being of that part of time. We are ones who can see beyond the present and that is not an easy… road to walk, as your people say.”

“Okay, how do I use this to help myself and my people,” I said, pushing aside the realization that I didn’t know who my people were, not really. Gwen could be but she didn’t know me and I hadn’t figured out how to step into her dreams.

Celestine seemed to hear my thoughts (got to learn how to stop that from happening) and answered those and what I’d asked aloud. “I can show you but you are currently out of time in your world and your body may have difficulty sustaining you. Time passes as we talk here but I am unsure of its passage up on your world. My body is old enough to sustain me for long Sight-gazing sessions. Yours is unprepared for it. And your people are those you love and would wage war for. Zothie, love that nickname, is one of them. I see another, Gwen, written across your heart. You will find more as you learn of your world. Your upbringing was a terrible cruelty.”

“Hey, don’t Gaze into my past,” I snarled. “Fucking rude!”

“You will later invite me to do so,” Celestine answered.

I wanted to snark at him but a sizzle of pain shook me, striking from my belly to my mind. “Oh, something hurts.”

“I will imprint how to shield yourself and give you a mark to call me with, young Psyche,” Celestine said and I felt another shock of pain upon my chest, above my right breast. I could see the mark on my incorporeal form, the outline of a winged figure. “Touch that and it will call me to you. I can instruct you in how to see what is, what was and what may be. Go in peace, return to learn, Psyche.”

I began to fall away from Celestine and shouted, “Thank you! I will!”

_______

It was not longer night but brilliant noon when I came to. I lifted a tendril to my forehead as a hand went to my shift. The movement summoned Zothie but I ignored him to look under the soft fabric. Traced in silver like the milky way, the winged figure sigil graced my flesh but didn’t hurt. At least there was that. I sighed and paid attention to Zothie.

“What happened to you? Answer me, Psyche!”

I tried to sit up and had to use an arm and half a dozen tendrils to make it to a seated position in the back of a car or whatever it was Zothie picked up. “I was Sight-Gazing, or that’s what they called it.”

“Impossible,” Zothie said with a growl. “Our line does not produce Sight-Gazes.”

“Well, apparently Gwen wasn’t the only one to learn new tricks,” I snarked back, looking out the windows. To my right was a broad expanse of ocean and to my left was a sharp cliff-face. “Where are we?”

“Northern California, on the PCH,” Zothie told me. “Don’t distract me. You were Sight-Gazing? Who told you it was even called that?”

“I…” I tried to remember their name, the being that had saved me from being shattered by the infinite. Fuck, I could not remember their name. “I can’t remember their name, damn it. Why can’t I fucking remember it? They held me, shielded me, told me to call them when I tried again. What was the name?”

Zothie’s head tilted in thought before he glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “Nameless beings are not safe playmates, Psyche.”

“Really? Never would of fucking guessed,” I groused at him, becoming aware of the fact my stomach felt like an empty pit. “You got any food?”

“Gods beyond the primordial realm, she steps out of time and her first thought upon returning is food,” Zothie bitched. He was still ranting through a bunch of hairpin turns and twists that took us into the town Westport and slowed down as he pulled into the parking lot at the Westport Community Store. He tossed me some cash. “Go, I ate earlier but you need calories. Sight-Gazing takes a massive amount of energy and you haven’t learned how to take it from followers.”

“You still have followers?”

“How else do you explain why we have a Jeep and legal identities, Miss Cassandra Elder?”

I stopped, hand on the door knob. “Your followers got us that? What are they, pagan ninjas?”

“Better, because they’re real,” he said with a gloating smile. “I called them after you passed out in Oregon and they flew out a priestess and priest to get us set up after confirming that I am indeed their god. So, we have legal identities with our birthplace being in the tiny village that has accepted newcomers over the years but was formed back shortly after the last ice age. I’ll explain more later, go get food.”

I got going after my stomach gave another painful growl.

The storefront was old wooden shingles, the steps creaked as I walked up them and the inside smelled like fresh baked bread, cinnamon and all things good in the world. Okay, at least half of the good things. Which was plenty for me.

I walked out with a phone number I never planned to call, two huge sandwiches layered in meat, cheese and crisp vegetables, three sacks of chips, an entire pecan pie, a dozen snickerdoodle cookies, two gallons of water, a six pack of a citrus soda and a strawberry smoothie.

I dragged my haul to the Jeep and clambered inside, setting most of the bags in the back where I could reach them from the front passenger seat. Zothie was studying his phone but tossed it in a cubby as I settled in with a soda in the cup holder and a foot long sandwich sub on my lap. I saved the bag to put trash in then started tearing into the sub.

I’d never had fresh deli meats, bread or cheese before as they kept the 40 series on a high-protein, low flavor mush diet. Or at least I was. So the sandwich was more than a solution for hunger, it was a new experience. The mix of flavors and textures made me close my eyes in order to focus on the experience. I moaned, leaning back against my seat.

“That good, huh?”

I groaned something and Zothie laughed. “Yeah, I remember that first meal made by humans. They screw up a lot of things, but their food can be amazing.”

“Totally worth not wiping them off the planet,” I agreed around another mouthful.

“Well, at least not all of them,” he said and restarted the Jeep. The boxy thing’s engine turned over with a soft roar and we backed out with the aid of a camera on the rear bumper. He noticed my gaze and grinned. “My followers found gold and gems in their lands, ones they’ve kept outsiders away from for centuries. We’re both a bit dark for the locals there but no one that wasn’t raised there would know it. Yes, I know that look, I managed to keep them safe from the outside world while allowing them to bring in what would help further their causes. Even bound away and trapped beneath the earth, I had the power for that. I am a good god for my people, if nothing else.

“Anyway, so they sell gold and gems to the outside world, bring in what they need to stay current and live pretty modestly otherwise,” he continued. He stole one of my sodas and I didn’t protest. He had paid for everything as far as I knew. He seemed to pick up that thought and nodded. “Well, actually, we paid for it. My followers now know about you, the beloved niece of Zoth-Ommog, the Elder God’s Psyche and will say prayers for or to you as well. You get used to it. We can visit if you want.”

I shook my head, swallowing. “I want to go see Gwen first. I want… I want her to know me, Zothie. I want her to…”

“To love you as you hope she can,” he finished softly. “I understand wanting love when you have never known it. Most beings go after romantic love, yet you seek sisterly love.”

“I’ve never known the possibility of anything else,” I whispered, looking out at the ocean again. Waves tumbled by and my tendrils twitched with the desire to know what swimming in those depths would be like. “Before we stop to rest, I want to hit a store for swim wear. And then a beach after sunset, gotta hide my extra bits.”

“Yeah, mustn’t scare the locals,” he added. “From what I saw on the GPS, there isn’t much in the way of shops between here and where we have to head inland to avoid the mess that is San Francisco.”

I grabbed his phone and used my tendrils to check out maps while I kept eating. After a few moments I had a good stopping place. “We should stop in Fort Bragg, we can grab swim gear there. I want to try swimming in the ocean that Gwen loves so much.”

“If only all wishes should be so easily filled,” Zothie said with a faraway sound to his voice.

“What do you wish for, Zothie? Everything we do seems to be about me?”

“What do I want,” he mused. “Vengeance for my entrapment but I haven’t the foggiest where the Elder Gods responsible for that are. I imagine some of them have long since left this planet or died. Beyond that, I don’t know what I want.”

“That sounds lonely,” I said honestly. I knew all about being alone. “Do you want to stay with me and go see Gwen?”

“Its why I told my followers about you,” he said, shifting gears to take us around a switchback turn. “I figured I could do what Grandmother Niggurath ordered me to do and I like hanging out with you.”

I laid a hand on his. “Thank you, Zothie. It means a lot to me, ya fuckin’ goober.”

“You have such a sweet way of saying things,” he laughed and hit the gas. “You’re almost out of food, we can grab more alongside swim gear in Fort Bragg. Our lives and accounts are legal, legit and nearly untraceable ones that are started each generation for me. My, well our, people know that paperwork establishes reality in this modern America and to blend in we have to exist. By the way, my cover name is Zach T. Elder. I told them to use Gwen’s last name, made things easier.”

“You’re Zach, I’m, fuck you said Cassandra?”

“Yup.”

“Least it’s not something stupidly common,” I grudged around a mouthful of snickerdoodle. I lost any angst in the dance of sugar and cinnamon across my tongue. “Oh, gods, no wonder they never let us out, I would destroy peoples for these.”

“You get used to the flavors,” he said as we drove on. “Though those are pretty good, I’ll grant you that.”

I sank into my thoughts and second sandwich as we slowly cruised south. A storm system blew in by the time we were in Fort Bragg, the sky threatening a downpour of biblical proportions as we went inside to get more food, drinks and swimsuits. After trying on a slew of options, I found a two piece that didn’t cover my tendrils and something called a thick rash-guard made of scuba fabric that would. I could still see the faint outline of my tendrils in the mirror but at least it was all black. The color faded into my natural skin tone, giving me a near solid silhouette that was broken by the long silver braids that hung over either shoulder. It would work. And the braids would draw attention away from anything else on first glance as long as it was dark enough.

Zothie, of course, came out wearing something flashier, a pale silver pair of board shorts that nearly shone against his night-dark skin. From the looks the cashiers gave him, he looked good in the shorts but all I saw was the goofy grin he had when he said my hair matched his shorts.

I’d suppressed the urge to toss him into a display and we finished our shopping in relative peace, making fun of one another as we debated this snack versus that one. It was… fun? I don’t know, I’d never done fun before.

It was enjoyable to be in Zothie’s company after such heavy conversations of the last few days? Weeks? My sense of time was thrown to hell. As he paid, I stole his phone to check the date.

March 7th. I’d been free for about a six weeks, I realized. No wonder I was hungry but not tired. I’d been in another real for almost a month with a being whose name I could not recall.

Fuck me, I escape one prison to find myself in another one made of my own powers that I didn’t have the key to.

But I would learn. I would get to Gwen and see if she could love me as she loved so many. I could feel her warmth when I looked for it, like a star surrounded by lesser lights though two of those lights were almost as large as hers. I wondered what those were as I opened a couple of aps.

I knew basic computer and tablet interfacing from my upbringing (you can’t call that a childhood) and was quickly looking up our location and news of the world. By the time we were in the car, I gave Zothie back his phone and asked where mine was. He responded I didn’t have one yet, but we could pick one up outside of San Francisco.

I told him I’d need a laptop as well, so I could type up my story. And try out some videogames, nothing like exploring humans than through the veil of entertainment. I wondered if my teacher out in the cosmos could play games with me.

Maybe I’d ask.