I stayed with the god, Joanna, for twenty-seven days. They weren't luxurious, or easy days, but they were fascinating. She was determined that we should learn each other's languages, and it seemed that each day when I woke, she had mastered everything I had tried to explain to her the day before. She was ravenous for my knowledge, and as we became capable of basic communication beyond useless hand-sign, I started to teach her what I could about the Erin-Vulur. She was beyond fascinated in our village, how we lived atop a mountain frozen in the ice, and after I had told her that, she had begun sending down little metal drilling creatures. They would dig deep into the ice, so far down I would be unable to see or hear them, and much later they would return with containers of whatever they had been set to collect.

At first, during all of this, Joanna would speak, rapidly and excitedly, in her language, saying things I could not possibly understand with my rudimentary grasp of the basics of her tongue. At first, I thought she was talking to me, or to herself, but watching her face in the crystal window of her helm, it became clear that she was receiving some answer that I couldn't hear. The Elders had spoken of the spirits of Ravanur, the winds, the cold, and the dark ones trapped beneath the glacial skin of the world- but I had never seen or heard any of the spirits speak. As far as I knew, neither had anyone I knew, not even the Stormcallers- though my sister told me that there were secrets they simply were forbidden to share with the rest of us. I found a new respect, and a sense of awe, growing within me the longer I stayed within the storm wall of Joanna, the fallen god from the Firmament. She could so easily pierce the barrier between flesh and spirit, that she could speak with the elusive hidden powers of Ravanur as easily as she spoke to me- this was surely a god I was speaking to, one both great and powerful.

I tried to maintain the stoicism expected of a ranger, to observe and gather knowledge that I could report to the Elder without getting personally involved in this. After all, if Elder Lot was right, this god had slain a Stormcaller. I hadn’t seen any trace of the body, but that was hardly surprising. I had been watching her raise small buildings from nowhere for many days, and it was not hard to imagine that she could just as easily have commanded the ice to swallow the fallen mage, leaving nothing behind. When I finally began to be able to speak a rude act of her language, Joanna explained to me the purpose of her fall- the knowledge I had been waiting for this whole time. Having ascertained what I thought she was, she gently explained to me, in the tongue of my people, that she was not a god. Instead, she said, she was a person from another world out in the Firmament, and she had been sent to make Ravanur ready for the coming of many of her people. She explained how she was to make the air kinder, calm many of the storms, and make Ravanur warm enough to melt her glacial skin. All of these things were impossible, of course, so though she told me she wasn’t a god, I remained convinced that she was divine. After all, what mortal could shape the world with a wave of her hand? What simple person could best a Stormcaller in their own element? And who but a god could hope to make Ravanur, our Frozen Mother, warm again?

On the night of the twenty-seventh day, I received a message from my people. The air was at its coldest, and the Great Father's shadowed face was slightly smaller in the sky, the way it was in the middle of every night. My low, narrow wind-tent had been set up near the center of the camp, not close enough to the tower to touch it, but still a safe distance from the whirling chaos of the storm wall. I sat in the mouth of the hide and fur shelter, running a sharpening stone over my climbing axes when I suddenly realized that I wasn't alone. I sprang to my feet, stepping into a defensive stance, one axe held up above my head, the other waiting low. When I saw what had startled me, I sighed. It was shaped like a burug, scaled down so that its back didn't rise higher than my knee. And it was made entirely of ice. It was a Stormcaller construct, and it wasn't the first one that my sister had used to communicate with me. And I had no doubt that this message was from my sister because the little ice monster was doing somersaults to get my attention. Doubtless, she considered the relatively simple magick she was doing to be tremendously boring. She probably wasn't even trying to show off. I growled at the insect as it began to pirouette around me, clicking its crystalline mandibles loudly. "What, Nissi," I hissed at the thing. "Just give me the message already!"

The ice sculpture burug folded up, settling itself on the ice with its legs tucked up underneath its belly. Then, its mandibles spread open, and Nissikul’s bored, somewhat petulant voice came out of its mouth. It was as if a miniature version of my sister were living in the false creature’s mouth, and speaking for it in her voice. The whole experience was very strange. “Volistad,” she intoned, trying and failing to make her voice as imposing and regal as she could, like she was some kind of prophet from Palamun. “Volistad, ranger of the Erin-Vulur, you are hereby commanded to return to the nearest outpost of the Perimeter, where you will report on all you have seen to the Elder Stormcaller’s chosen agent.”

I frowned at the burug construct. “I assume you will be the Elder Stormcaller’s envoy?”

“Your assumptions are irrelevant!” Nissi drew out her words to mimic the affected speech of Elder Lot. “You willllll do assss you are toooooold!”

I snickered. “Please inform the master that I will meet his agent at Pyrinta Outpost in but a day and a half.

“Veeeerrrrry wellllll!” Nissi laughed, and then said something indistinct, and the burug collapsed into formless shards of ice. It was time. Time for me to return to my people and share all that I had learned of Joanna, the reluctant god who would change our world into a paradise. Time to show Vassa to be the fool he was. I looked over at where the god was sleeping, perfectly still in a sitting position, her back against the marvelous tower she had constructed. She would change everything for the Erin-Vulur. I crawled into my tent and fastened the flaps closed against the howling wind. I curled up into my sleeping furs, lying on my back to keep the Deepseeker’s blessing from digging into my side. I slept and dreamt of the new world to come, a world of warmth and ease, of food growing from the ground with ease, of fat prey to hunt, and a whole world without ice for me to explore.