We took a few more steps towards the light and then appeared in the meadow on Olympos where I’d last been at the time of the Relocation. The same blue and gold bell-shaped flowers were nodding among the grass, and Father was sitting in the same place, as tall as the mountains but no bigger than a man. We walked towards him through the tall grass. Jathery walked on the other side of Athene. I wondered how Father seemed to gla, whether gla saw Father as Saeli. Father looked at the three of us evenly. He saw us, and so he knew where we had been and why, he knew everything, he had always known, and now it came to his attention. I understood this so much better than I had before.

“I have a song,” I said, before anyone else said anything.

Father spread a hand granting permission, to a distant rumble of thunder. Athene and Jathery took their places on the grass, flanking him. I took up my lyre, my true immortal Olympian lyre which never—unlike the mortal ones I’d been making do with for so long—needed tuning. That might not be my favorite thing about being a god, but it’s close.

I sang about being out there, much as I have set it down here. I could see Father smile as I sang. Athene seemed to be listening very intently. I wondered again how much she remembered.

“Good boy, Phoebus,” he said, when I finished and sat down. “And now you understand why I told you not to go there.”

“We are there already,” Athene said.

Lightning flashed to and fro among the peaks.

“Why do you keep so much from us?” Jathery asked, gla face expressionless but with anguish in gla voice.

“You have to be ready,” Father said. “You have to discover things for yourselves.” He looked at me. “Are you planning to sing that? To mortals?”

“I’m going to sing it on Plato,” I said. “There are people there who need to hear it, and are ready to understand it. I’m going to sing it to Sokrates and Pico.”

“They have a meeting to interrogate the gods, before the human ship lands,” he said. “You should go and sing it there. And you two should show up at the meeting too.” He waved at Athene and Jathery. “They deserve a chance to engage you in dialectic, after all you’ve done. And then bring Pico here. It’s time.”

“Oh Father!”

He hadn’t said a word of reproach to her for breaking his edicts and going out there. And since she’d had no way to get back, she’d still be in that eternal moment if Jathery and I hadn’t gone after her. Yet she was immediately protesting his commands again.