If there were places destined for my children I did not know what they were. I wasn’t aware of any prophecies or expectations. They had to find their own way. I could give them advice and prohibitions and information. I couldn’t use my power to teach them, or to give them safe boundaries to work in, because right now when they needed it I didn’t have any power. It felt like letting them down. And yet, Simmea had wanted me to stay incarnate, at the cost of her own life. Could this be why? Could they need to learn without boundaries? As soon as I thought it I knew that this was insane. Simmea hadn’t known anything about the powers of a god except what I’d told her. She hadn’t known about Delos or what they would need. She was going on the information she had at the time, most of which I must have and some of which I might be able to discover if we ever caught up with Kebes. (Or whoever had killed her, if it wasn’t Kebes.)

I did feel like an idiot whenever I thought about it. What could I do, incarnate, that I couldn’t do as a god? I usually asked the question the other way around, for there were so many things I could do as a god that I couldn’t do as a human. I had become human to learn about will and consequences and the significance of mortal life. There were things I had learned, and no doubt there was more to learn. But as for things I could do better incarnate—beyond learning that it seemed to amount to suffering, and waiting. Perhaps there was something else Simmea wanted me to learn. But she had seemed so urgent—don’t be an idiot, she had said, as if her reason was obvious and imperative. She let herself die, she gave up her memories and our life together and the future we could have had. The least I could do was try not to be more of an idiot than I could help.