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Prologue: As Sassy and Eliot watch their child grow up in a seemingly perfect world, they have to wonder if this peace is merely the calm before the storm.

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"Eeeee! Mommy, help me!" Phoenix giggled, dashing across the garden. She was closely pursued by Kerra, whose many long, thin braids were flying out behind her. Sassy smiled at the antics of the two.

"I'm gonna getcha!" Kerra yelled, beginning to catch up to Phoenix. Phoenix giggled and jumped way up into the air, grabbing a branch of a tree.

"Are ya, Kerra?" Phoenix grinned, pulling herself all the way into the tree.

"Heyyy, that's not fair," Kerra complained. "You're s'posed to stay on the ground!"

"Nobody told me," Phoenix said with a note of smugness, stretching out on the branch. She yelped as the branch bent and broke from her weight, plummeting to the ground and taking Phoenix with it. Eliot caught her in mid-fall.

"Careful around these trees, Phoenix," he cautioned. "The only one that's stable enough to climb is the Grendel tree."

"Yeah, but that's where all those icky Grendels are!"

Ira cleared his throat loudly nearby.

"'Cept you, Ira," Phoenix amended.

Ira looked away with a satisfied expression on his face. Kerra giggled. Realizing that Phoenix's attention was elsewhere, she reached over and tapped Phoenix on the shoulder.

"TAG-you're-it!" she said, running away. Phoenix yelped again and took off after Kerra. Sassy and Eliot looked after them bemusedly and returned to quiet conversation.

"Y'know, every time I see those two play like that, I envy them," Sassy said quietly. "They have it so easy. When I was Kerra's age, we had Rrak to worry about, and d'Graht."

"When I was Phoenix's age, we had the humans," Eliot said simply.

"Sometimes I wonder if this is just the eye of the hurricane - you know, just a period of peace and quiet...until the rest of the hardship comes."

"Me too," Eliot said, glancing towards where Phoenix and Kerra had run and sighing wistfully. "But like I said...worrying about the future won't do anything but make the present a lot less enjoyable."

"Yeah," Sassy agreed quietly. Karen came up to the couple.

"Where's Kerra?" she asked. "Lunch is almost ready."

"Lunchtime already?" Eliot asked, surprised. Time flies when you're having fun, he mused. "Yeah, Kerra's playing tag with Phoenix. They went over that way," he gestured towards the submarine bay. Karen sighed, putting one hand to her forehead and walking off in that direction, muttering something about 'darn daughter doesn't stay put for two seconds'. Eliot and Sassy shared a smile and then leaned back against the lemon vine, just enjoying the blessedly peaceful day.

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"...keep in mind that waaaay back then, we didn't have cobs or Genetics Kit or any of that fancy stuff. Nope! Just the basics, and Norns back then wouldn't eat unless you told 'em a few times..."

This was the Hand, relating a story of the 'way back when' of Albia. She was gesturing like mad, and obviously having a good time telling the story. Kerra and Phoenix sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the Hand, each with a few snacks nearby.

"...I ever tell you about Barry and Beth? Barry and Beth were in looove, not something you often saw back in those days. Barry was immortal, and Beth was mortal, a pretty old mortal in fact. One day she started dying, and I decided to let her die--"

"You _let_ her die?" Phoenix asked incredulously. The life-preserving Hand _let_ a Norn die?

"She was old and in pain," the Hand said.

"Oh."

"Anyway, when she finally died, Barry wouldn't do anything but sit there, staring at her corpse, and he kept going 'push norn', like he wanted to kiss her, but she was dead. Then he went to sleep in a nearby lift, like he was trying to rejoin her."

"How romantic," Kerra sighed.

"Anyway, then he tiptoed over to her and went 'Daa?' like he was asking her if she was okay. I nearly cried."

"I would too," Phoenix commented, munching an apple.

"Would too what? Cry, or ask Beth if she was okay?" Kerra asked.

"Both," Phoenix shrugged, and finished her apple.

"Turned out that lil Tanya was Beth's daughter, but she wasn't able to hatch until her mother had died. I hadn't learned about export then."

"Sad," Kerra frowned. "Really sad."

"It was," the Hand said. "I like to think I've gotten better at this kind of thing since then."

"You have," Phoenix soothed, patting the Hand. The Hand made a vague gesture that passed for a faceless being's smile, and then floated off. Kerra gulped down the rest of her snack with a bottle of lemonade, and looked at Phoenix.

"You know what? I'm in mid-childhood, and I _still_ haven't seen all of Albia! Wanna go exploring?"

Phoenix shrugged. "Sure, I guess it's better then just sitting around all day."

"C'mon then!" Kerra sprang to her feet and headed off for the submarine bay. Phoenix followed after her.

They got as far as the jungle before they met up with a creature who wasn't a Norn. The dim light of the jungle caused crooked fangs to glisten, red eyes stared from under a thick brow, and the body of the creature was bent and hunched. Stringy blond hail was pulled sloppily into two small pigtails. Kerra and Phoenix backed away fearfully.

"Female Grendel," Kerra hissed warningly.

"I figured that," Phoenix hissed back, eyeing the Grendel warily. The Grendel peered calmly at the two norns with slightly glowing red eyes. There was a long, uncomfortable silence as the three creatures stared at each other warily. Finally, the Grendel broke the silence.

"Come with me."

Kerra and Phoenix backed up some more. Phoenix had heard that female Grendels could sometimes be more vicious than their male counterparts, simply because the females had the advantage of bitchiness.

"No," Phoenix said.

"Come with me," the Grendel repeated. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Kerra and Phoenix exchanged a look that said they didn't believe it for a minute. The Grendel leaned casually aginst a tree.

"I repeat, I am not going to hurt you," she said. "If I wanted to, I could have done it already."

"She has a point," Phoenix conceded, looking questioningly up at Kerra.

"Fine, we'll come with you," Kerra said. "But we're holding that as a promise. Don't hurt us."

"I won't," said the Grendel, ambling up to the two Norns. "Incidentally, my name's Methka."

"I'm Phoenix," Phoenix said, eager and trusting. She figured that if a Grendeless told you her name, you might as well stop worrying. "And my friend here is Kerra," she said, gesturing up at the white-haired girl, who was glowering.

"Pleased to meet you," Methka said cordially, then ushered Phoenix and Kerra into one of the lifts. She joined the two Norns in the lift, and sent it down. Once in the cellars, she motioned for Phoenix and Kerra to follow her. Still a bit wary, the two Norns did as she asked, following her onto the raft and under the garden and finally to the wildly warm place of the cellars beneath the kitchen. Methka turned to the two young Norns, looking up at them. She seemed different. The nightmare features hadn't changed, but there was a look of great, boundless wisdom in the softly glowing red eyes. Both children were startled.

Suddenly, strangely, Methka's features began to melt together, and a bright light radiated from her body. Kerra and Phoenix shielded their eyes against the glow, attempting to peer through their fingers at the Grendeless. Obscured by the light, Methka suddenly stood tall, her entire form changing from the hunched, bent-over, oddly proportioned Grendel form to a taller, more graceful being. The light faded, and standing where Methka had once been was a tall, blond Norn, dressed loosely in iridescent, shimmery robes, taller even than Karr. Kerra and Phoenix looked extremely shocked. The Norn before them was beautiful, radiant...perfect.

"M-M-Methka?" Phoenix stammered. "I-is that you?"

"Yes," the tall one promptly responded. Her voice was more resonant, more melodious.

"But...aren't you a Grendel? How come you're suddenly a Norn?" Kerra blurted out.

"This is not my true form, nor was my previous form. I merely chose a form you could relate to, could understand."

There was a long, stunned silence. Finally, Phoenix ventured a question.

"What are you?"

Methka smiled benignly. "I am a Shee."

Kerra snapped out of her near-trance, pretty sure Methka was lying. "Naw, all the Shee left Albia, a long time ago. The Hand told us."

"Most," Methka corrected. "Not all."

"The Hand told us _all_ of 'em left," Kerra shot back. "The Hand doesn't lie."

"The Hand told you what she believed to be the truth," Methka replied calmly. "She was not aware that one Shee remained in Albia."

"Well, where've you _been_ all this time?" Kerra queried, still not fully convinced.

"I have lived in a long forgotten cave in the Purple Mountains," Methka said. "'Twas only recently that I returned here, to the commonwealth of Albia."

"Oh," Kerra said.

"Well, why did you bring us here?" Phoenix asked.

Methka smiled again and sunk down onto one knee before Phoenix, so as to be able to look directly into the child's eyes. "To give you my blessing. Phoenix, you and Kerra are part of the future of Albia. Live well, and prosper. Remember, you have the blessing of the Shee."

With that, Methka stood again, and began to fade away.

"No! Don't go!" Phoenix begged, but it was too late. Methka had disappeared, either gone from Albia, or back to her home in the Purple Mountains, leaving two very dazed norns standing in the cellars.

"Phoenix?" Kerra asked. "What do you s'pose she meant by 'part' of the future of Albia?"

Phoenix grinned. "Oh, yeah, we're really gonna produce eggs on our own when we grow up," she joked. "We're gonna need males to kisspop."

"Oh."

The two Norns stared at the spot where Methka had stood for a little while, then headed for home, heady with the blessing of the Shee.

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end