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On the day before her fever broke, the hain chieftain lay twisting and tossing in her nest, once a tidy affair of blankets and straw now reduced to a tangled crater around her. A curtain had been pulled over the hut's door and the fire was nearly dead. Her paramours had gone out to fetch food, and she was alone in the dark.

Then she was not.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Iffary."[/colour]

The hallucination was stronger than the usual fever dreams. Its glow put her aching head into a daze.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Listen, Iffary, for my words are no fell vision. My voice is real and my light is blinding. I, Chiral Phi, have measured the thread of your life, and found that there is yet length in it. It shall be woven into my pattern.

"Before the sun sets tonight, your son, Pil, will succumb to infection. Seven days from now he will die. There will be no time to mourn, for mere hours later, a hair demon will take the life of your oldest paramour Zulie, and the tribe will never recover. You will watch ill fortune destroy all you love. This I have foreseen.

"Only one thing will save the lives of your children. Hear it well. You must name Pil as your new heir as soon as you leave this hut. You will have to forsake your eldest daughter Neiko. With Pil at your side, you will take the whole tribe, and all its possessions, and guide it to the place beyond the Mount of Willows. There alone your survival is assured."[/colour]

Zulie entered the low, round building. His eyes widened as he watched a luminous haze evaporate from the body of the chief and disappear into the air. The tray of bread forgotten and left to fall to the ground, he rushed forward to grip her hand. She was weeping.

Time passed. Iffary recovered; Pil fell ill. Pil was named heir according to the words of the vision. Neiko fell into a confused dejection. A glorious apparition appeared to Pil, dazzling all those who were present, and he gained the strength to recover. Zulie saw a large fiberling lurking in the boulders.

The tribe hesitated to abandon their home, but did not stand against Iffary's divine right. Neiko went walking along the cliffs and never returned. A storm was coming, and her family could not afford to stay long enough to mourn her suicide. What hope they had left lay before them, in the meadowed places beyond the Mount of Willows. 

There a four-armed figure awaited them, carrying the egg of a new deity in their delicate fingers.