Alexa lets out a most undignified snort of a chuckle.  

"Of course they want the past to last forever. That's when they won."

Because the dog isn't wrong. She'd told herself, for two hundred years, that she knew exactly what she was. That she could never be anything else. She was the point of a spear, hammered to shape, sharpened to a razor's edge. She told herself it until she believed it, until suddenly finding out that she wasn't all but shattered her to the wind. She had to fall so she could find out what pieces were left.

And she, only one woman. Only one mind's worth of ego, of inertia, of unwillingness to pick up pieces long shattered. How much worse for an empire? How hard could an empire cling to that self image? How much rot and decay could set in because fixing it would mean acknowledging how bad things had become? How many crews could come here before Nero had to acknowledge her own desperation?

Two hundred years and change of heroes. Her own daughter...

Idly, her hands explore the dogs--dig behind ears to find that [i]one spot[/i] to melt a dog, see how many legs she can make kick with a single belly rub.  It's the perfect activity to let her fingers do while she ponders.

"I am curious," she says, slowly, sounding out each word as if preparing for the words to bite, "what your alternative is.

"Not to the affairs of empires. To that first bit, about bargaining with gods as they [i]were[/i]. You talk as if you know a better way. And you are old enough that I could believe it.

"Were the power difference not so vast, I could believe that you could learn and grow with them. You could spend time with them. Learn of them. Find joy in their laughter. Know them, know what they want, as lovers do. How else could you know them as they changed? How else could you be familiar with them, to know their moods?

"The gods love, of course. And mortals may even love them back. But can there truly be a relationship so close between the two, when one side bears all the power?"