She showed me her contradictions, which when taken as a whole wasn’t a contradiction at all. “You’re looking at the pieces, and out of context at that. Flour and water make bread but you wouldn’t know it from just looking at flour and water alone. You were held on the ocean floor, where not even the heat of lava can remain, but your heart still flames. Look at the vessel where these forces mix. There is your answer.”
She took me to an open plain (plane?) and said I would play a game with her. She threw a lightning bolt at me and in reflex I slapped it away. She grinned and threw another. This time I was prepared and slapped it back towards her. We played lightning tennis for several rounds.
“How does a flame play with lightning? If your heart’s flame defined you then you should not have been able to deflect any of my bolts. Why do you limit yourself?”
Why, indeed.
Over a meal she brought up the answer that the Ocean gave to me. She reminded me I was speaking to the pantheon out of order, but cautioned me about trying to do things the official way. The Ocean has my bloodline, yes, but I am disconnected from the initiatory current. I must find my own way, for my own use. “I hope you’re not going to try and head a new House with this.” She read the repulsion on my face and laughed.
She asked what I had learned of the answer. I spoke true of my limitations. She asked if I understood the blinds. “It’s a misunderstanding of a cover of one person’s synchrenism that has been taken to represent a culture. It’s not what it looks like at face value. And if I tried to go with the plain sight understanding, I’ll only dig myself in deeper shit. But now that I know what it is, I won’t have to bother any of the others because it doesn’t concern them at all! If anything, it all goes back to [the Ocean] and the attending currents.”
She neither confirmed nor denied my suppositions. She only smiled. We finished our meal. She escorted me to the borders of her realm. We said our farewells. And that was that.