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of circumstances. Mufruzhuuzh was still war king. The god would set everything to rights.

The god was so large he had to bow down on all fours to travel through the tunnels. Of course, he could just as easily have walked upright, tearing out the roofs of the tunnels just by passing through them, But he chose not to, leaving the tunnels undamaged for the people to use. Such kindness! Such generosity to mere earth-crawling worms like us!

Around them she could hear the patter of a thousand feet, as men and women and children scurried to every open passageway, hoping for a glimpse of the god as he passed. Emeezem could see hands reaching up to let the light of the god's body touch pink hands; parents held up their babies so the light of the god would bless their tiny bodies. And still the god followed her, his light un-diminished.

They came to the chamber where, so many years ago, Emeezem-no, she was mere Emeez in those days- had first seen the unmarred head of the god. She stopped, and bcseeched him to forgive them for leaving him in such obscurity for so long.

She heard the undergod speak to him, and he answered. Then he licked his finger, reached out his hand, and touched the lintel of the doorway. Thus did he leave the fluid of his body on the door of the place. That was more than mere forgiveness. She keened in relief, and many others joined in with her. She could hear one voice, a man, singing, "We put your glorious head in darkness, not worshipping it because in the day we could not see your light. But you return the waters of life to us, and bring light into the stomach of the earth. So noble, so great!" Others sang their assent to his words: "So noble! So great! So noble! So great!"

The god paid them the compliment of staying there, still, unmoving, till the song ended. Then Emeezem moved on, leading him farther up the corridor, to the temple she had caused to be built for him, starting the very day she was chosen as root mother. Because the head was so large, she had decided that the god must also be very tall, and so she had made the people dig his temple so low that the ceiling could be high. She also placed the temple so that the roof reached up into a crevice in the rock, letting a bit of daylight reflect down into the chamber. And in the brightest spot of the soft diffused glow, on a pedestal made of bones of the skymeat, she had placed his head.

It was nighttime now, though, so there was little illumination when he came into the temple. Instead he brought the light with him, and it brightened every corner of the room when he rose to his feet. Others came through the door after him, gathering along the walls of the temple, watching as he approached the pedestal where the sculpture sat. Now he would see how they had worshipped him, once they understood that his strange large head was a sign of power and not of weakness. Hadn't the entire spring harvest of infant skymeat been offered to him that first year, so that his pedestal immediately rose at once to be as high as any god's? Hadn't he also had more than his share of skymeat broken open and shared among the people in his honor every year since then? Yet still no one had used his head in the time of mating, for they understood that he was not to be worshipped in that way.

The god walked slowly to the face and stood before it. It glowed in the brightness of his body, answering his bright face with an earthen one. He reached out to k, touched it. Then he lifted his head upward toward the source of the room's faint natural starlight and sank to his knees before the statue.

I see, thought Emeezem. You show us how to worship you properly. We cannot do exactly what you have done, because our knees do not bend in that direction. But we will touch the face as you touched it. Was there a reason why it was the lips you touched? Should it always be the lips? Or will we touch that part of the face that we want to have bless us? You must tell me. Perhaps later, if you should deign to