Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign - By Phillip Jones Page 0,39

Gods

Southern Grayham

“No, no, no! I mean … yes, I saw the map, but what I meant was, where in the galaxy are we? There are no large purple and orange worlds visible from Earth with the naked eye.”

Mosley tilted his head as a dog would when confused. “I’m not sure what you mean. All that is, or ever was, since the end of The Great Destruction of Everything Known is where you are. You’re on one of the five planets that revolve around the sun. This planet, as I told you before, is Grayham. The two worlds above are Luvelles and Harvestom. Dragonia and Trollcom cannot be seen for now, since they travel on the far side of the glowing sun. Nothing else exists, other than the hidden god world, Ancients Sovereign, but the beings on the worlds do not know of its existence or how to get there. Only those of us who live in service to a member of the Collective are privy to this sacred information. You would not know, but Bassorine instructed that I share it with you.”

Again, Mosley became sidetracked. He sniffed the edges of the wooden platform until he found the perfect spot. After marking it, he rejoiced and then rejoined the conversation. “What a wondrous day!”

Sam smiled. “Are you going to answer my questions ... or not?”

“I apologize. Most of what I know is limited to this world. Anything more, I cannot reveal in depth.” The wolf paused. “I’m not sure what a galaxy is, but it is, indeed, an amazing name.”

Sam and Shalee looked at each other before Sam responded. “Okay, okay. So … you don’t know where Earth is. That, I can accept. Obviously, if all the worlds are able to support life and you have only one sun, judging by the position of the other two worlds, the planets must be on different orbits. Your solar system is kind of a logistical nightmare, isn’t it? It must look like a giant atom. The sun acts as the nucleus while the planets move around as equal mass electrons. Granted, this is a crude analogy, but—”

Mosley interrupted Sam’s thoughtful rant. “What are you talking about? What’s an atom?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh, nothing. Forget it. I suppose I’ll just have to accept most of this for now, since you clearly have no idea what I’m talking about. At least answer this if you can.” Sam looked toward the sun. “How many hours are in one of your Peaks?”

Mosley gave Sam a blank stare. It was clear the wolf knew nothing of hours. He hesitated, “I don’t know what an hour is. I can tell you, we consider a Peak to be from when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky until the next moment it does it again. Does this help?”

“Heck, no, it doesn’t help. Of course a day is easy to figure out. Don’t you have clocks or watches?” he asked, pointing at Shalee’s wrist. “Don’t you understand the concept of time?”

Mosley looked at the watch and asked Sam to explain its function. Once the beast understood how the timepiece worked and the words Sam used to measure time, the wolf responded. “We have no words to represent your concept of time. We understand moments pass, but we don’t define the passage of our moments as you do. We don’t use words like minutes, seconds or hours. Our worlds are much simpler than yours.”

Shalee fumbled with the pink band of her watch. “Well, it may be good for nothing now, but at least it’s still pretty. Bummer.”

Looking up in the direction of the sun, Mosley continued. “Sam, we plan around specific positions of the sun. For example, you can see the sun has just risen, and it’s only a quarter of the way toward its highest point in the sky. We call this Early Bailem. When the sun is at its highest point, we call it the Peak of Bailem, and when it has passed the Peak and it is once again midway to the horizon, we refer to this as Late Bailem. These terms honor the God of the Sun, Bailem.”

The wolf lowered to his haunches. “Just before the sun disappears behind the horizon, we call this dusk, or evening. When we can no longer see, we call the darkness, night. In the middle of the night, there is an estimated series of moments we call midnight.”

Sam interrupted. “How do you possibly call ‘an estimated series of moments’