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The child had come. Naia felt the weariness wearing on her - she was so tired. But the child had come to say goodbye, and now she could rest. The poor thing was crying; Naia wanted to comfort her, but there was no time, no energy left, she could feel herself cracking apart, like one of Gleb's rocks when a downpour eroded it away.
Her conduit, her statue, crumbled around her, and she felt herself falling for just a moment, before she landed, claws outstretched, on a branch. Her tail twitched.
She felt the bark beneath her pads, and flexed, felt claws extend and grip, opened great amber eyes, and found herself perched in the branches of the new World Tree. The tiny sprout she herself had planted, along with the spirit of a child, in the midst of a dying desert. Oros watched her with wide, unblinking eyes, and she blinked back, dug her claws in, and stretched, pulling each and every muscle in a long, luxurious expansion of every vertebra in her back.
Oh, she said, twitching her whiskers forward. I had forgotten how good that feels.
Oros hissed softly, and she thought it was laughing. Her tail twitched in silent agreement, and she hopped down from the tree, then reached up and had a good long scratch with her claws, dragging their insubstantial razor sharpness down through the bark of the trunk. The tree didn't mind; she wasn't pulling the bark off, or anything. I remembered it before I felt it, he observed. It is good to see you remember again.
The child appeared on the Sigil Gate, still crying, wiping at her face. The Spirit Darters of the grove clustered around her, fluttering like birds, and Naia realized she was much smaller in this shape than she had been in her prior one.
Hmm. This offered other options.
She padded through the dune grass (so tall) emerged out where the child sat weeping on the steps up, sat down, and began to purr.
"Oh!" the small human said, looking up. "Where did you come from, kitten?"
Naia didn't answer. Speech seemed unimportant just now. She hopped up into the girl's lap, kneaded her thighs for a moment (the fabric of the child's tunic was lovely under her paws) then curled up and resumed purring.
The human child petted the tabby cat with the amber eyes, and was comforted. And Naia considered that perhaps, it would be good to spend this life not being responsible for anything - at least, for a while. It wasn't as if she had to go back to being a goddess instantly, after all. She could grow slowly, like one of her favorite oak trees.
(There would be so many lovely oak trees to sharpen her claws on, she was certain of that. This child was too good a gardener not to plant them everywhere in the dunes.)
"I hope she's happy, wherever she is," the child whispered. "I wish she hadn't had to go..."
Naia redoubled her purring, and gently batted the child's hand with her tail. "Oh, sorry, I stopped petting you, didn't I." The child sighed. "I'll just have to do a really good job, and make her proud of me, wherever she is." She moved to stand up, and Naia dug one claw gently into the child's lap. "You don't want me to get up yet?" The child laughed a little. "OK, I guess I can sit here a little while longer."
So she did, and petted Naia, and Naia blinked her amber eyes up at Oros, and smiled with her whiskers.