Then she leaned on her staff, feeling her legs tremble, suddenly conscious of everything around about her, from the sweat-itch in her hair to the soft touch of the sandal straps on her toes. And that she was ravenous, and craved sleep almost as much…

The others were as shock-pale as she; Sumina's merry wrinkled-pippin face clenched like a fist, BD's as fierce as her wolf. Melissa was steady, with the stolid patience of the hearth-mistress and farm-wife she'd been these two decades past but with awe and terror beneath, and Signe's valkyr beauty stood hawk-harsh, her bright blue eyes probing. She and Juniper weren't enemies now, but they weren't friends either.

"Does that happen often here?" she said sharply, with fear trembling on the brink of anger.

"No," Juniper said flatly. "I've had visions granted… not often. And never shared like that. not even since the Change. It was always possible, I suppose, in theory, but-"

They looked at each other and nodded, acknowledging that they had seen.

"But even Christians don't expect to have the sun stopped overhead often," Sumina said, taking a long breath.

The skin between Juniper's shoulder blades crawled, and she shuddered as her mouth went dry as milkweed silk in autumn. Yes, she loved the Lord and Lady in Their many forms… but those forms spanned the universe of space and time that sprang from Them, and They could be as terrible as the fiery death of suns, as inexorable as Time. A mother's kiss on her child's face came from Them, but so also the glaciers that grind continents to dust.

"I thought… I thought They might tell us something of the Prophet, this madman out in Montana," she said.

Signe nodded sharply. "I saw him. It couldn't have been anyone else." She grimaced. "And he was as nasty as… well, as nasty as the rumors, which is an accomplishment."