What you did out there wasn't necessary either, though the sun was near to it. You looked out into the unfinished darkness and drew The Sword and raised it in one motion. In your hand the flames whipped and whipped and grew gold and white and brilliant, so you could see them with your eyes closed, or from above. (In your diorama a pinprick blazes.) Down below, you caught the sun spinning on The Sword's very tip and flicked it out of reach. It hung in the sky, and the sky came with it.

Fiat lux, Richard said.

You almost needed the garden, too. Will have needed it. You took clippings from the heart-plant; you went down into your mind and dug up rosebushes and replanted them in dark soil. Richard wanted to do the soil, and you let him. You thought of bringing Gil in, to consult on trees, but could not. If he didn't notice, Teddy would. You took rootings from the tree in his nook, instead, and watered them from the font.

Leafy and living, but silent and still. Richard suggested a breeze. You pulled the wind-up bird from your pocket, breathed into it, and let it flutter onto a branch— then pulled it down, pressed it in your hands, and let a dozen spill out.

Richard with a cigarette was watching from a bench. "Can't just wave your hands and make it different."

"I can't! I— I mean— I couldn't— I couldn't snap my fingers and go 'there's a garden now.' I'm not God."

"Aren't you?"

"No." It came out harsher than intended.

"I see." Richard cocked his chin, took a drag, tapped the ashes onto the new dirt. "Even so. You've surpassed me."

"...Will have."

"Much the same. I suppose I expected this. I am not, after all, the Herald. Would you devise new and terrible ways to kill me if I said I was proud?"

You slid up behind him, sticking your fingers through the lattices of the bench. "I... Charlotte Fawkins would."

"Of course. I'd expect no less." He hadn't turned around. "But you can rest secure. So, Lottie, I am proud of what we have accomplished. She may never hear that, but you— well, you are hearing it."

You clenched your fingers through the bench.

"Moreover, I look forward to seeing my vindication in action. That will provide all I need. So thank you for offering an advance on it, if you will."

"I didn't mean— I wasn't thinking of it when I came."

"No matter. You rarely think of anything at all. It shakes out regardless."

"Yeah." You were silent. "Richard, has she told you that the Wyrm won't bring you back? I mean the agents."

"Not conclusively."

"But you believed it."

(2/5?)