The world was yet an insubstantial place. Its basics were in place, all the necessary elements needed for the myriad combinations that would create land and sea, sky and air and life of many diverse forms. Their love had brought these pieces into being, birthed from the power of the star-farer who called himself Roshi and the corporeal essence of she whom he had named Aema. Soon the planet would take shape and the seeds would be planted.

"You are a wondrous being, my love," Aema breathed. Her skin was a dark grey, her hair the deepest wine-red, her eyes the color of earth and rock.

Roshi's hair was snowy white, flowing over his broad shoulders, his skin shining with lustrous luminescence, and he gazed at his love, his own eyes of silver fire smiling at her. "It is you who are wondrous," he murmured to her. "You will give form and substance here, taking of my seed to bring this dream to fruition."

"Yet it is your dream," Aema countered. "It is you who has awakened me and set the fire of life within me."

He laughed. "Then perhaps we shall share the credit, hmm?"

Aema blushed. "As you wish, my love."

Roshi took her into his arms, the embrace warm and sustaining, then set her at arm's length from him.

"Are you prepared for the next step, my love?" he asked.

She nodded and held out her left hand, palm up.

"Will it hurt?" she asked,

"All births come with some pain," he answered, and his lips again curved into a smile. "But not more than you can bear."

"There is nothing I would not bear for you, Roshi," she said, the simple truth a thing of beauty in her mind.

Roshi leaned forward, kissing her, and a thin blade appeared from his hand.

"Flame burns, water flows, the stars shine," he said, his voice strong and clear. "Each gives its own gift, each has its own life, eternal, ever-changing, ever-growing. From one they did spring, to one they will return. To that end, I create the wellspring, my life joined with the blood of the world to be, made fertile by love's power."

Aema held her breath, unable to keep from tensing as Roshi gently held her hand, keeping her fingers open, and slashed the blade across her palm.

He had not lied to her; there was pain. It engulfed her as her blood misted into the space around her, then began to dance and swirl around them both. Roshi lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the wound, then breathing into it, and the mist began to solidify. All around them it coalesced, forming a core of purest flame, then a shell of rock and water, and finally a sphere of air that gradually thinned into the stars beyond. She gasped at the wonder and beauty of the transformation, and Roshi enveloped her in his arms, took a breath and exhaled again.

In the blink of an eye, they both stood on the surface of a planet, a world of ocean and islands, warm and wet underneath a lavender sky, double suns, one white and one red, shining down, giving life and warmth.

Aema looked around her. The magnificence was unbearable, and she cried out with joy. Roshi reached out his hand, catching the sound, and threw it. As he did, life filled the sky, insects and birds, and where they touched land or water, other creatures came into being, fish and beasts of many kinds, and plants began to grow and covered the islands and the bottom of the seas.

"This is what love has wrought," Roshi murmured to her. "This is the power we wield together."

"Roshi, my love, it is - so beautiful!" Aema whispered.

"No more beautiful than you, my love," he returned, and kissed her.

"The world, now formed in love and sacrifice, filled with all that we now see, with two suns and two moons, for there were but two forces of life in all the universe. And as each force has two sides, light and dark, so Zindar the Red and Za-faran the white were of Roshi, and bright Mnori and dark Mirana of Aema."

Jeremy whistled. The myth was certainly a beautiful one. He'd never come across a creation myth that truly acknowledged both male and female and light and dark quite so poetically. He paused, closing his eyes, smiling to himself. In his mind, Roshi looked remarkably like Sulu as a Silmaril. As Chief of Security for the Enterprise he'd had access to the files regarding those unfathomable beings, along with holos.

The reports sure didn't exaggerate their incomparable beauty, he mused, and chuckled. Yeah, and Sulu's pretty damned incomparable himself.

And, of course, Aema looked almost exactly like Lady Jilla. The description of the Goddess as dark-skinned with dark eyes had surprised him until he remembered that the myth said her appearance had changed with the grief of losing Roshi.

Though, with all the 'my loves', how did that ever come about?

He went back to his reading.

The world continued its growth, new life coming into being each time Roshi and Aema joined. The years passed, and they were happy, playing with their creation, shaping and guiding it with laughter and acceptance and peace. But they did not neglect strength, nor wisdom. The life of the world drank in the emotions that sparkled between its Mother and Father, giving it back in equal measure, learning to read and interpret and react to the subtle shifts in the essence of Roshi and Aema.

For their part, Roshi and Aema, too, absorbed the emanations from their life's children; they, too, learned of the purposes of emotion, not only that which they shared between them, but that which came into being all around them. Aema learned of sympathy and empathy, pleased when Roshi's approval gleamed from his eyes. But she was teacher too, for from her, Roshi learned to care for the life-span that was, to his reckoning, infinitesimal.

From the life that flourished in the world, creatures arose that held the promise of comprehension. They were simple at first, like the other life, then slowly, gradually, became aware of that other life around them. They became aware of themselves as separate from that life, then of their role in the world.

It was then that Roshi approached his love with a new phase of their creation.

"Aema," he began, "these are the creatures we created the world for."

She glanced up from her place on a grassy rise, above the clear water of a wide, flowing river. "Did we not create it for all life?" she asked.

"Yes, of course, but ultimately for beings that could know us, and learn from our guidance," Roshi corrected gently. "It is through these beings that we will ultimately be replenished ourselves."

Aema rose, her face troubled. "Then this was but a selfish act, my love?"

Roshi smiled softly. "All life is selfish. All life seeks to maintain its own existence, to grow and thrive. And all life feeds on other life, does it not?"

Aema's brow furrowed. "Yes, I have seen it thus," she said. "But as all life comes from our love, it did not seem a bad thing."

"And so it is with us," Roshi returned.

Still, Aema was puzzled. "But from whence did you come, my love?" she asked. "What love gave you life, and do you, too, exist to replenish some greater being?"

For the first time, Roshi's eyes seemed guarded. "That is knowledge beyond us - for now," he murmured. "Just as we are knowledge that is, for now, beyond the comprehension of the life of this world."

"Will it someday know us?" Aema questioned, and her gaze went back to the river and the small school of fish that swam in it.

"That is my purpose," Roshi answered. "And yours."

"And is the purpose of your Makers that we should someday know them?"

"That is not a question I can answer, my love," Roshi said. "Can you bear the mystery?"

Aema bent her head. "There is nothing I would not bear for you," she vowed.

Roshi smiled at her and embraced her, soothing her unease with the protection of his arms and the warmth of his kisses.

"And so came into being the life that would grow and develop in the world - and the first warning of the trouble that would forever alter it."

Jeremy frowned. Aema's question was the ultimate one of all sentience - why am I here, where did I come from, is there something greater than me? And that was the beginning of the problems that ended with Roshi abandoning Indi and Aema? It certainly didn't put the man in a positive light.

But then, I am reading Aeman texts, he reminded himself, and immediately wondered what Roshian myth would have to say about that. He considered looking it up, then decided to finish one tale before beginning another. Getting one side of the story straight was, in his experience, the best way to understand the differences and contradictions of the other.

He rose, stretching, and got himself another cup of coffee. So far, the image Indiians had of themselves was very clear: a loving, intelligent, emotional and dedicated people. The repeated 'there is nothing I would not bear for you' seemed an important thread, and Jeremy could easily see that in the Indiian psyche. Part of their marital customs, after all, involved the wife accepting absolutely the culture of her husband - which was, of course, where Jilla's troubles had, in fact, begun.

But it's also the source of her salvation, he told himself. Accepting Sulu as completely as she did Selar is what keeps her alive.

The fact that her complete acceptance was also Sulu's salvation was not lost on him. If he were a man who believed in fate, he would certainly believe that they were destined to find one another.

And wouldn't Sulu hate that, he grinned.

He returned to his desk and made some notes, then paged the screen down to the next portion of the myth.

"The world grew further, the beings that were of such concern to Roshi grew with it..."

"Look at them, they are so playful!" Aema said as she watched the beings laugh and tumble about in the shallow water between land and sea. Beside her, Roshi, too, was smiling.

"It is good they learn what it is to be carefree," he replied. "But eventually they must also learn responsibility."

"Responsibility for what?" Amea asked

"For the stewardship of this world," he answered. "They must learn to harvest the bounty of the land and the water, to hunt, to farm, to build..." He paused. "And to create on their own."

Aema's face grew troubled. "Why on their own?" she said. "Surely we will always be here to guide and guard them."

"No, we will not," was her love's soft, sorrowful answer.

She blinked in alarm. "How can that be?" she gasped. "They are our creation, they need our love to continue... do they not?"

"Our love brought them into this world," Roshi tried to explain, "but it was always our goal to give it to them when they came to enough knowledge."

"But this is my home, Roshi, and yours! Surely we will not abandon it!"

Roshi turned to his love, meeting her fearful gaze with gentle resolve. "It is not my home, my love," he said. "I must return to the stars, but I would bear you with me."

Urgently, she clutched at him. "They are our children!" she pleaded. "They will be bereft without us, and I would fade and die without you! We cannot leave them, you cannot leave me...!"

"Hush, my love," Roshi soothed. "There is much time by your reckoning before we can leave them to their destiny. And in that time, you will grow as well, and will begin to see the wisdom in what I do."

"There can be no wisdom in creating life only to leave it," Aema insisted.

"All things outgrow their mothers and fathers," Roshi returned. "All things must, in time, become mothers and fathers in their own right. It is a process, my love, not an abandonment, and it will not be sudden nor without preparation." He stood, taking her hand. "Come, let us go among them. Let us enjoy their play and their laughter. Let them feel our love, let them know what brought them to life, so they will remember it when they begin their stewardship. I promise you, you will find joy in that as well." His eyes lit with teasing affection. "Or would you nurse them and keep them as happy but helpless infants forever?"

Aema's lips pursed in a way that was delightful to Roshi's senses. "I did not think of that," she pouted.

He nodded. "Only because you, too, are still growing." He paused again, and asked, "Can you bear it, my love?"

Her face softened in a smile. "There is nothing I would not bear for you," she replied.

"Thus did the truth begin, that the children of the world need the constant presence of their mothers and fathers in the months after birth, that they may understand the love that created them."

Jeremy nodded. He'd known that Indiian children were inseparable from their parents for the first three months of life. There was a simple biological explanation. Indiian blood was mercury-based, and reacted almost as if it were carbonated; volatile and increasingly active when under stress. It was why Indiians themselves were so - and he chuckled at the only word that really fit - mercurial. While in the womb, the mother provided the stabilization necessary to keep the child from overload. Once born, that stabilization had to continue until the child's own regulatory systems matured enough to take over the process. So, for all practical purposes, an Indiian baby of less than three months of age had to be near one if its parents at all times, day and night. The myth, like most such tales, provided an explanation more poetic than the physical reality, and one that conveyed the truth on a deeply spiritual, and therefore more ingrained, personal, and more accessible level.

But Jeremy had caught something else in this portion of the myth. It was the set-up for the eventual rift between Aema and Roshi. If Roshi was truly a Seeder, he had to eventually leave the planet to evolve on its own. The Seeders were, according to the Enterprise's notes, more like gardeners and cultivators - and no farmer could stand in his fields all day and all night through the growing season. Planted crops had to be tended, yes, but constant attention would only create crops that had to be constantly tended. It was far better to let them grow as their biological natures directed, with only the careful weeding and grafting required to achieve the best yield.

It was more than a little odd to be thinking of a sentient people as 'crops.' It became odder still when Jeremy considered that, according to the precepts of the Seeder myth, all life in the galaxy were such crops - including that on Terra. It jarred with his own religious convictions - until he thought of Jesus as a Seeder, Whose love gave life to the world and Who still watched over it with loving care, but with only the intervention needed to guide and protect His children.

His mind gave him a picture of all the images of Jesus that had been painted or sculpted throughout the centuries, altered to show a glowing, pale figure with silver eyes and snowy-white hair.

Then he realized that that description could well account for the images of the Resurrection.

He shivered, shutting down the train of thought. You're supposed to be learning about Indiians, he reminded. Leave your own spiritual crisis for another time.

"Time passed, and the beings did learn to hunt and to farm, to fish and to mine the earth for minerals, to begin to build and create on their own..."

Aema smiled at the beings who she increasingly considered her children. They were so industrious, and Roshi's promise had been true: she did find as much joy in their work as she had in their play. They had learned to work stone, to harness fire, to make clay into pottery, to weave grasses and to spin fibers into thread, making clothing from the skins of animals. She found that while she could mourn for the deaths required to sustain their lives, it was an unnecessary grief, for the emotions of the animals and the vegetation came clearly to her: they understood the sacrifice. And the beings did also, for they honored each kill and each harvest with song and dance and the return of their bodies to the land or the sea to replenish what they had taken.

Millennia had passed while she watched her children grow. Her union with Roshi still created new life, channeled into the changes in fish and fowl and beast and plant that enabled them to adapt as the world changed around them. She was happy, she was loved, and it seemed there was nothing that could spoil her joyous existence.

But she had forgotten Roshi's warning, and so, when the day came that he approached her with the next phase of their union, she was unprepared for his words.

"My love, it is time," he said.

She glanced up at him. "Time for what, dearest love?"

"We must leave this world. We must let the beings continue on their chosen path."

Aema stared, her eyes growing wide with alarm.

"No, it cannot be, they need us, Roshi!"

"What they need, Aema, is the room to expand as they will," her love replied firmly.

"It is too soon," she argued. "They have just begun the questions that will lead them to awareness of us."

"Just so, and so we must leave them to discover what they will about us," Roshi returned.

"Why must they make such a discovery when we can simply walk among them?" Aema protested.

"That is not our way," was the simple response.

"I am not of your beings!" Aema cried. "I was created from the elements, to be for this world, not for your stars!"

"As a first step, yes," Roshi tried to explain. He held out his hand. "Come, there will be other worlds, other creations..."

"Do you not love this world?" Aema pleaded. "For I do, with all my heart, all my soul!"

"My love cannot be such a small thing," Roshi answered.

"You call them, all they have accomplished, small?!"

"No, my love. I simply know how much more there is."

"And I do not!" Aema's voice was both strident and beseeching. "These are my children, Roshi, I cannot, I will not leave them!"

"You will not bear this for me?" he asked with cruel directness.

"Do not ask me to make such a choice!" Aema wailed.

He sighed. "Then, I fear, my love, that I must make it for you. I cannot stay. If you will not come with me..."

"Roshi, my love, you can't..." she began.

"I must," he replied. He turned away from her. "And if you must stay, then you must. But this I vow - and it is a thing you would understand if you would but come with me: There will come a day when I will return and provide what guidance the beings need, if need there be."

"No, Roshi, please, I beg you...!" Aema fell to her knees, her arms uplifted in supplication.

"This is the way of the universe, my love," Roshi said softly, his voice thick with sorrow. "Wait for me. I will return to you and to this world created by our love."

As Aema wept, the air around her grew cold, and Roshi's form slowly faded to nothing. It was, if she had been there to see it, the way he had arrived, thousands upon thousands of years ago. To her endless grief, Aema was alone and she clung to the words he had uttered. He would return, and she would wait, for there was nothing she would not bear for him.

"Betrayed, abandoned, Aema began Her vigil, watching the night and the stars for sign of His return. Her skin became pale as moonlight, Her eyes washed grey from the tears that fell to Her silken cheek. Her tears fell upon the land, and the love that was contained within them gave the final spark to Her children. They, too, became washed in Her grief, and they looked upon Her and saw Her sorrow and Her majesty. And so, as had been ordained, they came to the discovery of Her. And Her despair cleansed Her and She ascended to the stars, ever to keep Court till the end of time when Roshi returns to Her."

There was a lump in Jeremy's throat as the tale came to its end. The images in his mind were clear and suffused with both sorrow and understanding. Aema's act of supplication before Roshi was why those who discarded her ways became Beggars. The washing of her mortality explained the skin and eye color of her children. The power of her love, embodied in her tears, gave the final evolutionary push, and set her image in the minds of all Indi as Goddess, Mother. Yet still, the ultimate message was of forbearance, of acceptance. Aema waited. She had been waiting for all of Indiian history. And she would wait forever.

Jeremy brushed the tears from his eyes, glancing down at the drops on his hand. With the story still so fresh, he wondered if there was life contained within them. He knew there was an important evolutionary step indicated by them. Terrans cried saltwater, proof that they had returned, at some important time, to the oceans of Earth. That conclusion was born out by a number of other physiological factors, but the point was made: in a way, tears were the proof of the Human final evolutionary push.

And they're proof of another connection, he thought. Nobody who doesn't love knows how to cry.

He closed the file on his computer. He understood Lady Jilla's strength much better now. He understood the depth of her pain at the decisions she'd had to make. And he understood the vast wealth of emotion contained within her.

And like the Indiians, he accepted with a twinge of sorrow, that such beauty would never be aimed at him.

Sulu was a very, very lucky man.