Lily, still unable to find the tea leaves after searching for a while on the second floor, came to the staircase. She poked her small head out, calling, “Mom, I can’t find…”
“I’ll find it.”
Leaning on her cane, Philomena struggled to rise from the sofa.
She slowly left the living room, leaving only Isis and Beacai behind.
Perhaps it was the evening chill, but the atmosphere between them grew inexplicably cold.
Philomena’s plight intensified Isis’s desire to save her.
She also couldn’t bear the thought of a five-year-old girl losing her mother.
To save them was a deity’s response to their believers.
Gazing at the chandelier above, Isis pondered for a long time.
Finally, she took a deep breath and began, “Beacai…”
“You want to save her, don’t you?”
Before she could voice her thoughts, Beacai interrupted her.
This made Isis look at Beacai in astonishment.
Seeing Isis’s reaction, Beacai covered her mouth with a smile.
Her silver hair shimmered brightly under the dim, yellow light.
Knowing Isis as she did, Beacai had anticipated her actions.
“I told you, Mother’s thoughts are far too easy to guess. I could see this coming from a mile away.”
Beacai rested her chin in her hand, continuing, almost to herself, “Before, I would have been so jealous, wondering why Mother was so biased, preferring a little girl she’d just met over me. But now, I understand.”
“Mother, you’re the most indifferent one, aren’t you?”
She uttered the words airily, seemingly pleased.
Isis, however, frowned, utterly unable to grasp her meaning.
“What?”
‘She was the most indifferent person?’
Since her reincarnation, no one had ever described her this way.
Kindness and justice were the images mortals held of her; indifference was her antithesis.
‘And now Beacai claimed she was the most indifferent?’
Isis suspected Beacai might be blinded by jealousy.
Beacai, naturally perceiving her confusion, suddenly leaned closer.
She looked directly into Isis’s eyes, beginning to explain.
“It seems you love everyone without reservation—elves, Nona, even me when I was first born. The love you give us is always the same.”
“If I were Nona, you would have raised me too, wouldn’t you? Or, if my race were elves, you would willingly pay any price to save me, right?”
This was how Beacai perceived Yggdrasil’s love for all living beings.
She inherently cherished elves and newborn infants, even willing to suffer harm to protect them.
Moreover, no matter which elf or infant it was, she would act the same.
Her love for them was always equal.
This was her nature, her divinity.
Though Beacai disliked this aspect of her, she had to admit that if Yggdrasil weren’t this way, she would never have been saved by her.
Beacai, the Goddess of Blood, might have long since perished in the hunters’ encirclement.
“What do you mean?”
As Beacai leaned closer, Isis instinctively shifted back, giving the impression that Beacai was pressing down on her.
The young woman’s scent enveloped her.
Still, Isis couldn’t quite grasp what Beacai was trying to convey.
“Still don’t understand, Mother? Your love, in truth, is quite cheap. No, I should say, it doesn’t even qualify as love. It’s merely your inherent nature as Yggdrasil, a primal urge to protect any living creature that draws near.”
Beacai propped one hand beside Isis’s ear.
Her crimson pupils reflected the woman’s face beneath her, and the smile on her own face deepened.
“Isn’t your title, ‘Mother of All Beings,’ derived precisely from this kind of love?”
To hear her love called cheap felt offensive, even to Isis.
She cared for all beings, wishing them beautiful lives; this had nothing to do with cheapness.
Yet, having a favor to ask, she had to bury her irritation deep within.
She retorted softly, “Then how could I be indifferent?”
In her mind, even if her love were cheap, it bore no relation to indifference.
Hearing this, Beacai merely let out a soft chuckle.
“Is that so? Then let me ask you: since your birth, has anyone truly entered your heart, making you willing to abandon all principles for their sake?”
‘To abandon everything for one person?’
Isis froze for a moment.
Her eyelids drooped, and she fell silent.
She recalled the distant past.
When she had first become Yggdrasil, she had made many friends.
Some, as subordinate deities, had accompanied her for a very long time, gradually growing with her from a weak deity to the Yggdrasil that supported heaven and earth.
Even so, their relationship had remained strictly within the bounds of friendship.
After she reached her true pinnacle, they had even grown distant, and their conversations began to carry the respectful tone of subordinates.
As for the races she created, while she cared for them, she wouldn’t fight to the death to ensure their continuation.
Like the elves, if she could save them, that was ideal, but if not, she wouldn’t force it.
The rise and fall of races, the birth, aging, illness, and death of beings—these were all natural laws.
As a deity, few things truly weighed on her heart.
The temple atop Yggdrasil was her abode, and only two or three people ever visited her throughout the year, yet she never felt lonely.
Only after her death had she adopted Nona and raised her.
‘Perhaps… Nona could be considered someone who had entered her heart?’
Beacai’s words left her in deep contemplation for a long time.
While she could never admit to being indifferent, she realized that there were truly few people she genuinely cared for.
Most were merely fleeting acquaintances.
‘Was her love truly so cheap?’
Isis averted her gaze from Beacai, falling into self-doubt.
Even the name Nona, for some reason, felt difficult to utter.
Because, just as Beacai had said, if Níðhöggr hadn’t been sealed within Nona, but within someone else, Isis would still have adopted that child and raised them.
Her love wasn’t unique.
And a love that wasn’t unique often seemed cheap.
She cared for Nona, perhaps simply because her love for Nona was slightly greater than for others.
If she were still the deity of old, she likely wouldn’t have been so attentive to Nona.
‘Abandoning principles for Nona…’
“Don’t deceive yourself, Mother. You can’t do it. That true love has always been buried deep within you, and no one has ever received it.”
“I don’t envy them precisely because I don’t want that cheap love. Mother, you say I’m indifferent, yet I can do things I dislike for your sake.”
*Thump-thump-thump—*
Footsteps echoed from the stairs.
The elf mother and daughter, having retrieved the tea leaves, were about to return to the living room.
Beacai, in turn, settled back into her original seat.
She glanced at the silent Isis and spoke.
“I will save that woman. And Mother, you won’t need to pay any price for it.”