"Please, stars, let me fix this before he gets home!"

        "Starlight, star bright, first start I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. I wish for Mom to come home safe from her business trip as soon as she can."

    "Please, night, let me hide, don't let them find me!"

"Oh stars, please oh please let me have a better and faster transition than the default years-long glitchy journey of HRT."

"Don't let them find me" sounds urgent. She grabs it hard.

There's a child hiding in a supply closet in a jeweler's shop —

She takes a moment to take in the full situation.

A group of eight thugs have broken into the shop, armed with guns and knives and a few crowbars and hammers. The boy's father was working late on a commission, and the boy was enjoying watching daddy make something pretty. The thugs broke in, and the father told his son to hide before they made it into the back room where he does his work. The father has been shot three times and stabbed twice, and is currently bleeding out on the cement floor of his workroom.

All the thugs' weapons are interpolated with air and they themselves are all transported to the nearest empty police holding cell. She makes sure it's locked.

Then her attention jumps to the father who is currently bleeding out. He's not dead yet — she vanishes the bullets lodged in him, copies flesh from his son to patch the wounds, then duplicates his own blood to replace all that he's lost. She takes a moment to adapt her patches so they won't be rejected by the father's immune system and then pulls back. 

She 'types' a letter to the police station and leaves it pinned to the wall across from the holding cell with a bright silver star sticker.

These men were in the middle of committing an armed robbery and had almost killed a man when I apprehended them. Make sure they harm none more. The robbery occurred at 2427 Market St at 9:47 P.M.— Stella.

She marks each of the thugs with a black diamond tattoo in their clavicles. She lets it sting a little.

Then she returns to the father and his son. They're teleported to the safest bed in their tiny apartment and wrapped up in a heavy blanket of midnight blue patterned with silver stars. She leaves the broken windows and display cases downstairs — as much as she wants to repair it all, it's evidence she shouldn't tamper with. She leaves the stolen jewelry on the transported thugs as evidence as well. 

She 'types' another letter.

You're as safe as I can make you now. Take heart; the night protects. — Stella

The police are somewhat bewildered to witness a group of thugs appear from thin air, live on camera while they watch from the office. A pair of officers head down to the holding cell to inspect the thugs.

"What the fuck? Who's Stella and how'd she do this?"

"Dispatch, get a squad car down to Market street."

And the thugs are quickly processed, and found to be holding quite a few necklaces and rings from the shattered display cases.

Meanwhile, at the jewelry shop on Market street, the boy and his father are hugging each other tightly in the father's bed, sobbing with relief. Eventually they calm themselves enough to read the note. "Thank you, Miss Stella, whoever you are," the father murmurs, running his hands through his son's hair. "Thank you so much."

Eventually, the cops show up and acquire a copy of the footage of the thugs breaking in and then vanishing from the jeweler's single very basic camera covering the shop floor, and get testimony about the assault. Samples of the blood are taken from the workshop floor, the store is dusted for fingerprints, and evidence is gathered to charge the thugs with armed robbery.

Stella has moved on to the woman who wants to fix "it" before "he" gets home, but her awareness registers a little satisfaction at the quick motion from the police.

(There's an ache in her from working in the harsh artificial lights of the police station, but it's not so bad. She can manage.)

It seems this woman has broken a football trophy belonging to her husband. From how she's thinking about it it's clear he's abusive. 

She repairs the trophy — it's just a matter of fitting the pieces together, she can glue them better than any bond can.

The wife doesn't have children. She gets a letter laying out that she can have the choice of staying, or getting a starting amount of cash (lost bills, mostly, or taken from those who genuinely won't miss it) and a teleport to somewhere she can start her life over (her choice of domestic violence shelter or relative's home in her country.) If she decides against, Stella will vanish the letter.

Stella thinks about marking the husband, but decides against it.

The wife gasps when she sees the trophy repair itself before her eyes. She checks it over carefully, murmuring quiet thanks to whoever or whatever fixed it. When she sees the letter, she shakes in place as she reads it. "I..."

Her breath catches in her throat, and a tear rolls down her cheek.

She wipes it away furiously.

"I can't. I can't. He'd come after me. And he's not that bad if I'm good. I appreciate the fix, Miss Stella, but I'll stay."

She starts looking around, deciding how to dispose of the letter.

Stella vanishes the first letter. Some problems you can't fix in one motion. 

She appears a second letter.

Pray to me again if you need me. I can't be there in the day, but at night I may hear you. — Stella

Once she's sure that the woman has read it, she'll vanish that letter too, then move on.

The woman shudders and frowns and nods a bit at the letter, shivers again when it vanishes, and returns to cleaning.

Meanwhile Stella's next focus is a young adult in a darkened college dorm room, staring out the window at the night sky. Their body shows all the signs of having gone through testosterone-based puberty, and they have a long-standing discomfort in their own skin. A brush across their mind reveals a plural system, five girls who wish they could be individually embodied so they could hug each other fiercely, who grieve the apparent lack of magic in the world, and who desperately crave a body that suits their shared aesthetics. Sure, they all have different individual preferences, but a compromise body could certainly be managed, and would be a massive improvement on their overall well-being. 

This one is going to be complicated, but what artificial light is here is distant, and she has nothing else extremely urgent at the moment. 

Stella goes looking for the woman's close relatives. She has two female cousins of about her age — she can copy and work their bodies together with this woman's to build her something that'll accommodate her present brain well enough. Separating the system out she can't do, and upgrading their body to be more than human using copied animal parts would take too long — but she can offer a cis body of more or less this woman's current age and state of health with only a moderately insane amount of detail work.

She makes sure she has the body settled, then sends a letter. It's on cream-colored paper and hand-typed on an old Selectric she copied from a warehouse. 

If you wish it, you can have a body based on a mixture of yourself and your cis female cousins. I don't have the time right now to give you each your own custom body but if you want to have five copies of the new body for each of you to primarily inhabit I can do that. I can duplicate your brain, but not pry individual people out of your neurons.

Whatever you need, wish it on a star and I'll see if I can help. — Stella

She also conjures a deep blue blanket with a pattern of stars on it around the woman. She deserves some comfort in her life.

That produces a storm of reactions. 

What. What. What.

Someone is appearing physical objects before their very eyes. That's supposed to be impossible. 

Very quick test to at least increase the complexity cost of any hallucinations involved here, though she knows she can't really rule anything out. 

Sable steps out into the common area and prods her roommate. "Hey. what's this look like to you?" She holds out the blanket.

"Dark blue blanket covered in stars? Why?"

"Mmkay, thanks. I'll explain later if things work."

"Um. Sure."

And Sable heads back into her room.

She tugs the blanket tighter around herself and walks over to the window, looking out at the stars.

They can't rule out hallucination, but quiet words spoken aloud in response to appeared letters don't really make for a high-cost scenario. Maybe let it play out?

"Miss Stella, star-themed lady who sent me this blanket and letter," she asks, gazing at the twinkling points of light, "who and what are you? Why are you helping me? How did you send these things? Is this magic?"

It takes a moment, but a return letter appears, printed on the same Selectric.

I don't have a lot of time to talk. All within the shadow of night people are praying or wishing. Most of them aren't wishing to me yet, but that will change.  

I don't know where I came from. If people wish or pray to me, I can — answer. "Oh stars," you said, with a fervent wish in your heart — that's enough. I can't make genuinely new things, but I can make a copy from anything that exists within the shadow of night, and combine those copies. I can also move things instantaneously. I type these letters on a real typewriter, actuating the keys with concentration. It's faster and prettier than trying to cut and paste from a thousand newspapers.

I am night's refuge. Protection. Aid to the lost. I know it deep in my bones. I exist to give succor. That's why.

Oh.

That's basically a claim to be a goddess. That's the kind of values a vaguely human-shaped goddess would talk about. That...

She's not sure how much she believes yet. She could be hallucinating. Sure, she never has before, but she's about the right age for it.

But her roommate saw the blanket.

And they've all been hoping the world would turn out to be magical for a long time.

And they badly need a different body.

"Yes," she whispers, eyes locked on the stars. "Yes, Stella. We want that body you're offering. We absolutely want it."

And she does it. 

Sable's body shifts, smoothly and easily, from her current body to the one Stella already has prepared. It does hurt in the process as the nerves unknit and reknit; Stella's doing it as gently as she can, but she doesn't want to introduce an anesthetic. Sable could be allergic, and Stella doesn't want to knock her out. She deserves to be able to see her new body. 

Here you are. Sorry for the pain, but I judged it safer not to drug you. 

Attached to the note is a cute little plush purple shark.

Holy shit.

Holy fuck.

She turns and rushes to her mirror, looking herself up and down. Wildly curly black hair, her familiar stormy blue eyes, a petite frame, a modest but noticeable bust, curvy hips...

Thank the stars, she thinks. Thank you, Stella. So much. This is amazing.

She hugs the shark, then sets it on her bed and rushes out. 

"Whoa," her roommate exclaims. "New girl. What're you doing in Sa— Miller's room? They didn't say they had a girl over."

"It's Sable, Mike," she replies, intense and excited focus overtaking her face.

"Oh, you know, then?"

"No, Mike. I mean I'm Sable."

She puts her hands on her hips and gives him a look.

"What!? How!? Prove it!"

She leans in close and whispers in his ear. "You keep an envelope full of costume scales taped to the inside wall of your desk behind a drawer, and that's how you could teach me about makeup."

"Well shit. How'd you get a magic transition, girl?"

"Something that looks an awful lot like a shiny new goddess turning up in this hellworld. I didn't think magic was a thing, but apparently it is. Her name's Stella, her deal seems to be stars, night, and helping people. Can't act under daylight, can't make truly novel stuff without hacking it together out of existing stuff, has limited attentional capacity. That's all I know so far."

"Ffffuuuuck. That's gonna shake things up. Can't wait to see what happens."

She nods. "See ya, bro. I'm heading back to my room for now."

Mike waves.

When Sable gets back into her dorm room, she has a brief discussion with her headmates.

She fulfilled a mundanely impossible wish.

            Still not sure we're not hallucinating.

    We may not be able to rule it out, but the events so far are rather convincing.

        An impression of illusion magic shattering.

We'll be on guard for that. If she asks us to do anything awful we call it off. She's limited and people don't know about her yet.

                And don't we — and the world — need some hope for once?

They come to a decision, and Sable grins. She focuses on the stars, the night, and the person who'd helped her so much.

"Okay, Lady Stella," she murmurs, heart brimming with excitement and hope and gratitude, "how can we help?"

Stella considers Sable's offer. 

It's a big help, in some ways. Having someone able to generate prayers for her about things that catch her attention matters. But she's also worried that Sable doesn't know what she's getting into. 

This is starting to get tenuous as an answer to your original prayer. If you focus on wishing to talk it might help me keep the connection. 

I expect I'll have some relative downtime when night is mostly over the Pacific Ocean. I'll probably use that to catch up on less-urgent things that I can nonetheless fix with time and effort. Well targeted prayers then might help me do a lot for people sooner.

If you're willing to get up just before dawn in the morning and pray for solutions to particular large problems, you could help a lot. It would help even more if you were willing to move to an island out in the Pacific, say Hawaii, and adopt a nocturnal lifestyle to help me work on thorny problems, but your location here is not terrible either, and I don't want to ask that of you — you have a life to live of your own. 

"We can do the early mornings thing at the very least. We'll see how things go, and maybe we can angle our degree for something like being a staff programmer at an observatory, which would give us an angle on Hawaii. We have our own reasons to be interested in visiting there, anyway. Tomorrow will be spent fixing legal paperwork to match our new face, though. Good luck with your night, Lady Stella."

Good night. And if you need help, don't hesitate to pray.

Stella turns her attention back to the boy who's slowly drifting off thinking about his mother coming home safe. She can't really ensure that; most of her journey would take place during the day. But she can offer a little reassurance, and listen just in case she has something to wish for.

So far her prayers are somewhat slow, so she takes the time to get a nice envelope together and a plushie of a kitten with some custom decoration. 

I'll watch over your mother for you, and do my best to see her safely home. I can only act at night, but I'll try. I hear prayers and wishes directed at the night, the stars, or to my name, which is Stella. 

I know this is a bit of a silly answer to a prayer, but the world doesn't know much about me yet, and you were wishing in the right direction. 

Take comfort; all is likely to be well, even without my intervention. 

— Stella

The boy excitedly squeezes the plush kitty and drifts off to sleep, thinking "thank you Miss Stella!" as hard as he can.

Despite almost no one knowing about her yet, Stella is still in for a busy night. Lots of people across the Americas "accidentally" pray to the night or stars: clerks wishing their shifts were over, people being mugged, strippers wishing for a quiet night or a big spender, an author praying for her story to get accepted by a publisher, an artist wishing for inspiration, a teenage boy who just got his driver's license wishing for a Mustang, a thief hoping to find a good score so her family can eat tonight, and so many more.

She breaks up muggings first, with teleportation and destruction of their weapons. Those who injured their victims badly enough to cause or seriously risk their deaths get the diamond mark. 

Those who want money the honest way are harder to manage, but she tries. Bored, work-less clerks whose bosses won't ream them out for reading on the job she makes books for; those having busy nights she does spare tasks for where she can hide them. More than one clerk forced to stand gets a tall stool they can perch on, or where that won't pass, a soft mat to cushion their feet. Often she applies combinations of these strategies together, hurrying work and then giving entertainment or comfort for the remaining time. Some few clerks, those worst off, get the offer of a way out, or extra money found in their wallets. The strippers are handled similarly: some get lost bills slipped into their take for the night; others she offers opportunities to get out of the business. 

Other cases she handles one by one, offering comfort and support where she can. The author gets a stack of books on how to get published, a letter of support, and a mug of cocoa; the artist who wishes for inspiration she offers an adventure — two teleports, one to anywhere in her range and one back home; the teenage boy gets a free car, though a reliable, workhorse machine and not the Mustang he wished for; the thief gets a selection of lost pieces of jewelry and a gentle admonishment. 

For those cases that are common and not serious, she makes up form letters to let her do more of them faster; but anything where fear of violence is on the table gets a personal response. 

Her most common form letter goes like so:

I don't have the time to speak to you personally, but I hope you are comforted by the token I've left. You matter, no matter how mundane your trials: and if you pray to the stars or the night sky again, you may once more catch my ear.

— Stella

Victims of violence are very relieved, if confused. Clerks are quietly appreciative of their jobs getting easier and their boredom getting relieved. The author is quietly grateful. The artist takes her up on the adventure, and travels to a bonfire party on a scenic jungle beach, looking around to burn it all into her memory and take a few pictures before eventually accepting the teleport home, at which point she starts sketching furiously and picking out paint colors. The teen grumbles heatlessly for a moment about getting a different car than he wanted, before saying, "Seriously, Stella, thank you, whoever you are." The thief blushes vividly and hurries to her fence. All in all, Stella's efforts make a quiet but noticeable difference for people all across North and South America.

Some of those differences are noticed, however. Rescued people post on social media, cops make phone calls up their chains of command, and gradually information trickles to alphabet soup agencies in several countries. Footage of teleportation is analyzed and compared, witness testimony is studied, uploaded photos of letters are dissected for every possible scrap of meaning. A great many people are extremely concerned about the capabilities displayed. They try to devise hostile response plans, in case this mysterious "Stella" turns out to be a threat, but no one can figure out where to shoot.

Eventually they decide to just experiment. An analyst in the CIA (who wound up winning jurisdiction due to the events occurring internationally) sits in a conference room and thinks about the stars, and the night, and silently prays for a very thorough explanation of who Stella is and what she wants.

This deserves a careful response. 

She produces a letter, on the same typewriter she uses for all her letters. It'll match their signatures. 

My name is Stella. I have only just begun to exist. My purpose is to give refuge, succor, and relief to anyone who needs it. In as much as I have a body, it is the shadow of the earth that produces night.

I can answer prayers and wishes directed at me, which includes the stars and nighttime itself. When answering prayers, I can freely duplicate and transport material objects, or combine them with some effort. I am unable to answer prayers during local daytime.

I have no intention to cause harm, and intend to uphold the rule of law as best I can, though I do not consider myself truly bound by it. I bear no allegiance to any country, though I have a fondness for the western world. I do not counterfeit money, but do retrieve lost valuables. I have no compunctions about producing valuable material goods that are genuinely needed by those who call for my aid, though I categorically refuse to provide weapons. I handle all prayers personally and only give items to people I believe will be responsible with them.

As someone who seeks to ease the lives of others, rather than upsetting their lives, I want to ensure the world stays stable and happy. Unrest, violence and death are anathema to me. Those who I have had to restrain from killing others I mark with a black diamond in their clavicle. I have little fondness for autocrats, but believe that in very few cases is violent revolution worth the cost in blood in its undertaking. 

I am politically left by western standards, though I anticipate you will quickly begin to learn my viewpoints on various issues from my responses to them over time. I have no desire to explain every action I take to a jury of my peers; I rely on my own conscience for that.

I respect the work you do to keep the peace, and hope you maintain it well.

As one guardian of the people to another, 

Stella.

The western powers set their colossal surveillance apparatus to the task of combing through all available videos, trying to correlate someone's reactions with Stella's publicly visible actions, in case she's lying about the body thing. They're not really a fan of having someone they cannot even in principle apply force against. Normally they have response plans even for their closest allies.

After an hour or so of collective analysis across the continent (along with waking a few heads of state for official opinions), the same analyst prays once more, wishing to discuss the possibility of appointing a diplomat or three for Stella.

It seems clear that the alphabet soup would like to convince her of their views. She's not immune to persuasion, and she'd rather not stray from her purpose... But it is worth trying to integrate with the existing system.

I believe we can help each other. 

I am willing to commit to an exchange of prepared letters at each nightfall on the east coast. Active conversation spends valuable time, but prepared documents I can check at relative lulls. Thus, in general I prefer asynchronous means of communication.

In the meantime, she vanishes gangs and cartels' hoarded drugs and weapons, upgrades and repairs infrastructure when she has the chance to get it in edgewise under other prayers, and generally does her best to ease the burdens of Mexico and South America using the knowledge offered up by those who pray to her, even accidentally. Though she's tempted to simply vanish the Pablo Escobars of the world, she restrains herself to breaking up attacks and handing out the black diamond mark to those whom she catches in the active commission of lethal violence. She's going to at least give them a chance to reform.

The governmental agencies agree to that proposal, and and start making calls to select an empty office on the eastern seaboard to use as the letter exchange point. Dossiers of diplomats and analysts are collected to form a specialized team to interact with Stella. They otherwise leave her be for now.

The cartels and gangs are rather displeased to find themselves suddenly disarmed. They investigate to see if any of their rivals are responsible, and threaten violence if they find the culprits.

While all that is going on, various street-level violence still occurs, and people occasionally pray about it — in very slightly increasing numbers, even, as rumors of Stella's existence spread.

Stella does her best to prevent as much violence as possible, though the constant low-level artificial light she's working in gradually builds to what might be a pounding headache in a human. She still puts preventing or repairing violence first, even in harsh light, but she starts prioritizing the more routine prayers by light level as she gradually starts to exhaust her pain capacity. Taking breaks to "wander" in parks and natural areas by starlight eases her pain a little, as does doing a few more of her personal whims — gifts for people she likes the wishes of, more or less. She practices making more custom gifts for those in parks and wilderness areas, learning the "motions" to interpolate text in flowing cursive more efficiently. 

After a moment to think and decompress spent making extremely overelaborate smores for a family in Yellowstone National Park, she realizes that she should also be prioritizing those in hospital, especially those who are suffering from old age or other terminal conditions. They take more time to set up, but some of the cases are urgent enough that they need her intervention now — she's already lost some people through her carelessness. 

She was already doing triage, but this new realization pushes her further. She can't be everywhere at once. 

She panics for a moment, and almost dangerously misplaces an interpolation on a handgun — but she catches herself. She needs rest, or she'll destroy her own ability to help too. 

Stella writes a form letter for people she's slightly too slow to save, and starts teleporting the recently dead to a renovated cavern under Yellowstone where she can work in total darkness. There she vitrifies and stabilizes their bodies — a much less fiddly process than repairing each and every injury — and starts reviving and returning those she can as a 'leisure activity' in her spare moments. Those who are too far gone even with all her abilities she also returns to their hospital beds, composed as peacefully as she can make them, with hand-written letters of apology.

It hurts not being able to be there for everyone. 

— three patients in she starts keeping vitrified copies of those she couldn't save. Their families can have bodies to bury, but she's not going to give up hope that the people themselves can eventually be recovered. 

News of her interventions still hasn't spread very far, but reactions are stunned and positive. A few more people make posts on social media. Gradually things start slowing down, as more and more of the night moves over the Pacific ocean. Eventually, morning comes to the west coast of North America, and night falls in east Asia.

Sable wakes in the pre-dawn quiet and prays to Stella, with gratitude rather than a request. "Thank you for this amazing new body. I hope you take some time for yourself, too."

And then she starts in on her tasks for the day, calling her family (two time zones ahead) to tell them the news, and then doing her coursework early so she can get a head start on the bureaucratic nonsense she'll have to do once offices open.

It's good to have someone looking out for her, too. 

She drafts a letter in between emergencies.

Hey, Sable. (I looked you up a little, hope you don't mind.) 

Thank you for the prayer, it's very flexible. I wanted to put a personal project to you. 

I'd like to raise an island in international waters in the Pacific, so that there can be a refuge for people who have no-where else to go in the world. I might end up with a couple of these, actually, in the Pacific, Atlantic and probably Indian oceans.

I'd like to invite you to help design them, and to be one of the Pacific island's first residents. I like you, and I think you have the attitude I want in a... priestess, I suppose. 

Infrastructure's likely to be light at the start — while I can copy generators and gasoline to power them, and houses, fresh water, food, etcetera, I can't integrate a country with the world, or provide all the people necessary to run a country — so no internet, and you'd have to keep your own generator running to power your house with fuel I provided, and eat food I made for you — but I'd be willing to provide all the necessities, and the climate would be lovely.

Some risk of retaliation from some group or other who dislikes me, of course. You'd be committing to a very interesting life. But come on, don't you think it would be such an adventure?

"Wow. Wow. On the one hand, hell the fuck yes. On the other, how am I going to explain this to my parents? Mom's going to have Opinions about my running off to be the priestess of a goddess I've only just met. On the gripping hand, she had Opinions and Concerns for my well-being when I came out as trans, and I didn't let her stop us then."

She hums for a long moment.

"Ah. This is crazy and I'm being reckless but I love this. Yeah, Goddess, sign us up. I reserve the right to ask for a letter drop on my mom to prove that you exist, though."

Draft me a letter and I'll send it with a gift, and my own personal note.

(She's replacing crushed organs and knitting together flesh for a car crash victim in another artificial cave below the Coyote Mountains Wilderness; her attention is a little bit elsewhere.)

She quickly writes a letter on her laptop.

Mom, Dad,

Let's rip the band-aid off up-front: I'm leaving school. I have good reasons, but you're probably going to have Concerns. Let's get a few of them handled quickly:

1. I'm still going to finish my degree, just online, because the opportunity requires travel.
2. I'm going to be the first priestess for that brand-new goddess you may have heard about, Stella. She's the goddess of the night, stars, and caring for the lost and in need.
3. Yes, she's real. She's going to be appearing this letter directly in your lap tonight, along with a note of her own. Hopefully a mundanely impossible event before your eyes counts as enough evidence for you.
4. She also magically transitioned me to a gorgeous new body, see the attached selfies.
5. She doesn't want sacrifices or anything awful. The main thing she needs is help coordinating people and requests, because her biggest limitation is attentional capacity.
6. You can't actually stop me. I'm telling you so you hear it from me first, rather than when I wind up mentioned in a news story about her.

I'm going to be busy coordinating a lot of people and setting up infrastructure, and quite frankly having the time of my life. I won't want for anything, and I'll be helping Stella make a real difference in people's lives. I think that's worth a precipitous leap, to get in on the ground floor. We can keep in touch over email once I've got the new location connected to the internet, and I'll work on cell service sometime after that. Take care.

Love,

Sable

She quickly snaps a selfie on her phone, then another close up to her face, holding her old deadname ID in-frame as well, and prints both of them out along with the letter. It all gets stuffed in an envelope, and she nods.

"There we go. Not the nicest explanation, but I don't really want to spend the time explaining things nicely when all they're going to try to do is overprotectively stop me from helping you change the world. It would take three extra days minimum, they'd still be scared and grumpy, and I'd still run off with you to a brand new Pacific island. The only change to things would be lost time."

She shakes her head.

"Best time to drop it on them will be tonight. New Orleans probably has too much daylight for you to operate there by now."

Thank you so much. You're right about New Orleans being day now; I'll deliver your note at dusk on the east coast.

Essentially for security reasons, I'm going to whisk you to my Pacific island now. I've got the start of the physical terrain in, just a broad flat level island high enough it won't sink at high tide — it's just not at all pretty just yet. I don't want you and your letters to fall into the hands of some three letter acronym because I wasn't cautious enough. 

We can talk more once you're safe. Ready for the ride?

She shuts down her laptop and throws it in a bag, along with a few sentimental items. Everything else is just clothes that don't fit her new body and textbooks she can pirate.

"Only thing that comes to mind is that we might need to drop me in coffeeshops a few times to research infrastructure stuff for setting up the island, like a satellite internet provider or a good make and model of solar panel and battery. That can be done later, though, in less predictable locations. So yeah, ready to go."

She's not resting, not really. But the prayer load is lighter with darkness centered over the pacific. She can almost pretend that she's not letting people die by spending time on this.

(She protects, as best she can. Japan and Australia are starting to come into her range. Soon after that will be China. Dusk is proceeding westward at around a thousand miles per hour. She'd better get this done fast.) 

She considered copying Sable's old rooms to her island for speed, but they're so cramped and dingy that she doesn't really feel comfortable giving them to someone she considers a kind of friend. Instead she copies a tasteful, fully-furnished neo-victorian house with a front window seat on its first floor, builds it into the island with reinforced concrete foundations, and teleports Sable to just inside its front door. 

She doesn't bother with a letter just yet - she's copying over the old contents of Sable's pantry just as a basic stocking measure. Then she gets the house hooked up to a nice heavy duty gas generator and lays in enough gasoline to keep it ticking for a week, along with installing some decent solar panels and batteries on the lawn. (She can Google while she works, her awareness is multithreaded enough for that even if she can only attend to one prayer at a time.) As a finishing touch, she puts in a septic system and makes sure the landscape will drain properly when it rains, rather than flooding the house. 

After all that's done, she writes the letter and drops it into Sable's hands.

I got the basics in. The decor is a bit bland and depressing right now, sorry. Give me themes and I'll put them in for you. I'll probably have missed other stuff too; make me a shopping list and I'll get to it when I have a spare moment.

While the house is basically functional, though a bit hotel-ish, the land outside is mostly bare rock and soil right now and there's not much of a view except the sea. Stella doesn't seem to have put in any landscaping just yet.

"This is lovely. Thank you, Goddess. I'll get on that shopping list presently."

Sable starts surveying the house, infrastructure, and island. Apparently Stella just copied the whole stock of food from the common room kitchens? Well, that'll do quite nicely until grocery time. She double-checks to make sure the generator and solar panels and batteries are all hooked up right, then plugs her laptop in to charge. That done, she starts making a list of foods, clothes, and other things. She starts off with very modest food requests, and then realizes that Stella won't be buying things, but rather copying them, and switches to listing comparatively easily isolated-for-copying favorites instead. And then realizes she doesn't have a lot of ideas in that regard, so just lists what she can.

Groceries & Hygiene

• Smoked salmon
• Bagels
• Cream cheese
• Rice
• Pasta (both raw and easy pasta packs)
• Shin Ramyun Black ramen
• Mi Goreng noodles, original flavor
• Milk
• Ice cream
• Cookies
• Eggs
• Spices
• Soy sauce
• Sriracha
• Hot sauce
• Frozen breaded chicken tenders
• Roast beef
• Bread
• Mayo
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Tampons
• Shampoo
• Conditioner
• Face wash
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrushes

Clothes

• Bras and panties
• Short skirts
• Long skirts
• Slinky dresses
• Casual dresses
• Jeans
• PJ pants
• Camisoles
• T-shirts
• Blouses
• Bikini
• Fancy formal priestess outfit?
• Lots of goth stuff
• Lots of star-themed stuff
• Suggestions welcome

Utilities

• Satellite internet/phone service
• Well-water or desalination
• Wifi router

Facilities

• Apartment buildings for future recruits
• Office complex for clerics to work out of

Defense

• Military-grade radar to detect attempts to hit the island and move us?
• Possibly better idea, copy the island in different oceans to move us around so we're under as little daylight as possible, if the threat gets serious enough?

Recruiting

• Trans folks, wide spread of specializations and easily very grateful for magic transition
• Sociology/Economics/Policy wonks for figuring out the most effective leverage points
• Social media / PR people
• Analysts/researchers
• Finance/accounting people so we can interact with the outside economy?
• IT people so we can host our own organizational software?
• Hardware tech people to keep the infrastructure running?
• There could be a lot of overlap and dabbling for some of these needs?

Other Thoughts

• If you can do night vision, we can spend more time in darkness?
• We should talk about temple PR statement stuff at some point, public announcements of goals/principles/scripture
• Should I set up social media for you and/or the temple?
• How public should I be about being your priestess?
• If I'm telling people about what I do, what should I say my title is?

Once she finishes her notes, she sits in the window seat and gazes out at the stars, praying to Stella, "The shopping and brainstorming list is done, when you have time, Goddess."

She keeps her mind loosely on that, and pulls up an ebook on her phone to pass the time until her Goddess has spare attention.

Meanwhile, early night in Japan features some prayers for fandom merchandise, or tickets for a sold-out idol show, among the usual issues with age and violence. A few people in Shanghai pray for better jobs. Gangs exist everywhere, though they have different names in different countries. 

One bold bilingual otaku reads a few social media posts and decides to try praying directly to Stella for a chance to go on a date with Tohsaka Rin from the Fate franchise.

The food and hygiene items are easy; she copy and pastes from a Superstore on the western seaboard and is able to turn up just about everything. The shampoo and conditioner are blackberry-scented. 

Getting Sable's sizes is easy enough (Stella can "visualize" making a tape measure well enough to measure her body in the appropriate places), and there's plenty of places to copy from. For goth and star-themed clothes, Stella copies the whole store contents of several goth and alt-wear boutiques into a large pile on the house's bed, and leaves a letter atop it saying to pile up the rejects for her to vanish. 

The formal priestess robe is worth some consideration, but she's not feeling strained right now; she'll take her time designing it when she next needs a break. 

She's stocked the house with fresh water in the pantry, but she takes the time to hook up a proper desalinator to the house and get the plumbing sorted out. Missing that detail was sloppy of her, but then, she is distracted. She puts in a wifi router, but she'll have to deal with bureaucracy for satellite internet, since she has no credit card and isn't willing to steal someone else's. She tries reaching to space and discovers she can't put a satellite into orbit herself. That's troubling. 

Backup copies of the island to hop between are worth considering. Right now it doesn't represent an excess of work, and the threat is as low as it's ever going to be. She'll make a mirror island a few thousand kilometers to the south, in the rough vicinity of the Marshall Islands, and keep it updated with everything except the people as she goes. Duplication in multiple places is easy like breathing. Once dusk moves further west she'll do a couple in the Indian ocean as well. That way she can just move the people and always have a template to draw from unless there's some form of massive coordinated strike — and if she pisses off the world that badly, she's got bigger problems. 

She appears a small office complex from San Francisco on the other side of the (currently quite small) island and hooks it into a similar set of grid hookups as Sable's house. An apartment complex quickly follows. 

She might as well green up the lawn a bit while she's here. She copies some sod over. A proper garden can happen when she needs a break.

She writes a note. It ends up being a lot longer than she had planned.

I can integrate parts of real animals into human bodies well enough to grant senses present in actual animals. I've never done it yet  — it takes a lot of time and investment  — but I checked because you were a fox-girl online and I wondered if I could make you one in real life. It turns out I can. So yes, I can do night vision.

I'm actively doing my best to be as friendly and just as I can, but I'm fallible like mortals are; my mind is not so different from a human's. I will inevitably make slips. A PR account is a good idea, but we'll need someone very competent to manage it. I also don't want to give people the impression that you or any priestess speak directly for me, though. No-one else should have to shoulder that burden. 

An official scripture will take time but is definitely important. I don't want to give people the impression they can do just anything they want in my name, which will inevitably happen if I don't have an opinion on the matter.

Your decision to be public or not about being my priestess is up to your judgment. I don't want to burden you with being seen as something holy, or force you to risk your public identity. You might not have an opinion, but your family probably does; do you want them to be inundated with messages from people who want them to help, because they are the world's channel to you, who is a channel to me? Or threatened by acronyms or gangs? Being my priestess is a high-risk job, just like being a UN diplomat or similar... but then, you knew that when you accepted. It is ultimately up to you how much you want to risk; I can't make that judgment call for you.

If you are being open, you should tell people your title is First Priestess. Not High Priestess — that will probably go to someone terrifyingly competent — but First. I chose you because you fit with me and my methods, not because you were useful. The fact you reached out mattered, but mostly because it meant you were like me; always seeking an opportunity to help. 

I have made a simple statement of my goals to the United States government, and indeed to several other governments who asked. Copies are attached. I think you understand my goals more or less correctly, it's just a matter of phrasing it for the public. 

Two other items, both of which you should keep secret:

Firstly, I keep backup copies of bodies from recent deaths that I cannot repair with my current skills. I have successfully revived several people who I have temporarily vitrified to stabilize them. May I make a backup copy of you to keep on ice and regularly update the brain of from your current one? I wouldn't wake her unless something happened to this you, naturally. 

Second; while I wish to keep this secret from the world at large, it will undoubtedly become known to major intelligence agencies that review my actions over the long term. As such, I think I should tell you now. Acting to create miracles from prayer causes physical pain to me when done in the area of artificial light. The more intense the light, the more intense the pain. I do not want this to become publicly known, but I am presently nursing the godly equivalent of a killer headache and I expect it will only get worse the more I act in populated areas. As such... I would really appreciate it if we modified you to be able to see in the dark. This would have knock on effects though — you'd be visibly inhuman thanks to your eyes, and that means you'd become known as my priestess wherever you go, etc, etc, etc. I'm not going to do something so major to you without making sure you understand the implications. 

Lastly — do you mind if I use your credit card to purchase a satellite internet account? I expect that in the long term I'll be extremely rich, but currently I have no licit identity to do trade. Doing this will almost certainly flag you as my priestess to certain acronym agencies, though, if they don't already know. 

I think that's everything.

(She is a little distracted with handling these issues. Japan still has its gangs dismantled as best she can do it, but she spends less attention granting wishes for material objects and money woes. Australia and New Zealand get some help too. She's working. And her "headache" is coming back.)

The Yakuza respond to having their guns destroyed by going out with swords. Some people pray to be relocated from North Korea to South Korea, or the reverse. Australia has an ongoing issue with aboriginal people being mistreated.

She bounces happily at the various deliveries. "Thank you, Goddess!"

It's tempting to go jump into checking everything out, but Stella sent her a letter. That needs to be checked out first.

"Yes, it makes sense that you'd make mistakes occasionally; you write like someone with a human-shaped perspective. And I appreciate your concern about us, but I do think spreading some burden among your priestesses is going to be necessary, given that we've only got the one of you."

She pauses for a moment at the discussion of her public identity. "Yeah, that's a risk, but... I don't want to let fear stop me from doing as much good as I can. If we start attracting sufficient hostility, we can try to convince my family to move, or maybe we can try to create a new identity for me to go public under. We probably can't hide it from the alphabet soup, at least not without a significant time investment and a bit of fraud, but I have done a bit of research into how to fast-talk the government into creating an identity. On the other hand, maybe we don't want to do any fraud. It would be reasonable not to do any fraud. And we can't really expect everyone to be up for getting new identities, or restrict our recruits to people without families, so. Really our only option is to just go loud. Refuge in audacity. 

"So yeah, I'm gonna be public. First Priestess is a great title."

She blushes a bit. "I... It makes me feel a bit closer to you, having a title that's still mine even when we find someone terrifyingly competent to run the temple. I like that we have methods and goals in common." She takes a slow breath, steadying herself. Don't get a crush on the unattainable goddess. Don't get a crush on the goddess. 

You totally have a crush on the goddess, Hailey teases.

Sable pouts internally. Not helping.

"I'll tinker with a public website draft based on your statement to the government, try to get something we can use for that. Probably also some drafts for like... Tumblr and Reddit and such, places where trans folk and counter-culture folk live. I may need to make a First Priestess Sable account on some sites."

She hums thoughtfully and keeps reading.

"Oh! Backup bodies are a great idea. Yes, sign us up for that, absolutely on board. Reports of my death will always be greatly exaggerated, yes fucking please."

And then she gets to the part about artificial light. 

"Oh Stella! Oh no! That's... No, we can't let you keep building up a headache like that. No one should have to suffer an ongoing pain like that, and on top of that we can't replace you. Also, I just really like you as a person and don't wanna see you suffer. So we need to figure out how to take care of you, despite your lack of a physical body. I insist."

She nods firmly. "We were already pretty thoroughly on-board with the idea of being inhuman, just for our own sake, but if it would make life easier and comfier for you, then full steam ahead, whenever it wouldn't burden your attention.

"And yes, you can absolutely use my card for the satellite internet. I should probably get a name change done too at some point, but that can wait a little bit."

She's touched, honestly. 

(Individual aboriginal people in Australia get some help, of various kinds. The systemic problem is harder. She's not quite willing to send anyone else to her shiny new apartment complex just yet. She duplicates Sable and puts the copy on ice in an artificial cave under the Australian outback.)

Sable makes a good argument that she needs to be on form so she doesn't do anything stupid. And she's so brave, trying her best to shoulder all the danger that Stella's put her in. Sable reminds her of herself. 

Before she's realized what she's doing, she's manifested another stars-and-midnight blanket around Sable. She wants Sable to feel the same way that Sable's comforting prayer for her health makes her feel. 

(She destroys swords meant for violence, passes out mochi balls and stuffies, heals the sick, adds more bodies to her pile to revive some day. It hurts. But it's better for her to do something. She's not made to stop completely; if she doesn't focus on a prayer it's like she doesn't exist for a moment.) 

She works herself as hard as she can, then when she can't hold on against the pain —

Let's get you your eyes. Tell me right away if you have trouble seeing when I'm done; I still have your originals on eye-ce so if we mess this up we can copy them right back in again. 

She takes her time on them. The point is for her to rest. This is something for her. She deserves something for her, now and then. 

If she was working on the actual substrate of a fox's eyes, she'd have to make compromises. She's sure Sable wouldn't mind having to wear glasses, but making her myopic and colorblind like real foxes would be a disappointing outcome. Instead, she bases Sable's eyes on owl eyes, giving her close to the rod-cell density of an owl, but adding additional cones in to support color. While evolution has developed some remarkable tools for sensing, she can do better with deliberate ingenuity. Vertical slit pupils will help Sable's night vision even more, and have the fox-like appearance she wants, so she gives her them, engineering custom multifocal eye structures from her best guesses from nature — but she keeps the original storm-blue color of Sable's eyes, one of the few parts of Sable to make it through her first transformation. 

She worries a little. But she does the install, and hopes that her craft is good enough. 

(And she also sets up the satellite internet in the background, because she has a nice carte blanche wish to take time for herself and that counts, damn it.)

She snuggles into the blanket when it appears. "Awwww! Cozy." A happy sigh escapes her lips. 

She giggles and facepalms at eye-ce. "Hehe. Oh that pun is awful. Love it."

And then the changes to her eyes start. "OooOooOh?? That feels weeird."

Soon enough, though, she can see again, and she has to put her phone down. "Oh wow."

With her phone out of the way, the darkened room is richly detailed. "Okay, the night vision on these is fucking fantastic, Goddess. The backlight of my phone was a bit overwhelming, but the night vision is amazing. I can even see color. Let's see how distance looks."

She steps out to the yard, her steps sure-footed and swift despite only having starlight to see by, and looks across at a tree.

"Hmmm." At this distance with her old body and her glasses she could usually see individual leaves, in daylight. "Distance vision is a bit blurry. I can't make out the leaves of the tree across the yard very well, it's kind of smudging into a green mass. If it's not easily fixable, don't worry about it, but that and the overwhelm from brighter lights are the main spots with room for improvement."

Stella appears a letter.

You deserve better. And it would make me happy not to have any compromises in your vision.

Give me a moment, I think I need to adjust the rod count and the focal length.

She makes a second guess at rod count, roughly halving her original guess. Sable's slit eyes are barely dilated even in near total darkness; she can use the foxlike structures to compensate a little. She also carefully adjusts the positioning of the lens. 

Better?

"The focal length is much better." She looks down at her phone at its lowest brightness, then back at the scenery, then back at the phone, slowly. "Still too many rods though, I think."

We'll binary search the rod count. Tell me if it's too bright or too dark.

Stella goes back to work. This is a bit of an indulgence, but she expects she'll end up copying the set of eyes she makes here to more people, with cosmetic tweaks but the structure largely intact. That makes her feel a little better about her efficiency. 

(She does not deliver Rin Tohsaka to the otaku in Japan; she can't make fictional people, and if she could she wouldn't make a person just to be someone's date for the night. 

She does send a "nice try" letter though, and a pile of Rin merchandise as a consolation prize. She liked his attitude toward trying things to see if they work.

She reaches towards North and South Korean transfers for a moment, then stops herself; she doesn't want to put anyone in a situation where they'd be suspected as a spy, and it's diplomatically fraught if she starts flagrantly breaking immigration law. She wants to do it, but... for now she has higher priorities. 

She drafts a form letter (in Korean, but she's going to translate it later.) 

I'm sorry, but it's too early for me to move people between nations yet. I don't want to panic any governments due to unexpected illegal immigrants. 

While earth is flawed in many ways, I want to do my best to respect the systems of law that have let it stumble along before me.

I feel your pain, and I will do the best I can to negotiate freer immigration in the future. 

You matter, and I humbly apologize for my failing you so. 

It's a sorrowful letter to send, and dangerous to send to people in surveillance-state North Korea. She ends up shelving it and not sending it, much as she would like to apologize personally.)

The otaku is delighted with the Rin merch and posts all about the experience on social media. Entirely reasonable not to make a person just for a date with him, and some of these collectibles are out of production and hard to find. He feels pretty great about that, and arranges a little display of it all to photograph for his reddit post.

The hopeful immigrants are disappointed, but not very, as nothing else has worked before either.

Word is starting to spread. News media is covering the miraculous recoveries and rescues of the preceding night in the west, and those stories are getting picked up by occasional eastern outlets as well. Prayers pick up speed a little bit.

Sable is happy to help Stella binary-search the eyes closer and closer to perfect. Eventually they're as good as they're going to feasibly get, and she gazes up at the starry sky with wonder and adoration, her heart brimming with so much gratitude for her goddess.

"I always thought the stars were pretty, but I never knew they could be this pretty," she whispers. "Thank you. For everything."

It makes her feel warm to see Sable happy. If she had a face she'd be smiling right now.

It's nothing.

It's a lie to say I'd do this for just anyone, but I hope you can take them as a gift in the spirit they're intended. 

I'm going to keep a copy of these new eyes on ice and start offering them with cosmetic adjustments to other priestesses I pick up as well, if that's alright with you. 

If and when you want a fox tail I might take a break to do that as well.

China's starting to come into my range now, so I'm going to be very busy for the next little while. High population density. 

Feel free to use the satellite internet to do research or set up social media. I trust your judgment. And if you want to be teleported to a café in Melbourne for better wifi I don't mind. 

"The issue with fox ears and fox tails is that while all five of us enjoy being at least a little inhuman, we all want to be different kinds. So we may hold off on that, or we may not. We'll need to brainstorm on that a bit."

She takes some time to make sure the router is configured correctly, and hooks it up properly to the satellite modem, and then starts surveying the existing social media and news coverage of Stella while she starts drafting posts.

Prayers are coming in from China, although there's a distinct sense of concern about whether it would be proper to grant their requests, and a somewhat ancestor-oriented framing. Some farmers are praying about their crops, wishing for a good harvest. Some city-dwellers are wishing for uncensored information about the rest of the world. A few people are wishing to emigrate to the west.

Social media is rich with reactions.

Whoa, did you hear about the people getting healed in the hospital? They're calling it a miracle!

Wait seriously? Aren't people always getting healed in hospitals? That's kind of what they do there.

No I mean they got better way too fast. Overnight. Doctors have no idea what's going on, just that some "Stella" chick is taking credit for it.

Wow

I prayed to Stella for a date with Tohsaka Rin! She couldn't create Rin for me, but she gave me all this merch for trying, including these out-of-production pieces! <pic> <pic> <pic>

Oh c'mon, goddesses aren't real. Great collection, though.

Hey, give the dude some credit, he tried.

Wait hasn't there been a bunch of news about impossible things happening and notes from someone named Stella accompanying them?

Vids or it didn't happen

RIP collectors everywhere if she's going to be duping collectables.

Stella saved me from a mugging!

The goddess healed my grandmother!

I for one welcome our new starry overlady!

At last!! Justice for night owls everywhere! I wasn't staying up too late for dumb reasons, I was preparing for our future night goddess! Take that, morning people.

I was lost in the woods at night and had a bad cut, then the next thing I knew I was on the edge of the city again with my cut bandaged and treated and had a paper lantern in my hands. Here's a photo of it. <It's four-sided and patterned with a scatter of butterflies, and in one side panel, the name Stella in cursive.>

playing a game of tag with my girlfriend but I got lost

tag, huh?

shut up

I got a free car from stella but it's being a huge headache because it's got the same VIN as another existing one

not to look a gift horse in the mouth though, I mean, it's just - yeah.

orz

even goddesses can't file basic paperwork huh

I guess she needs people to ask before she can actually help? Because otherwise why is she duping collectables, that's such a terrible waste of time. Ma'am, what about cancer.

Hey so what does everyone think this goddess looks like. Is she hot? I bet she's hot. Will she hand out collectables of herself for fans?

I heard from someone about the light thing - makes me wonder if that means that people will finally do something about light pollution if that means they get more shiny toys.

lololololol, your god works in mysterious ways, ours gives us anime body pillows.

So like, do I have to pay taxes on divine intervention over the legal tax-code gift limit?

Imagine winning the prayer lottery but the government gets half first

I got a cool star themed necklace from her, but my mom caught me wearing it and threw it out. She thinks it's evil or something. It was really pretty :(

so i was trying to prepare some food and accidentally cut myself and I freaked out and prayed and got healed but rents saw and shouted at me about devil magic and kicked me out of the house and now its dawn and im scared

So is she limited by actual dawn or legal dawn?  If we overthrow the date line system can we get 24/7 prayer uptime?

Stella Glow in the Black Blanket 14.99 EUR plus Shipping, only 12490 in stock!

If Stella wanted someone to have a blanket, couldn't she just give them one?  And if shipping takes more than a day ...

I was having a real rough night with my depression, having some ideation, and I wished on a star, and a personal letter appeared in my lap, along with a plushie, and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. It really cheered me up. Makes me feel like maybe the world isn't as cold and lonely as I thought. Still gonna be a struggle, but maybe a bit easier now.

<picture of a typed letter on cream-colored paper, reminding the reader that they're unique and precious and cared about>

<picture of a plush seal in light blue>

<picture of a cozy-looking blanket in midnight blue, patterned with stars>

awwwwww! that's so wholesome!

Don't forget that suicide hotlines exist too. 

<list of phone numbers in various countries>

But that really is wholesome, yeah.

I wished on a star to heal my cancer last night, and this morning the doctors are saying my leukemia is in complete remission! Also I got this teddy bear with a star on his tummy! And a really sweet letter thanking me for being brave and holding on so long, but saying that it's okay to wish for help too. My mom's still crying about it. <picture of a tween in a hospital bed holding a teddy bear, wrapped in a starry blanket> <picture of the letter>

The letter? The bear?

The kid's recovery, idiot.

Oh. Right. Derp.

The Book of Stella! Get Stella's scripture, only $19.99! Find out what your new goddess wants from you, who she likes, who she hates! Act now!

All about Stella's afterlife! Tell-all interview with someone who had a near-death experience!

Sable frowns. She's got some work ahead of her.

Stella reads over Sable's shoulder between cases. She winces at the person who got kicked out of their house. She knew something like this was inevitable for someone, but it still hurts. She needs to be more careful. 

After a bit she manifests a letter.

A lot of reactions, good and bad. I suppose it is the biggest news anyone's seen for a while. 

We need to establish our social media account as real and official so that people don't get fleeced by charlatans. 

I wish I could do something for the person who got turned out of their house, but I don't have the range on them. I knew there would be people who thought I was evil, but it hurts to see it confirmed. Still, all I can do is my best.

We need to establish that I do need rest time. I grant other wishes than lethal ones because if I do nothing but violence and medicine it's not good for me psyche-wise. Spending all my time in thousands of operating rooms and crime scenes is not healthy, not to mention the light issues. 

I trust you to write a basic FAQ and some foundational catechism. Run it by me before you post it.

I also want to include a photo that will make people think. We need to talk about your priestess regalia. 

I'm thinking a quite large ammolite pendant in the shape of a star, a deep blue dress pinpricked with silver thread, and, for proof, perhaps you holding or posing next to an exact copy of a famous jewel or piece of art that would be difficult to copy. My mind goes to the Hope Diamond, but ideally we want something very difficult to forge. I don't want to offer insult to a country by copying their sacred treasures though, otherwise I'd do the crown jewels of england or similar. What do you think?

Oh, and we should get the stars in the background so sleuths can figure out we're on an island where no island is known to exist.

"Hmm. Good thoughts. Oh, while I'm getting things down for the FAQ, I presume you don't have any kind of afterlife setup going? Just based on what you've told me, it sounds like you don't, but better to check."

She gets up and paces a bit in the darkened living room. "I like the style you're going with for the regalia. As for proof, some people are really good at photo editing, but video might be harder to fake. Maybe an additional angle would be to add our more blatant supernatural features on camera, if we can agree on a single set? Not sure what would be particularly hard to forge, as far as famous treasures. Gemstones would have distinctive refraction in the light, so that would have advantages on video. At the very least it would be clearer that I'm standing next to or holding a very large gemstone."

I don't. I can't retrieve people whose brains have been destroyed, either. Moderate brain damage I can kind of patch but have never done so yet because I'd have to copy brain structure from living people and that's a whole can of worms. Minor brain damage can be small enough for me to repair safely though. 

Video is a good idea. I can appear things on camera, and I brought along a copy of my original Selectric so I can type a note on it visibly on camera. The machine being operated by no visible person would also be difficult to fake. 

I want to put in some decor for the island as well anyway, so if you have ideas for a original art piece I could make of something obscenely expensive — pure sapphire and silver comes to mind — do speak up. 

I also speak all languages, so perhaps a note in a language not supported by google's models as well. Lakota, perhaps. 

"Yeah, I think we can work with this." Sable keeps pacing. "A statue of you in sapphire and silver, maybe? Or something featuring interlocking rings of whole gemstone? That would be essentially impossible to craft without conjuration unless you carved the whole thing from a single enormous stone, and if you make one of the middle rings from a different gemstone then the whole thing is literally impossible without conjuration. Maybe a statue of a woman with her arm outstretched to give aid? But how do we work the interlocking rings into that? Maybe we can do without a true structural impossibility since you could conjure it on camera, and people won't be visiting here to inspect it? Also if I'm going to be on camera we should settle on our inhuman features before that so that our appearance as a priestess is consistent."

She keeps pacing, getting more animated with each turn to continue.

"I want to go fox or lamia or demon, but lamia is impractical and demon has PR problems. Hailey wants wings but we probably can't make them functional and wings she can't fly with would just frustrate her. She'd accept demon as a backup but again PR problems. Maya wants to be made of steel and fire and accepts that that's not possible with current biological limits. Ruby wants to go fast and wants to be cute and isn't picky otherwise. Neo doesn't care. How do we find a compromise in there?"

Pace pace pace goes the priestess.

I have an idea. A statue of a woman sitting in a comfortable chair — I guess she'd represent me — hugging an armillary sphere containing the earth firmly in her arms and lap, her head laid against the top of the sphere. The rings of the armillary sphere are gemstone, the earth is a custom-made jewel of two clear colors, emerald and sapphire, and the woman and chair are made of silver.

As for your body situation, it feels like fox is the best compromise with practicality in your job and support for moving easily.

"Ooooh. That sounds lovely. Absolutely gorgeous statue design. Maybe make the armillary sphere rings out of amethyst or something, both to represent the night sky and because I think amethyst's really pretty?"

"Heh. Of course, Sable, you pick your favorite and most you gemstone for the armillary sphere. It does sound pretty, though. And I suppose I can vibe with fox. Let's make the fur black, though, rather than your usual purple."

"As if you're not going to be just as thrilled to visibly and blatantly stop being a mundane human, Hailey."

Sable laughs and shakes her head.

"Yeah, I think that's a plan. Probably do both the statue and the changes on camera, that way everything's nice and blatant. Hmmm, what about lighting, though? We'll need bright lights to capture everything properly on camera, but that's gonna suck for you, Goddess. I suppose it'll help keep people from catching on about the artificial light limitation, at least? And we can dim them down to off as we pan up to the night sky, and end the shot there?"

I can't create light sources that are turned on, but I can give you a set of studio equipment and have you set it up. 

I've worked beneath harsh lights before, and it's worth it in this case. Trust me. You've already helped me hugely by being a safe lightless redoubt for me whenever I need a moment to breathe.

... funny how I use figures of speech like that. I don't know how I know these things, I just do. My background on Asia seems to be somewhat weak compared to how I feel about the Americas and Europe... 

I have an image for the statue in my head. It came to me unbidden — a young girl, perhaps fourteen, with a sad smile and a ponytail. In my heart that's what I look like. 

I don't know where that came from. I don't know where I came from. It's possible I was a person before and the transition to — not working on physics — did something to my memory. I was certain that the acronym agencies wouldn't be able to find me, but...

Something to think about later, I think. Want those fox parts now? I could use a longer break before we do the shoot.

"Sure, that would be lovely. I'd been thinking we'd do those on camera too, but we can totally do those first. Whatever's best for you, Stella."

She hums thoughtfully. "If you were a human before... ascending, I wonder if it's possible to recover your memories. Or maybe let you have a temporary body again, something that can benefit from painkillers or shoulder rubs."

Maybe, yes. Something to look into later. We have higher priorities right now.

Shoulder rubs, huh...

It'll probably take several tries to get the nerve integration right and I don't want to do that whole process under harsh lights, so yeah, let's get you a tail and ears. 

People are totally going to talk about me as the weeb goddess. Oh well, I'm sure there's worse things they could say ^^

Black tail, black ears to match your hair. What should I do about your human ears? It might be hard for you to use standard phones or headphones if you don't have human ears.

"Oh bah, it would, wouldn't it? Hm. Oh! There's a design I saw that captures one way it could work." She pulls up the image online. "If you use the existing ear canal like this, then I might still be able to use something like normal phones?"

Lovely design. Let's see if I can implement it.

It takes a few tries, but she can. Before long, sleek black ears and a matching black tail round out Sable's midnight-blue dress. She makes Sable's new clothes have room for the tail as well, of course. Lastly she places the ammolite star necklace around Sable's neck. For some reason, she telekines it and does the clasp herself rather than just appear it fully closed. It's a waste of time, but... it matters to her. 

You're mine now. 

You work out a script for the video and set up the lights while I get the full statue pre-visualized in my head. 

Sable blushes and grins. "I am, aren't I?"

She spends a few moments running her hands along the backs of her ears and shivering delightedly at the sensation. "Oh these are lovely."

And then she gets to work, setting up the cameras, positioning the lights, rigging one camera to tilt up to the sky at the right time, and so on. Everything gets set up to save directly to her laptop. Good thing she was involved with theatre and the A/V club back in high school. Once that's all done, she starts drafting the script, her tail swishing contentedly.

It's nice, working on something important for her goddess, something that will let them help more people together.

As she drafts, a thought occurs to her. "Um. Goddess? I wonder if perhaps we should introduce me under a different last name, give my family a little longer unrecognized."

Definitely. Your roommate might say something, but that doesn't mean we have to give the game away. 

I'm worried for your family since they're out of my range for a full twelve hours or so yet. There's nothing I personally can do to help them right now.

You're sure you want to do this? Once we broadcast there's really no going back for you or your family.

"You need priestesses. You need people who are firmly on your side and helping you help everyone. Someone has to take the risk of being the first, and I don't want to miss the chance to help."

She nods firmly.

"I couldn't live with myself if I passed this up."

Alright. On your own head be it.

You can be Sable Aster.

Sable blushes, smiles wide, and keeps typing. "Thank you, Goddess."

It's only polite to repay devotion in kind.

Your script is looking decent. Let's do some rehearsals with the lighting off. I think we want to livestream the real one; more impact that way.

"Okay. Let me just finish setting up accounts and the web site, that way we can send emails from our domain letting news agencies know about the stream, and post about it, and such. Get more live views that way."

She continues typing. Also blushing.

"Just a minute or two more... Aaand... done. Ready to announce the stream whenever you say go. Now we can rehearse."

Okay. I need to draft my own letter, give me a moment while I boost some crop yields in China. 

Dear Planet Earth:

I'm Stella. I come in peace. Every one of you matters to me, in a deep and personal way. And I will do my best for all of you as best as I can manage.

I love you, Earth. Be well, and may the stars guide you.

Stella takes a moment to consider her letter. 

It's heartfelt, but I'm not sure if it's slick enough, and I feel like it doesn't say enough at the same time. But there's only so much you can fit into a letter you're going to type live on camera.

Do you think it works?

"I think it's pretty good. Hmmm. I can't think of any obvious improvements off-hand. I'm sure our eventual PR clerics will out-do us here. We're just two girls trying our best, one of whom has divine powers and no body."

Yeah, I guess so. Scary to be out in front of the world officially. Wish I could hold your hand. 

A silver bracelet appears around Sable's right wrist. 

This will have to do.

Let's go.

She flushes and fingers the bracelet for a moment, smiling.

"Okay. Let's practice this."

They run through it a few times, Stella refining the camera movements and lighting adjustments, Sable getting used to her lines and actions. Eventually, they agree that they're as ready as they can get today, and Sable sends off a few emails and social media posts.

First, to news media:

Official Livestreamed Address from Goddess Stella and the Temple of Night

From: "First Priestess Sable Aster" <sable.aster@templeofnight.faith>

To: "NBC Newsroom", "CNN Newsroom", "CBC Newsroom", "BBC Newsroom", "RT Newsroom", ...

---

On behalf of Stella, Goddess of Night and Stars, I would like to inform you of an upcoming public announcement, at 13:30 UTC (one hour from now). We will be streaming live on YouTube. There will be a demonstration to confirm that this is an official statement, followed by a brief explanation of our intentions, and a direct statement from Stella herself. 

Thank you for your time,

Sable Aster
First Priestess
Temple of Night

Next, on social media:

Official Livestreamed Address from Goddess Stella and the Temple of Night

By: First_Priestess_Sable_Aster

---

I'm sure many of you have heard about the miraculous healings and interrupted assaults credited to Stella over the past twelve hours or so. I'm also sure you have lots of questions. I can't promise answers to them all yet, as we're just getting organized, but I do have a livestreamed address confirmed for 13:30 UTC (just under an hour from now). There will be a brief demonstration and introduction, along with a statement from Stella herself. Hopefully we'll be able to take time to answer more questions over the coming days.

The livestream will be available at this YouTube link, and will start at 13:30 UTC.

Thanks in advance,

Sable Aster
First Priestess
Temple of Night

And then, at the appointed time, the cameras go live.

The scene fades in on a close-up of Sable's face, highlighting her slit pupils, warm smile, and faintly twitching fox ears.

"I'm Sable Aster, First Priestess of Stella, Goddess of the Night and Stars. I'm honored to be here today, serving this new Goddess and welcoming her to our world."

The camera zooms out as Sable walks backward, opening up the frame to capture the garden, along with Sable's softly swishing black fox tail.

"You might wonder how you can know that I'm really speaking on behalf of Stella, rather than one of the scammers already springing up to sell you fake scriptures. I've got a couple answers to that question. First, we're not trying to sell you something, just to get the Goddess's message out and clear up a few misconceptions. Second, the clever among you might find something hidden in the stars. And third, we have a little demonstration for you.

Then Sable steps a bit to the side, turning to face a cleared spot in the middle of the garden, bowing her head and holding her right hand over her heart, a silver bracelet visible on her wrist.

A sapphire orb about the size of an apple pops out of nowhere in the air. Traced upon it in emerald are the continents of earth. It spins in midair for a moment, then silver rods slide out of its poles and impale themselves into ring after intersecting ring of amethyst and purple sapphire. The whole assembly spins, the rings whirling through the air, until a final enclosing ring of silver settles around the circumference of the gemstone armillary sphere. At no point in this whole proceeding has any part of the rings touched the ground. 

Then silver hands appear on the rim of the armillary sphere, followed by arms in an enfolding embrace. Stella weaves silver strengthened with iron up into the form of a young girl of fourteen in a chair, her head lain atop the armillary sphere, her hair in a messy ponytail that spills down to her mid-back, her dress shapeless but speckled with stars. She holds the sphere that holds the earth close to her body in a firm hug, as if it's precious to her. 

Sable steps close to the statue, her smile soft, and takes hold of the rings, gently spinning each in turn. 

"We're here to help, regardless of race, nationality, religion, sex, gender identity, orientation, or anything else, because everyone deserves to be safe and healthy. Everyone deserves to be cared about and protected. Even when faced with violence, Stella takes care to disarm assailants non-lethally, because hurting them too doesn't improve anything."

And then Sable steps across the garden, the camera following her, to a modified Selectric typewriter on a stand. She gestures indicatively at the typewriter, and says, "And now the Goddess has a direct message for all of you."

The modified Selectric taps out the same message in many different languages: 

To the world, and all the people watching with hope in their hearts:

I'm Stella. I come in peace. Every one of you matters to me, in a deep and personal way. And I will do my best to aid all of you, to the best of my ability, now and always, in big ways and small.

I love you, Earth. Be well, and may the stars guide you.

At the bottom of the page is a link:

templeofnight.faith

Stella slowly pans the camera up to the night sky, dimming the lights as she does and cranking the exposure on the modified camera.

The real night sky, unblemished by any lights, twinkles back. 

She lets it linger for a long moment, then cuts the feed.

"Wow!", Sable exclaims when the feed cuts out. "We just did that! We just did a public address to the world! Congratulations, Goddess."

She giggles giddily and flops down in a nearby chair, hugging her tail to her chest. "Fuck I'm proud of us. I suppose the next thing is responding to people on social media, and making sure the FAQ stays up to date. Want me to reach out to that one poster who got kicked out of their home?"

Thank you. That was only moderately nerve-wracking in the end. 

Do what you can for the poor kid. That has the possibility to turn into a really tangled situation, but we can't not try. And do what you can to manage the site. I hope you got really robust hosting.

"Yeah, I splurged on the good shit. I figured I'd only be paying it out of pocket once, and then the next month we'd probably have temple funding to work with. If all other options fail, do I have your permission to invite the kid here? Honestly, we probably need to get some people to run some housing that isn't the temple islands at some point, just so we have shelter to offer that isn't here."

Ugh. That's a toughie. The last thing I want PR-wise is "Stella kidnaps children", which some people will almost definitely see that as regardless of how politely we phrase it or how much we pay attention to the kid's wishes. We also don't really have the staff yet — if we take one we have to take them all, you know? It's not consistent to offer help to just one victim and leave it at that. And I don't want to occupy you with managing a child on top of all the rest of it.

All that said, it's anathema to me to leave the kid to suffer. If we have to bring them here to safeguard them, we do, and deal with the fallout. It all starts with being good to the person who is right in front of you and if we can't repair even this small a mistake we have no business messing with people's lives. 

I guess saving the world means being the bigger person sometimes. 

Sable nods. "Yeah. I'll get on it."

First she checks over the website, to make sure everything's running smoothly with the rush of traffic. The home page has an elegant photo of the starry sky as a background, with the words "Temple of Night" above Stella's symbol, a four-pointed star. Below the star, it further identifies the Temple as "Church of Stella, Goddess of Night and Stars".

The navigation bar lists six pages:

Okay, that looks like it's still working fine. Next, Sable reaches out to the teen who received the conjured car.

Hi there, I'm Sable Aster, First Priestess of Stella. I heard you were having trouble getting your car registered due to the duplicate VIN? Is your local DMV willing to work with us on that at all? Is there anything Stella or the Temple can do to help? Perhaps an official letter from Stella would help support the application to change the VIN?

While she's waiting for a response on that, she replies to the redditor who asked about collectibles of Stella.

We don't have collectibles available yet, but we're working on a design, and they will be easy for Stella to distribute once we've finalized that. The Temple will post an announcement when they're ready!

Next, a message to the kid whose necklace got thrown out.

I'm so sorry to hear your mom threw out your necklace. If you pray to Stella tonight, she'll be able to recover your necklace and return it to you. Perhaps also pray for a way to hide it from meddling parents while you're at it? Good luck holding onto it!

Then a reply to the "legal vs actual dawn" poster.

As much as we'd love to be able to give Stella all-day coverage by tweaking the legal code, her divine powers run on actual dawn, not legal definitions. Good try, though.

And now there are somehow even more fake scripture peddlers than there were an hour ago. Sable replies to each.

This is not Stella's scripture. The contents are fake and not endorsed by the Goddess. Stella's principles, statements, and scripture will never be for sale, and instead will always be available for free at templeofnight.faith.

To the afterlife interview, she sends a custom reply.

This interview is completely fake, and quite frankly dangerous. Stella has no afterlife of her own, has no evidence about the existence about the existence of any other afterlife, and does not know how to make an afterlife. If she could confirm the existence of a safe and welcoming afterlife, she might be slightly less concerned about humanity's ongoing death toll. Official information about Stella, her principles, and her capabilities will always be available for free at templeofnight.faith.

By this point, the teen with the conjured car replies.

Yeah, that's the form I'm working on. I'll ask the DMV if they'd like a letter about it, and message you again if they're game.

Sable agrees to that plan, reminding the teen that Stella can only deliver such a letter at night, and then reaches out to the kid who got kicked out.

Hey there. I'm Sable, from the Temple of Night. I'm so sorry your mom's being so cruel. Do you have somewhere safe to rest right now, while we're talking through what to do?

I'm at a library right now, but it closes at six PM and I've got nowhere to go afterward. I called everyone but nobody will take me in. 

I think I'm through the panicking part, but... I don't know what to do.

You're the real priestess, from the video? Prove it, give me a photo of you with those eyes in it. 

Sable grabs a piece of paper and writes the kid's username, quiet-wings, on it, then holds it up next to her face and takes a selfie. She attaches it to her reply.

Yeah, I'm the real First Priestess. I'm gonna promise you now, you're not going to be homeless come nightfall. I want to walk through the whole spectrum of options with you, but whatever happens, you will have someplace safe to sleep tonight. That work for you?

Okay. You got me into this in the first place, so - yeah. 

What's your plan?

To start off, let's just get through the checklist. Any family members that aren't terribly bigoted about someone else doing magic to you? Trustworthy friends in town you could stay with?

Oh, and I probably should've asked this already, but name and pronouns? Age if you don't mind?

No, no, isn't quiet-wings good enough for you?, sixteen. 

It's plenty, I just want to be polite. Absent other options, the best thing I've got is inviting you to live on the Isles of Night with me. There's an apartment building Stella put in earlier tonight for any Temple staff who move in, and you could easily have an apartment there. 

I just wanted to double-check for any options to stay with someone you already know and trust, rather than the weird transhuman (and trans human) priestess on a magic island in the Pacific. It sounds like none of that's available, though.

Gee, let me see, do I want to be homeless or do I want to get teleported to some random place that the goddess who got me into this mess made, with no non-goddess-powered way back?

Honestly I don't trust your goddess, but I'm just as much at her mercy whether I stay or go. I'll take a warm bed for the night, thanks. 

Yeah, this honestly sucks. We're planning to have some kind of non-island housing available eventually, and you could move there when we do, but "island in international waters" was quicker to do without starting a big legal fight. My next best idea is to make sure you've got any relevant ID and such, then give you cash and put you in a hotel, but I don't know any safe hotels that would rent to a 16yo for cash.

I'm sorry your family are angry religious bigots. I'm sorry Stella didn't know to prevent their reaction by hiding your healing. I'm sorry you're in this situation at all. You deserve better.

At this point, all I can do is try to come up with least-bad plans and hope it makes up for at least some of the suck you're dealing with.

Alright. 

What should I do from six PM till sunset?

If you give me a location and a name — doesn't have to be your legal one, just one you won't mind saying aloud at a restaurant — I'll use my personal account to put a pickup order in your name. Could do that for lunch, too. If we pick the right place, they'll let you hang out and eat.

... Okay, that makes sense. 

I haven't had breakfast, so, uh, yeah, that would really help.

You can call me Pidge on the order, but... there's not really any food chains nearby that I know of. 

If I have to send a cab to ship you to a larger town first, so be it. Let's see if any of my accounts on uber eats or doordash or such can reach you first, though. Where are you?

San Antonio Central Library. 

Oh I can work with that. Wha'cha want for breakfast, kid? 

Food, preferably. Uh, like an egg mcmuffin thing maybe? If you could get me an egg wrap from subway with like tomatoes on it that'd be great. 

Also don't call me kid, I'm sixteen.

Fair. One egg wrap with tomatoes coming up. It should be there in the early tens at the latest. Tracking link is here. Meet the driver outside, they'll be looking for Pidge.

Cool.

This is a stupid question but I'm still kind of freaked and it might help me settle my nerves. Why are you a foxgirl?

Nah, honestly a fun question, not a stupid one — not that I mind stupid questions. A big part of it is personal vibes. I vibe more with fox than say... cat or dog, and the closest competitors in my heart for fox are unimplementable or a PR nightmare. And I've been dehumanized for being trans enough times that I honestly didn't feel like I could stand staying fully human, so. [shrug]

Are those eyes of yours just cosmetic or do they really work? Like a foxes', I mean. 

Sable, I don't want to jostle your elbow, but I think you need to take a look at these headlines if you're just chatting casually with quiet-wings at this point.

"Elbow-jostling is great, Goddess. My bad for needing it."

She pulls up a few news sites and skims the headlines while she sends off a reply to quiet-wings.

They work better than a fox's, honestly. They're a carefully tweaked hybrid design the Goddess made, with detail levels as good as a human, but night vision good enough to work comfortably in naught but starlight.

The news is going absolutely wild.

New "Goddess" Announces Herself

"Goddess" Stella Makes Public Statement, What Does It Mean For Your Immortal Soul

Invisible Woman "Stella" Claims to be God, Fox Investigates

Mexican Drug Cartels Swear Vengeance on Stella

"Goddess" Stella Claims Credit for Miraculous Healings and Rescues

New Goddess Preaches Empathy and Avoiding Harm, What Counts as Harm?

Crazy Conjurer Duplicates Products and Infringes Copyright, Claims to be Goddess

What does the Vatican have to say about "Goddess" Stella? CBS Investigates

Notorious Gang Killer Apprehended by Stella, Marked with Black Diamond

Commodity Values Crash as Stella Conjures Cars from Nowhere

You wouldn't Conjure a Car: What does the existence of Stella mean for copyright law?

US Government in a Furor as Stella Proves Capable of Disarming the World

"No Afterlife" Known to New Goddess; Miraculous Healings on Brink of Death

Half-Beast Priestess Shocks World; Stella's Genetic Experimentation?

"Stella is Capable of Destroying the World": US Think Tank

The End of War? Stella's Profession of Non-Violence

Stella's Miracles Break with the Dawn: What's Next for America?

Mexican Army and Police Rushing to Arrest Cartels, Take Advantage of Miraculous Disarmament

New Goddess Appears, NBC Breaks Down Her Stated Capabilities

CBC Exclusive Interview with Homeless Man who had Food Conjured

This Mother Prayed to Stella and her Lost Child was Returned

On top of that spread of headlines, the Temple's inboxes are full to bursting with messages:

• interview requests
• endorsement requests
• fan mail
• hate mail
• volunteers
• angry cultists of other faiths
• prospective Stella cultists
• people hoping to become various sorts of kemonomimi
• people begging for various wishes to be granted
• people in desperate situations
• people demanding money
• scam artists claiming to be Sable's long lost relations
• government officials and policy wonks offering policy opinions
• people trying to bribe Stella
• people with charitable causes they want help for
• people trying to sell Stella on joining their religion
• people trying to fit Stella into their religion syncretically
• a couple death threats against Sable
• a few death threats against Stella by people who don't seem to get she doesn't have a body
• people trying to get Stella and the Temple's opinions on various controversies
• and lots of people asking to have their relatives/wives/kids/pets resurrected

Sable also has an email in her personal inbox from her parents, asking if she's the Sable they saw on TV.

She's got some work to do.

Stella appears a blanket and gives Sable a momentary sense of pressure — a brief hug from the invisible woman. 

I think the staffing issues are the number one priority. All of this will be easier with more people on our side getting the word out, sorting mail, and being present to support our cause. I can sort your email inbox faster and better than you can — let's get some oceanic people on staff right away. Australians and New Zealanders first because you can talk to them without translation, look for staff with more languages when you can. I'll interview some people from Paupa New Guinea and greater Polynesia and Micronesia. Also we're almost certainly going to come under cyberattack soon so getting a good IT worker is important unless we want to offer up our whole inbox to criminals. 

There's a lot to do and not enough time but we'll figure it out. Breathe. You have me behind you. The world's not a toy puzzle you can solve in a hundred and twenty five moves, and we're making a difference whatever they say. If you need to take time away, you're absolutely allowed. You'd do the same for me. 

She gets to work.

Meanwhile, quiet-wings is texting back. 

That's kind of cool. Is there a reason why you didn't go full fox face? Didn't feel like it, bad for PR, what?

Sable snuggles into the blanket and takes a long, slow breath. "Thank you, Goddess. I'm using Google for our email, so we're reasonably safe on that front, and the website is just static HTML and CSS, so it doesn't have much attack surface, but absolutely worth getting an IT person. I agree that staffing is the top priority. Can you inspect someone's intentions if I make 'pray for Stella to evaluate you as a candidate' the final interview task?"

Sable starts filtering the volunteer application inbox by requested role. She bangs together a Google Form for clerical staffer applications and replies to everyone who looks interested in such a role with a link to it, then gives herself a moment to respond to quiet-wings again.

Didn't feel like it. A full snoot and fur all over doesn't quite fit the degree of human-adjacent I feel. Other choices are of course valid.

Then she gets back to the inboxes. All the supposed long-lost relations get deleted. Any actual long-lost relations would know her legal name and hit up her personal inbox, or message her parents.

Speaking of her parents, they get a quick email as well.

Hi Mom and Dad,

Yes, the foxgirl on the news is me. I lucked into being First Priestess for the new Goddess because we think alike about priorities and caring about people. Going to be a bit busy to go into detail, at least until we have enough staffers to keep up with the tide, so we'll catch up later, okay? Don't worry, I'm safe, Stella's protecting me. Can't go into detail for security reasons, but she put a lot of effort into it.

Love,

Sable

The death threats get forwarded to their nation's FBI-equivalent, as best she can determine from email headers and her bits of tracing skill.

Then it's back to the volunteer inbox, where she sets up another form for people offering to deal with non-profit bureaucracy issues and sends that off.

Seems like a waste of an opportunity to me. You could go full egyptian deity. Like Anubis. 

I could! I don't particularly want to, but I absolutely could. For that matter, you could if you wanted. If I was going to go Full Drama, though, I'd definitely go for wings, rather than Egyptian deity. The only reason I didn't is we haven't figured out a way to make flying with them practical yet. Hope the egg wrap is tasty, and lemme know when you're ready for lunch.

The interview requests get set aside for later decisions. The angry cultists get put in a folder and ignored. The transhumans get sorted into two piles, biologically possible vs not, and the possible ones get a form letter encouraging them to decide very clearly what they want their form to be and then pray about it at night, while the impossible ones get told that while their desired shape is valid, biology sadly does not allow such a form to be survivable yet. They are encouraged to either pray for a biologically possible compromise, or wait for mortal science to advance further and give Stella more material to work with.

The people begging for wishes to be granted are told that the ultimate decision on every request is in the Goddess's hands, and advised to follow the advice on How to Pray if they would like to improve their chances. The people demanding money are told that the Temple does not yet have money of its own, and that Stella does not counterfeit currency, but that if they pray about why they need money, the Goddess may see fit to answer their prayer with salable goods or some other solution.

You're doing good work, Sable.

I need your thoughts on something important, though. I need to decide what to do about Myanmar.

Most of the conflict in South America was unambiguous enough that I felt fine with just wishing away the cartels' weapons — large syndicates of criminals that are willing to resort to deliberate, organized violence to get what they want are still criminals, pretty much. They distribute narcotics and murder thousands of people every year, I have very little sympathy. I can feel justified in taking action to end la guerra contra narco in favor of the forces of law and order. But a lot of other wars we're going to get to soon are... messier. They're not easy simple things.

Myanmar, from what I can literally glean from wikipedia, is in the course of a heavy ethnic civil war where various marginalized ethnic groups have tried to negotiate with the sitting government for more rights and ultimately resorted to violence to try and achieve that end. To be fair, their government is literally a military junta. They've tried to sue for peace multiple times and get the laws passed they want to protect the minorities, but there are like a dozen rebellious factions and they can't all agree on a single slate of demands. Ceasefires have been repeatedly violated. It is, to say it bluntly, a political and military clusterfuck. There might have been an originally morally pure and good side here, but both sides now have hundreds of thousands of people's blood on their hands due to repeated failure of negotiations. The international community is trying to sue for peace, but you know how that goes with long running conflicts; these people have been fighting each other since 1948 and they're not likely to stop now. 

I'll refrain from going into detail on the kinds of prayers I'm getting from the place. It's not good. Both sides use child soldiers, and both sides have scattered a fuck-ton of landmines around in civilian areas. It's an ongoing humanitarian crisis, pretty much, and there's no "easy solution" while keeping the country intact. 

What do you think we should do about it? 

Nah, I'd want wings and Stella couldn't make them actually work.

Heading out of the library to wait for the food, talk to you soon when I'm back on the wifi.

Sable leans back in her chair and sighs. "Well that's quite the miserable fucking mess. Just brainstorming at this point, but can you target the landmines for vanishing, Goddess?"

She pulls up the policy wonk emails and filters for Myanmar. Has anyone kindly contributed a big chunky analysis of the situation?

No. The policy wonks have largely focused on the global economy, Ukraine, and Israel/Palestine.

"Policy wonks are no help here. Boo."

That's an obvious first step, yes, and I'd be able to do it. They are a war crime to employ. But they are unfortunately effective as a defense against attack, that's why they're used. As long as they're around they're killing and maiming people, but if I just remove them all I could end up making things worse. 

Second obvious idea, just disarm everyone — the problem here is that weapons keep getting into the country all the time. China, India, Israel, North Korea, the Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine were all recorded to be supplying weapons in 2019. If we just wipe out the stock that's present then whoever gets the weapons first wins. We could go so far as to wipe out weapons supply in all those places but at that point it's getting somewhat morally dubious to destroy weapons that might be used unethically and we're getting so fucking huge that there's no way something doesn't go wrong we haven't thought of. 

Third obvious idea, partition the country somehow with landforms. Put in fuckoff huge mountain ranges and separate all the combatants by allegiance and ethnicity, get the people being persecuted their own chunks of land. This might work but I feel like they'd figure out a way over the ranges somehow, and it'd destroy the geography. If you supplied enough temporary supplies it might work but it'd still be a clusterfuck. And it's politically poison and will separate many people from their relations etc etc. Think of East and West Germany and the Berlin Wall and all the pain that caused everyone who suffered it. Think of Israel and Palestine, too. 

Fourth obvious idea, number three but dump them all in an ocean somewhere with their own personal landmasses — the problem here is that without constant resupply from me and good distribution systems everybody starves, plus making a landmass the size of all of Myanmar is not trivial geopolitically, etc, etc, etc, Berlin Wall But Worse, What A Mess. I think I prefer keeping them in place and partitioning the country to this one. And if I keep doing that kind of thing I'm going to run out of ocean.

Fifth obvious idea, sue for peace. Make some gesture that makes the point that I can make them stop if I have to and try and bring all sides to the negotiating table to get things done. This has failed many times before despite international pressure. These people hate each other. It's also the only idea on this list that even moderately respects these people's independent desires to do things or not. I hate this one less than most of the options on this list but it's still unlikely to work. 

Sixth idea, do some form of negotiated partition of the country. They tried this one, it sort of happened but hasn't ended the fighting, but maybe if you put in fuckoff big mountain ranges that are easily defensible by small groups of people then maybe that fixes it. I hate this one less than just forcing it on everybody but it's still got that berlin wall factor. 

Any obvious ideas I've missed here?

"Clever Goddess figures her priestess out and jumps ahead. Yes, those ideas are where I was going with that question."

She laces her fingers behind her head. "Hm. Is allegiance even a divinely available property here? Presumably yes. The trouble is that you have to break people's willingness to murder each other around the same time as you break the ability or they'll just acquire the ability again. I feel like we're obligated to do either five or six. Mountain ranges are going to have environmental consequences. Walls are better, especially if you make 'em twice as tall as the Berlin wall for better defensibility."

"Ugh," she scowls, "probably the only option that respects their consent is five, with walls as something they can request in the negotiation, initiated by either mass disarmament or tying a starry ribbon around every gun with a letter explaining that they need to sit down and talk. If we go with disarmament, we're basically hoping the nations supplying guns can't do same-day turnaround and vanishing any shipments bound for Myanmar you find the next night. If we go with ribbons on guns, we're hoping the demonstration of your ability to reach out and touch every weapon in the region is sufficiently scary that they listen."

She shakes her head. "Can you do aggregate statistics of prayers? Or mental states of prayed-about populations?"

It's more instinctive than that. I think I could learn to, with training, but I don't have the capacity right now. And I can't read mental states of people who aren't praying to me. 

Thinking of doing vote-by-prayer? I think I could sense relative proportions that way but not finely, as I currently am. 

I think reaching out and touching every weapon to scare them into negotiating is a good idea. I was thinking of dyeing them all. Keep in mind they can't know if I've sabotaged them somehow. I could make the guns radioactive if I wanted, or poisonous, or make all the ammunition into blanks, or etc etc etc any number of sabotages.

My fundamental problem with this plan is that it amounts to declaring that I'm the Queen of the world. I'm asserting a monopoly on legitimate violence.

But I kind of already did that when I vanished all the drug lords' guns, so, you know. Too late now. 

She nods. "Yeah, it's definitely too late. Functionally you are queen of the world, and all other states continue to exist only to the extent that you allow them to. There's an argument that the two biggest sources of governmental problems are incompetence and having incentives for things other than human flourishing. Dunno if it's right, but it's an argument. And you don't have other incentives. You can't be removed from power, there's no way to inflict violence on you, and so your only concern is rearranging the world so it's no longer so full of suffering that your heart aches to see it, that way you can just live peacefully and enjoy the sight of happy flourishing people. In some ways you're the ideal queen of the world."

A low sigh. "There's a lot of good reason to keep other states around, in so far as they deign to not suck, what with the whole not wanting to micromanage everything deal, but at the end of the day you do hold a monopoly on force. You have the literal biggest stick, on top of an immunity to everyone else's sticks."

Don't flatter me too hard. I've already made mistakes before, and I'm going to make more again. I just hope they're small enough I can live with them. 

And the issue is I don't actually have a total monopoly on violence. During the daytime I'm helpless. There has to be a real structure solid enough to survive during the 12ish hours of every day when I'm not available to fix things. If I just deleted all the weapons in the world, do you think that'd end well? I sure don't think so. But I'm tempted every time I hear someone pray for — 

— sorry, I was about to. Elaborate on some of the things I've been hearing. 

I need to take a break. A real break. Not just lingering here in between thousands of emergencies. I need to set the work down for a little while. 

It hurts to have to.

I really shouldn't though. People are dying right now, I can feel them winking out mid-prayer — 

Let's just get Myanmar done and then I will rest. 

We're agreed on the nice-bows-around-weapons thing?

"I'm not saying you're infallible. We definitely need a solid crew of policy advisors in the Temple. I'm saying that you're unstoppable. The problem is that while having the absolute biggest stick is sufficient to rule, it's not sufficient to rule well. Which is why the advisors and good incentives are important. You've got the incentives. We just need the advisors now."

She shakes her head.

"Yeah. We're going to talk ourselves into more headaches and heartaches if you don't take a break. You're right. Bows around weapons and letters telling everyone to sit down and talk about an alternative to killing each other. And then you're taking a real break."

"I care about you, Goddess. A lot. You've done a lot for humanity in less than a day. You deserve to rest, heal, and relax for a time."

She shoots off another message to quiet-wings.

I hope the egg wrap is tasty!

Mmmh. Yeah, it is. The tomato is hitting real nice after this morning. Thanks.

... I feel like I should complain but honestly I appreciate your help so far.

Stella reaches out to make the letters and gift-wrap the weapons.

She pauses.

It's done.

It'll take them a few hours to sort through the confusion.

I'm shutting out all the prayers but yours now. 

You sustain me. 

Thank you.

Please comfort me for a while.

"Gladly, Goddess. I know how hard it is to take a break at times like this. I've been in similar circumstances on a much smaller scale. So I'm really proud of you for taking this break. Now let's see just how creative I can get with prayers."

She imagines a slender, pale, silver-haired girl, shaped much like the girl in the statue. Then she draws on every bit of sense memory she has of hugs to put together a thorough mental image of her, hugging that silver-haired girl tight and warm and close, fingers combing tenderly through those silver tresses. And then she prays with every drop of her heart and soul for her brave, caring, wonderful Goddess to feel that hug.

And surprising even herself, Stella is able to visualize the hug as clear as her measurements against Sable's body.

It feels warm. Soft. Gentle. Sweet.

She lingers in the sensation for a while. It feels good.

She's been a good goddess.

She's been a wonderful Goddess, and deserves every bit of hug she wants. Sable pours every bit of care and wonder and delight and affection she has into her prayer, every bit of how proud she is of Stella, how impressed she is with Stella, and how honored she is to stand at Stella's side.

It hurts, ignoring the world like this. 

But she has to. She's breaking down. She needs to take comfort where she can. 

It's only foolish to work when she can't sustain it. 

She squeezes Sable in return, moderating her titanic strength to a tender hug. 

So delicate.

She writes. 

Both of us. Ruling the whole world well is a pain in the ass. But we're doing our best. We're doing our best together. 

Thank you for caring. 

She puts in automatic lighthouses on all her various islands, kind of distractedly. 

Sable snuggles into the hug, even while she keeps praying variants of the mental one: wrapping her tail around Stella, or pressing a soft kiss atop her head, or nestling her into her lap.

"You're so very easy to care about. And yes, we're both incredibly delicate, but it's worth it, facing such a large challenge while being so vulnerable, if it means I can face it at your side. Yes, the work itself matters, but so do you."

Stella stays, for perhaps ten minutes. Long enough for her headache to dissipate completely. Long enough for her to feel like she could just stop, if she wanted. 

But she doesn't want to, not really. The world has ever so many problems, and if she doesn't fix them, who will? 

I think I want to go back to work now.

She smiles softly, her cheeks still flushed.

"Okay, Goddess. Remember I'm here if you need me at any point."

I'll keep that in mind.

Easy stuff first. I'm going to enforce a ceasefire for the rest of Myanmar's night, as best I can. After that, well, we'll see. And the usual medicine and prevention of violence, of course. Keep anyone from wandering into the landmines. 

There's still a lot to fix. Israel and Palestine are coming into range and they're no bueno. Obviously if I take away all the weapons Israel collapses. If I don't, though, civilians keep dying by the truckload. 

The fundamental problem here for Israel is that it's asymmetric warfare, you can't tell who's fighting you, so they're in a hard place regarding trying to target just the people who fire rockets into civilian cities. This doesn't justify targeting civilians, but the Arab authorities have a vested interest in making Israel look bad, so they don't separate out the military dead in their death counts. Because they're fighting an asymmetric war and can't even tell you who is and is not part of Hamas. 

The Arabs may have started the targeting of civilians but again I think this is one of those conflicts where both sides have a lot of blood on their hands and can't pretend the moral high ground. It happened in World War 2 too, even for the allies who were supposedly the good guys. Hiroshima, Dresden, the mass firebombing of Japan... War is just godawful and even if you're "justified" it almost always involves mass death of civilians in the long run. 

Both sides here have legitimate points — the Israelis that they deserve to have somewhere to live, the Arabs that they were living here until the Israelis came along and were pretty much told to shove it, pack up from their homes and move elsewhere on pain of being shot. Fundamentally I think the problem lies with the fact that nobody was willing to take in the Jewish people themselves. They tried to exile them, make them not their problem, and instead made a long-running conflict that continues to this day. 

This is one that might actually be solvable with Israel 2 Atlantic Boogaloo, but that feels incredibly easy to fuck up. Who knows what having Israel on a major Atlantic shipping lane might do to the world. Could be good, could be very bad. You do remember that these are the people who were supplying arms to Myanmar, yes? They're not squeaky clean by any stretch. And there's almost certainly going to be SO MUCH argument over who gets the Holy Land. But I have some hope that this could be resolvable.

"Oof, yeah, that's going to be quite the mess to fix." She shakes her head. "I think the Israel Two plan is pretty solid. It's certainly my instinct as well, and as far as I can tell it's the only one that gives everyone somewhere safe to live without shooting each other, but you're absolutely right that the real challenge will be getting someone to accept it. Strategically, Israel will be better off accepting the new island than sticking with the original Holy Land, just because they can live somewhere Not Surrounded By Enemies, but I fully expect a lot of people to make a religious claim that they're entitled to the land. Fundamentally these two groups have built up their claim to the territory in their minds for so long that everyone's going to have a hard time seeing past that to think about the simple well-being of their people. We can't claim to understand the depth of significance or connection to their heritage they feel in the Holy Land, but there comes a time when a country has to ask themselves whether keeping land that's connected to their history is more important than the lives they're spending in this long and bloody war."

I mean, politically, "exiling the Jewish people yet again from their latest home" I super expect to go down like a lead balloon. But we've got to try something. And they kind of have a thing about there being only one deity, and I sure am not that deity. That is inevitably going to massively complicate things. 

My gut feel is that we use the same techniques as with Myanmar here. I'm also tempted to destroy some of the particularly indiscriminate weapons  — basically the landmines argument again  — but that's a fine line to judge. Got anything from the policy wonks?

"Let's see." Sable digs through the emails and linked articles and such for a few minutes. "As best I can tell, the conclusion is that the international community does not support Netanyahu, and only hasn't made a binding order there because they don't want to be obligated to go in with armed troops to bring him to international criminal court, preferring not to spill more blood. They have ordered humanitarian aid be provided, and for hostages held by Hamas to be released. Damned near everyone is calling for a ceasefire, so we could probably save lives while not pissing many people off by enforcing that, and removing mines, bombs, rockets, etc. If I'm reading this right, I think Netanyahu is using the hostages as justification for continuing the war, and the war as justification for staying in power. Also, there's a substantial population of atheist Jews in Israel, and a big political faction arguing for 'a country of all its citizens' and making things less religious."

I had a look at the inbox over your shoulder too. People sure have some vociferous opinions. 

It's hard to tell what's pundits speechifying and what's the situation on the ground, other than "pretty damn awful." Even with all my senses, getting the total situation of a whole country is hard. I have a lot of raw data but not a lot of context and it's the context that makes it all fit one way or another. And just ligering on images of devastation doesn't help me decide what to do except inasmuch as it says I need to do something, urgently. 

I think the smart thing to do is render humanitarian aid as specified by the ICJ, force a ceasefire for the night, repair as much damage to infrastructure as we can, and make the point that we can and will resort to "military" measures if we have to. We should also free the hostages taken by Hamas, the ICC condemns the hostage taking and I don't disagree in the least. These people are civilians. 

I feel distinctly like removing the bombs and rockets' explosive payloads and replacing them with equally heavy chunks of inert plastic or similar. I don't know why I'm making a different decision from Myanmar here though. Maybe I should go back and replace some of the large arms in Maynmar too... 

Anything that prevents death, right...?

Now I'm wondering if I should be copying the whole populaces of these warzones to revive later in case of death... The trouble is I don't have the space underground to hide that many people and it'd be a public relations disaster to be known to clone the living. But seeing the situation on the ground...

No, I've got to do something about this now. There's people down there with no food or water or anywhere to shit. People with injuries and diseases and no-one to treat them. 

The ceasefire can wait, there's no reason to stall on the humanitarian aid. If they bomb the damn place back to rubble again I'll just restore it tomorrow again if I have to. 

She nods. "Sounds like a plan, Goddess."

She also sends off a message to quiet-wings.

Glad to help how we can, and glad the food's tasty. Valid to wanna complain, though. You're dealing with a pretty objectively shitty situation.

Finished the sandwich. Been distracted with the news. Kind of ridiculous that I've literally got a major public figure on the other end of my phone and nobody even realizes. 

You holding up okay?

I'm on the humanitarian aid.

And yeah, I'm going to sabotage the large arms for Myanmar and the Israel/Palestine conflict both. Myanmar is looking a little quieter but some of them are still trying to go at it, and they'll be dropping out of my range in another six hours. I'm distributing black marks to those that don't honor the ceasefire for the night. I did warn them. With a little more perspective I'm going to vanish all the landmines too. I can't guarantee everyone will be safe come morning but that was never in the cards, and these things are literally a war crime, and their effectiveness as a defense is more dubious than I thought. 

Speaking of which, I need to jump you to the Indian ocean soon. Tell me when you're ready for the satellite to drop out for a bit.

"Good deal on the aid and ordnance removal, and those black marks are well-earned at this point. You're doing great."

She pulls up Pidge's message and hums. "Lemme reply to this and then I'm good to jump."

Heh, yeah, it's kind of weird being a public figure now, but needs must. We're holding up well enough, though I'll be doing better when we have some PR staffers, social media people, and a couple analysts to help assemble good plans for geopolitical messes. Took a moment together to cope about the painful and violent and kinda wrecked state of the world, before getting back to work. We're getting through it, though, one problem at a time.

"Okay, sent. Ready to jump."

Nothing about the island changes, but the stars jump in the sky. 

Moved. You're in the indian ocean now. 

The Russo-Ukraine war I think we have enough protocols put together for now. Ceasefire for the night, adulterate all the large arms, make it clear we won't stand for continued violence. While I think it's clear Russia's in the wrong here I don't want to just vanish all the Russian soldiers' equipment because I don't want to leave them at the mercy of the Ukranians. Ideally I'd send all the poor Russian sods back home but I haven't got the personnel records I'd need to get everyone back to their local neighbourhoods. Too much is digitized. And I'd worry about reprisals from the Russian authorities. 

If you've got a contact willing to produce some ~entirely legally obtained~ personnel records, speak up, but unless we're willing to shout it from the rooftops and have people risk their lives for that information I don't know that we have a perfect plan. 

As such, maybe it's time to talk about Africa. 

Hailey switches in and laughs ruefully. "We wish we had those contacts, but it's been a good few years since we meddled with Anonymous. Everyone we knew is out of the game by now. Hopefully one of our volunteers will have connections."

She shakes her head.

"Africa's certainly complicated. Where are you inclined to start?"

The real problem as I see it — well, there are several problems. There's a massive lack of infrastructure in rural areas, and a lack of education necessary to run it all, and all because everyone is forced to make food just to keep from starving to death. I don't have a lot of background on africa but the impression I get is that if you have the resources to get educated in africa, you move somewhere else that's got better conditions and stop being in africa. I've also heard that there's issues with corruption, what else is new. Plus a lot of places are buried under massive loans to try and get in infrastructure and those loans mean that the rest of the world gets to basically take what they want from the place. The resource curse, basically. 

Ironically I've heard the chinese are a little better on the loan count for african countries because they see it as an investment in future allies. I guess you think long term when you're a country that's existed for several million years

why are millenia called that when they don't have a million years in them? 

several thousand years, anyway. 

Basically I want to give africa a better deal by upgrading all its infrastructure and making it so most people can afford a western style of living, but that's a huge project and won't happen overnight because of the staffing requirements. I can't automate everything. So what I need to do is work with the people in these countries, but the issue there is that the officials are often corrupt — but, like, what else is new.

I've been answering easy stuff in my whole range too, to rest. India's gotten a lot of little wishes because they're more polytheistic and more eager to accept a new deity. I don't really like their caste based culture of rigid social roles, particularly when it results in outcomes like bride burnings, but I also don't particularly like American culture of high access to weapons when it results in outcomes like school shootings. Any culture is going to have problems. In the west we circumsize boys for no good reason and it's just something we do; in Africa they do it to women and we condemn it. Frankly, I think when you start cutting bits off of nonconsenting people for cultural reasons you have a problem. 

Hm. Just noticed myself going "we" there talking about the west. That's going to be a problem long term. A good goddess can't be partial like that. But it does suggest that I might have been from the west myself before all this. 

I need some decent cultural advisors from other nations. Where are we on the staffing issues? 

Hailey snickers. "You're right, no millions in millennia. Probably the Latin roots thing. As far as the rest... Given all of that, best idea I've got on Africa is to commission textbooks in African languages and roll out upgrades as enough people get trained to handle 'em. But yeah, cultural advisors are a good idea."

"Let's see. Been a couple hours since Sable sent the link to the form and updated the site to include it, so we've gotta have at least a few bites."

She checks. Do they have a few bites?

A few. Sure. Try a few thousand.

"Well fuck. Thousands of applications. Okay, filtering by people who speak English and at least one other. Okay, narrowing for the one other to be Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Ukrainian, or any African language. That gets us down to a few hundred. Narrowing by located currently at night gets us a few dozen. Okay, let's throw together a quick filter questionnaire..."

The questionnaire covers things like goals, dreams, wishes that might be granted through material objects, teleportation, or body mods, along with several to tease out moral alignment with Stella's principles. Everyone who got through the basic filters gets a questionnaire, and then she sets up a video call interview scheduler to send to people who pass the questionnaire.

"Probably give it half an hour for people to respond to that."

Cool. I'll likely be working on Sudan then, making food and taking away weapons. I think I've got the general war management strategy down for the immediate term, and I'm sure I'll have no trouble getting prayers close enough. 

People are definitely going to die because of what I've done and am doing, and because of what I haven't done too, but it's still the right thing to do to distribute food even if there's inevitably going to be arguments and fights about who owns it, and I think total disarmament of both sides in a war... removes a deterrent effect, I guess you could say.

This is going to be messy, but I think it's better than doing nothing. 

Slavery is harder to deal with. If I just "free" everybody without having anywhere for them to go to, things will get worse, not better. Again, maybe arranging some new society on a new landmass might handle it, but that is not a project I feel comfortable attempting on my first day as a goddess. I've been leaving chiding letters for people who are running heavily exploitative businesses but I doubt they'll have a huge effect on their own. At some point you've got to do something real about the problem other than sending warning.final.final.final like China used to do with Russia. 

I think I more or less have the immediate humanitarian stuff sorted out that I can sort out - keeping people from directly dying to violence and starvation, and illness where I can hack it - so we need to talk about the problem of conjuration. I can just appear practically anything, and that's already having major effects on the economy, especially for objects that are mostly valuable due to their relative rarity on earth. Design work is going to be worth comparatively a lot more now that I exist, and specialized manufacturing like nanotubes. Transportation costs are going to crash because of my conjuring, too. We need to start interacting with the economy more deliberately rather than just messing around directly. Copyright is also going to be a big issue in the long term.  

When Switzerland comes into range, I'm going to want to open an international account to handle deposits from, like, government entities and private companies, the business side of being a goddess. A nice deposit of less-volatile refined lanthanides probably would go a long way towards establishing my credentials. I'd want to keep the actual church accounts separate from that, I think, as a charity or NGO rather than a business or corporation. 

In the longer-term case, we're probably going to want to set up the Isles of Night as a sovereign state wholly administrated by myself and my church, our Vatican-City equivalent, and that's going to be a huge snarl of international law and political recognition. Long term plans there. 

Hailey nods. "Agreed, we need more discussion before we start appearing a continent to stick rescues on. Can't really implement Absolute Abolition until that's available, absent a fuckin' lot of cooperation from Earth's governments. I think you're taking the right path on that and the war mess for now."

She props her feet up and leans back in the chair, humming.

"The economy's gonna be hard to deal with. The big problem is that it would be wrong to hold back on conjuring shit people need just because the economy depends on the scarcity, but at the same time the scarcity-backed economy is load-bearing for a bunch of other shit. We need economists to talk with about this. Sensible ones, that won't try arguments like 'have you considered not conjuring lots of food and consumer goods so people still feel pressured to work and the economy keeps working' on us. 'Cause like, yeah, we do still need an economy, because intellectual labor is scarce in a conjuration-proof way, and also we don't want humanity to be dependent on you for literally everything, but it needs to be an economy that can cope with Everyone Gets Basic Needs Met, Period. That's what you and we are aiming at as a goal for Earth, yeah?"

She rubs her eyes. "Copyright is gonna be a fuckin' mess. It's currently the main way we've got of makin' sure people get compensated for intellectual labor, that and patents, and conjuration breaks those over your knee. I think nearly every way of doin' it is either directly or indirectly dependent on 'em. We need to incentivize intellectual labor, but we need to do it in a way that doesn't depend on copyright. Ugh. Maybe our next application set to sort through is English-speaking economists?"

I think the key thing about interacting with the economy is to do it predictably. Granting small wishes matters to me but most of them don't generate a ton of value individually — it's the aggregate that matters. I'm willing to act as a company or government where that prevents huge shockwaves, but I agree, we want to move to use my manufacturing capacity effectively in the long term. There is in principle a value you can put on a second of my attention, and I think the world will figure out that value faster than I can. It's probably pretty astronomical though. I would estimate my manufacturing capabilities if I focused on nothing else as roughly in the league of the GDP of Earth. In practice, though, my comparative advantage may be elsewhere, such as with delicate surgeries or similar. Bulk microchip manufacture, perhaps. Earth makes a lot of products, but there's a bunch of things only I have the precision for.

And yeah, copyright is going to be a huge mess. I've made something like a hundred thousand copies of my favorite book — I intend fully to pay for them all once I have money, but it was nonetheless rude to go ahead and conjure before asking. All the people whose designs I'm using deserve to be fairly compensated. 

That said, people are hurting now — I'm not going to let the technicalities of copyright hang me up from helping people excessively. Everything I make is technically someone else's design, save for the rare cases where I customize something. That'll have to be hammered out properly, and probably will be a media circus, but I think large enough settlements from my near limitless well of free goods should solve most of it. There is some small possibility of trade sanctions being put against me of some form, but we'll figure that out if and when it happens.

Okay, I need to sit down. 

I just got the breaking news from Palestine.

You sure you know what you're doing?

"Yeah, and figuring out what the right kind of predictable things to do are will be the job of an economist. Honestly, paying people for the copies of their book will be a decent stopgap, once we have money, but it won't last long-term. Copyright's probably gonna die. It was already hurting bad."

She shakes her head. "Also, it's not like trade sanctions can actually do anything meaningful to you or the Temple other than make it harder to help everyone else."

She taps up a quick reply to quiet-wings.

Yeah, honestly, we're pretty overwhelmed at that mess too. We're sticking to "no seriously stop killing each other so hard" and "the UN's recommendations will actually be implemented and enforced" until we have better advisors who can take Stella's capabilities into account, so it's not as risky an action as we could take, but it's big and nervous-making.

How're you doing over there?

Better than I could be, honestly. It does seem that Stella means well, I just don't know what the long-term consequences will be like. 

Also, I have to admit it is kind of funny that she's dyed all the guns bright flourescent pink.

Headache's a little less bad this time but definitely still there. Working in the warzones and refugee camps there are less light sources and they're less powerful. Fewer people have lights, fewer people want to risk lights. It's sad but helpful in a way. Campfires and oil lamps seem to be less bad than electric lights, too.

There's less people praying to me deliberately though. It's okay, your prayer to take time for myself seems to be broad enough that it gives me some wiggle room to fix stuff I'm not satisfied with personally. I'm having to flip between prayers to get everything but it's manageable. 

We're almost certainly going to get some converts in the refugee camps. How that'll work out long term, who knows. But it helps me feel like I'm doing the right thing. 

Hehe, yeah. Fluorescent pink guns are objectively kind of hilarious. 

As for consequences, we're operating in a world that was in no way ready for a verifiably-existing goddess to appear and start throwing miracles around. That's probably gonna make a mess, but we have more important things to worry about than governments and economies getting scared. People are suffering and dying. That gets priority over a bit of mess.

"Glad to hear our desire for your general well-being and self-care is helping. Lemme know if our focus on it slips while Sable's out of front. We all want it, but she's the one whose whole-ass soul runs on Love."

She smiles wryly. "Converts definitely seem likely, yeah. Be nice if worship got you something, but it's at least an opportunity for people to maybe learn a thing or two about sucking less."

I guess that makes sense. I just worry that there'll be a big mess-up. I hope Stella's judgment is good. 

Also, I looked up when sunset is and it's at seven, so I ask again, what do I do between six and seven? there's fuck all around here besides the library and I don't want to get arrested for hopping a bus with no cash if I can help it. You were hoping there would be like a restaurant or something open late I could stay at, yeah? 

We definitely have some other people who believe honestly now. I've been refraining from pulling random aussies because I've already taken a risk with you and I don't want to complicate things further by taking on staff without a proper interview process, but there are some candidates I quietly have my eyes on. I'm not sure if I want to recruit on belief in me as a goddess though; I think that's the kind of complex that'll bite me in the long run, make me overlook good people, make me make mistakes. But belief in the same kinds of ideals as me — that's worth something.

Hailey nods. "Yeah. Belief in you as a Goddess isn't as nearly important as belief in the goals and principles we share in the Temple. That's the priority. Using Christianity as an example, belief in Yahweh and Jesus is not remotely correlated with adhering to ideals of charity and compassion."

The plan is to send you a list of what restaurants are open near you as it gets close to time, filtered by which ones stay open past seven. You pick one, I place a pickup order in your name after verifying they have seating, then I get you a cab to the restaurant. You stay there until suddenly you vanish and show up on the island with me. Hell, if you wanna look at the list now, I'm literally just going to be using Uber Eats and then Googling the places to see if they have indoor seating — probably just use Street View to ID outdoor seating.

I actually know a decent Indian place, it's just halfway across the city. Let me google for another closer one...

There's a pause.

Himalayan Kitchen, 5519 W Loop 1604 N #102

It's only 20 minutes away, it's got indoor seating, and it's open until ten. 

(Meanwhile, Stella is doing more or less the same thing on a grander scale — restoring people's bombed-out homes, providing food for refugees, and doing her best to help keep those who've been hurt away from those who hurt them.) 

Hailey slaps together another questionnaire, this time aimed at economists. Where are they located, do they speak English, what are their opinions on these various economic litmus test problems (to filter out the ones who make mistakes like disincentivizing housing construction and then complaining about high rents, or similar failures of thought), what are their opinions about these various principles of Stella's? She fires that off at economist emails.

Okay, that's great. I'll order you something there when it's closer to time. Meanwhile, think about what you want for lunch, and what you want at Himalayan Kitchen when it's suppertime.

I'll be okay with the sub for now. Don't think I can eat much more when I'm this nervous. Himalayan Kitchen has an online menu, I'll look at it in a bit. 

The next two-ish hours go by quickly. There's a lot of war relief to do and not a lot of time to do it in. Slowly, the shadow of the earth creeps over Africa and Europe. Stella loses the Isle of Night in the Pacific (tidying up after the letters she left there before she goes), then New Zealand, then starts losing the east coast of Australia and the north of Japan. 

She does take a moment to leave a letter with a particular researcher in Japan before she goes. Sumio Ijima is still alive, and she thinks it's most appropriate for him to hear of her interest in theoretical metamaterials first. There was a US researcher too, but, well... The US already has enough cake. 

She works on, and starts drafting her letter to the Swiss bank. That deserves some time.

Filtering through completed questionnaires is a slow process, but Maya does not mind. She approves five potential staffers and no economists, and schedules candidates for interviews with Sable to occur over that day and the next.

She begins sorting through more emails. Many of them are useless. 

Some of it is fan art. Some images inspired by the statue, and one song.

"Oh, this is lovely."

She prays for their Goddess's attention and pushes Sable back into front so Sable and Stella can enjoy the song together.

Stella wasn't really expecting anything to come in this fast, but sure, she'll listen to the song in her snatched moments.

Sable pulls the blanket snug around herself and lets it play.

"Oh Stella, this is so tender and sweet. I love it."

She hums softly along with the tune.

It's nice to get something back. It steadies her a little. 

Meanwhile, her research soon turns up that it is in fact difficult to establish a foreign bank account in Switzerland these days after more than a little crackdown on exactly whom is moving money through the famously neutral country. Once again, Bureaucracy.

I thought the Swiss didn't much care who held money in international accounts, but it seems that state of affairs has changed somewhat over the past few decades. Now Swiss banks are intended only to serve Swiss people. I'm sure there's loopholes, but fundamentally there needs to be some solution to the situation. I don't have citizenship anywhere, so it's difficult for me to act in a legitimate fashion. I'm sure there's some autocracy somewhere that'd be happy to take my money for citizenship, but let's not. 

It tempts me to start dropping gold bars on people, it really does. But I can't expect the world to have figured out what I want and need inside of twelve hours, and while I can be a little petty, crashing the world economy even harder is not going to help things. And we have no candidates right now I'd trust to run my banking apparatus other than you, Sable, and to be blunt, 1: you have more important things to do, and 2: this isn't your skillset. 

I think, horror of horrors, I may need to negotiate with some governments.

"Oh bother. Governments are going to be frustrating. Shame the Swiss don't let people just open bank accounts anymore." She hums and shakes her head. "Plus side, you're negotiating from a position of strength. They can't hurt you, you're keeping me in perpetual night so they can't hurt me, and the only things you want from them are banking and access to diverse perspectives of advisors. So this should hopefully be easier than it could otherwise be. Who're you thinking about talking with? My instincts say to get varied governments in different regions that way it's hard to completely cut you off from your money unless the whole world goes mad."

Comparison shopping for governments, what a concept. 

To be very frank, I have issues with pretty much all world governments. Even "upstanding" western countries supply the global arms market, or have exploitative foreign policies, and most nations are also censorious or outright autocratic in ways I dislike.

In general my impression is that most western nations are "trying their best", within the limitations of their concerns. Other nations vary from "literally ruled by a warlord and his cronies" to "genuinely trying but just Do Not Have The Resources." 

I don't believe, in my heart of hearts, that the western world is the "good guys" in an absolute sense, but compared to their major competition... They are perhaps the "relatively good guys." 

Now, some points I'd like to make: 

— I don't ultimately want to end up just handing any existing nation or collective of nations the world. Like, if I end up in a situation where I'm a signatory of NATO or what have you, I think we have gone off the rails. I don't want to end up being Just Another Edition Of The British Empire or Just Another Edition Of The United States, or conversely, ending up being The USSR or The Greater Chinese Prosperity Sphere or what have you. 

— I also don't want to overlook how the world treats its citizens. It matters to me what kind of conditions people are in. I don't want half the world to be run by warlords and criminals. 

— I also also don't want to end up with the world being effectively under occupation. While I have the biggest stick around, restructuring countries will result in its own degrees of suffering. Going In And Doing Something about shitty regimes has its own kinds of costs, especially as even at night I cannot be everywhere. Having me be the world police is unsustainable and won't work long term. And historically... Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the British Raj, Cortez, etcetera, etcetera... 

— As such I feel the role I actually want to have is as a vaguely western-aligned NGO that does primarily charitable work. However, that ship has well and truly sailed already. We're trying to do peacekeeping, we have a fuckton of manufacturing capacity, we own territory, we have truly terrifying degrees of military power — we're a nation whether we like it or not, pretty much. And that's only going to become more true as we accumulate staff. 

— There's also the unfortunate fact that my powers work on prayer. If I could just do something with no prayer needed I probably wouldn't have attempted to be a church, it complicates things too much. Nevertheless, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

— As such, we've got a very narrow path to walk here such that we are able to cooperate with the western world while not simply handing the entire damn planet to them. 

I would love to hear your thoughts.

"No," Sable shakes her head, "not quite comparison shopping so much as... diversifying your portfolio. Banking in different countries makes it easier for a wider variety of donors or customers to work with us. Diversifying in which countries you build in-country facilities gives you a wider variety of places — and languages — to drop refugees. The more countries your non-Isles resources are in, the harder it is for any one nation or alliance to fuck you over."

She reads further, then frowns and nods. "I think you're right on all the major points there, though. The problem is that we need to strike a balance of sufficient carrot and stick to get cooperation from a wide set of opposing nations, and avoid any of them thinking we're siding with the others. I think a key way to avoid getting swept up into siding with anyone is by keeping lists of things we want each nation to improve on, and always updating them with more, that way we're never tricked into thinking any one nation is fully In The Right."

She gets up and paces, tail swishing with her intensity, gesturing as she works things out aloud.

"What we want from countries is threefold: cooperation, banking, and fixable land. You can fix poisoned land by vanishing the toxins, or vanishing the whole area and putting fresh soil in from twenty miles away. You can replace condemned buildings no one's gotten around to tearing down with Temple facilities. So what you need is either land grants or the right to acquire land. As we get more people in more countries, we'll be able to do things like operate the literal best soup kitchens and homeless shelters."

Making shelters that don't suck is definitely on the list, though I think that'll take cultural adaptation as well as financial resources. 

As for diversifying... Probably smart. I want to act legibly though. Probably I want to establish official embassies everywhere that'll take one. 

I think we need to lay out my philosophy in more detail before I start talking to governments seriously. There are costs to codifying things, though. Often moral intuitions are messy and imprecise, more felt than known, and I worry that I'll lose important pieces if I try to codify my ethics as a set of principles or laws or positions. Moreover, setting down my positions will inevitably place me on one side or the other of many, many controversies and the more my percieved neutrality is torn at, the less I'll be able to achieve in the world at large. Fundamentally I want to be there for everyone. In practice, I expect a lot of people to reject me. I want to do my best to help, nonetheless. 

She nods, still pacing, still swishing.

"It sucks. If we come out and say that conversion therapy is wrong, we'll piss off Evangelical Christianity and Russia. If we say genital mutilation is wrong, or infant circumcision, we'll piss off other religions. I don't think that situation's acceptable."

She frowns and keeps going. "I think the problem here is that just about every group is doing at least some shitty things. We can't hold back from calling them out on it, otherwise we become what we hate. Maybe what we do is tie every objection back to the core principles? And actually update if someone ever gives us a coherent and correct argument that we're wrong about one? And state that we'll do so?

"It's not like a country can really stop you from operating there. Even if they tried to attack a Temple facility, tear it down, kill the people, you could just resort to keeping the people out of the country during daylight and rebuilding the structure at night. They can't win. And that should carry some weight in the negotiations, at least among countries whose leaders don't respond to that by doubling down out of fear and pride."

Another sharp turn, tail whipping through the air with the about-face. "But yeah, we need to get the philosophy down in detail. You're right about that."

I could prioritize and compromise. Say I'd work only on the big things, like ending war and privation and making the world economy better than it's ever been. I could do a lot of good that way. Lifetimes worth of it, even. 

But I don't think the person I am would survive that. Not in the long run. There's going to be immense pressure on me from all quarters to look away from just this one thing, just this one problem, and frankly I'm already doing more of that than I think I really should be. I set aside the situation with North Korea already — when am I going to get back to it? This week? This month? This year? This decade? This century?

It's irresponsible for me to pick and choose my causes on anything other than how much damage is being done each day. But it's impossible for me to maintain that in the long term. I am not a world-saving robot, I am a person. I have foibles and personal desires. I want things to be better rather than worse for my presence in the world, but at some point I need to listen to what my heart wants and not the brutal mathematics, because if I make myself a thing of brutal mathematics I will collapse and be no help to anyone. 

This is, ultimately, selfish of me. To care more about some people than others. To work on some problems more than others. But it's more sustainable. I didn't, ultimately, decide to be this being, this Stella, this creature that can save or doom others with a moment's thought. But if I'm to stand against the world, better for me to be myself as honestly and sharply as I can. 

And what I am is — I want everyone, every person on earth, to be safe, and happy, and free, and whole. I really mean that. How on earth I'm going to manage that is a tall fucking order but it's the goal. 

I have a weakness for the persecuted, I guess you could say. At my heart I am there to be a refuge. I want people to have somewhere to retreat to, somewhere genuinely safe. I'm prioritizing keeping people from dying because I can't fix it if someone dies but I am and have to be more than just keeping people alive.

There was a woman early in the first night. Who wanted me to repair a football trophy that she had broken, for fear of her husband. 

There was a world where you'd have had to live marked out, lost, separate from everyone else. 

That, I think, is the thing I hate most. The cutting away of people from humanity. Saying they don't count. It's why my harshest punishment is visible marking-out. If you say others don't matter, I would like you to experience that from the other direction. This is petty of me. But it's what I did, by instinct.

I want people to always have a way out.  A real way out. I think a lot of people stay trapped of their own volition, out of fear or love or hurt or hope — but for those who have the courage to go, I want their escape to be made manifest.

Sorry, I'm rambling now. 

Sable nods firmly. "I completely agree. You're not a healbot. You have to live to keep doing all the good you do. You have to thrive just as much as you're hoping to see others thrive, or it won't be sustainable." She keeps pacing.

"And beyond that, I agree with being a refuge. That's important. That's a very important kind of good. And sure, marking people out for doing horrible things is petty. It's not ideal. But even you have to triage. And some people are going to keep dragging the world down unless they get a quantity of healing we can't yet provide."

She shakes her head. "Everyone deserves love. Deserves safety and joy. But I'll forgive us for prioritizing the ones who aren't othering and hating and murdering to help first, when it's clear-cut."

She flops back into her chair and looks up at the stars. Goddess they're fucking beautiful with her new eyes.

"Being a refuge is a beautiful thing. It's part of what I love about you. And I'm glad to help you do it. We're not going to give up on our dreams of a better world. We're not going to give up on making help and safety available even to the inconvenient. And if some government wants to throw a fit about the Temple helping persecuted people rather than the powerful, too fucking bad. Yes, we'll keep working to do lots of large-scale good, but we're going to keep helping the individuals too, because those little reactions are what keep us going in this draining work."

Alright. Priorities, then.

Any minority suffering from persecution. Ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, gender minorities, religious minorities. Disabled people, whether from physical or mental disabilities. The world's poor. Those who are being exploited in serious ways. 

People at immediate risk of death first, then those in intolerable long-term situations — whether that's starvation or being in a war zone or being a slave or being a persecuted minority or being abused or what have you. Then those who need someone to help make their lives fairer — those who are poor but not in poverty, whose who are trans but on hormones already, those who are a minority but not being actively abused, etcetera. Then ordinary people. Then and lastly those in positions of power. It is easier to get leverage from helping the rich and powerful; accordingly, let them buy aid rather than recieve it for free. In short, I think we're adopting a sliding scale model of intervention, here. I don't want to Harrison, Burger's Son* the world, but I think the day will take care of that to some extent. 

How to summarize that as a statement, though, is a little more difficult.

*[sic]; she means Harrison Bergeron

She nods, smiling. "I like it, but you're right that summarizing it will be the hard part. Hmm, what about..."

Her fingers dance across the keyboard.

Stella's — and the Temple of Night's — priorities are first and foremost to provide safety and freedom to the weakest among us, especially those facing persecution: ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, gender minorities, religious minorities, people suffering physical or mental disabilities, the impoverished, the exploited. We hope to become a refuge for people in need, a haven where any can turn to seek safety and freedom to be oneself. First is immediate risk of death, then intolerable long-term situations like starvation or living in a war-zone or slavery or abuse, then those who need help to make their lives fairer or better, then comforts for the lives of ordinary people, and lastly those in positions of power and wealth. This will not, however, be adhered to perfectly. All of us here at the Temple are people, even Stella, and taking time for smaller and less-pressing joys like giving a child a toy and enjoying someone's smile are necessary forms of self-care to keep us doing this work for a long time to come. Wealthy and powerful people who wish to make use of Stella's attention out of this order will soon have the opportunity to do so monetarily, once we have bank accounts, payment processing infrastructure, and finance professionals. All money received through such means will be used to support the Temple's goals, whether through purchasing utilities and communications services for Temple facilities, or commissioning the design of objects for Stella to conjure.

"How's that look?"

Looking at it laid out like that...

Some deep part of me yells "sellout" there. "Objectively" it's correct to accept money for our work so we can do more of it, but I dislike it. It reminds me of buying indulgences in the old Catholic church. It's a dirty compromise. I particularly dislike only offering the opportunity to buy miracles to the wealthy and powerful. It should be available to everyone or no-one, no special-casing. 

We could try and work entirely off donations, but in some ways that makes us more beholden to large donors, not less. You've seen how large charities work around rich people. 

I genuinely think we need to engage with the economy, therefore, "no-one" is not an option, therefore we must make the option available to everyone. Miracles on a sliding scale basis, separate from answering prayers, Stella has the right to refuse transactions, prices not yet established but expected to be based on a combination of need and income. 

That'll be a whole-ass mess in the long run and require a bunch of staffers, but I'd rather be honestly mercenary in the hope of helping more people with the funds raised than pretend principles I don't have. This is fundamentally admitting to being bribable on goals that I find ethically neutral, and I don't want to sugarcoat that to you even if we never say it explicitly outside this room. 

Fundamentally this is a compromise with the existing economy. Do we honestly believe that it will help us help more people than the realistic alternative of never offering any miracles for hire? 

... That's not an easy call, but I do think it would genuinely help significantly. I'm just worried about the long-term ethical hazard of becoming the church-in-splendor rather than the church-in-service. 

What do you think?

She hums for a moment and nods. "I think you're right. I don't think I like making miracles available for money much more than you do, but sliding scale miracles are an efficient way to acquire currency, and we do need to interact with the economy. Fundamentally we'll need things you can't just conjure: comms, commissioned designs, real estate, and utilities, to name a few examples. We'll be much more efficient with those at our disposal than without, and we can't get those without money."

She updates the draft.

Stella's — and the Temple of Night's — priorities are first and foremost to provide safety and freedom to the weakest among us, especially those facing persecution: ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, gender minorities, religious minorities, people suffering physical or mental disabilities, the impoverished, the exploited. We hope to become a refuge for people in need, a haven where any can turn to seek safety and freedom to be oneself. First is immediate risk of death, then intolerable long-term situations like starvation or living in a war-zone or slavery or abuse, then those who need help to make their lives fairer or better, then comforts for the lives of ordinary people, and lastly those in positions of power and wealth. This will not, however, be adhered to perfectly. All of us here at the Temple are people, even Stella, and taking time for smaller and less-pressing joys like giving a child a toy and enjoying someone's smile are necessary forms of self-care to keep us doing this work for a long time to come. Miracles outside of the normal prayer process will be available once we have bank accounts, payment processing infrastructure, and finance professionals, priced on a sliding scale based on need and income. Stella reserves the right to refuse any request. All money received through such means will be used to support the Temple's goals, whether through purchasing utilities and communications services for Temple facilities, commissioning the design of objects for Stella to conjure, or other things as needed.

"Better?"

Yeah, I think so.

Thank you. You steady me.

You would object if I did something obviously bad, right? I want you to be honest with me, not just rubber-stamp whatever I say.

"Um, of course?" She looks a bit surprised for a moment. "I trust you not to smite me for talking back, so of course I'm gonna speak up if you have a bad idea. Also just... part of loving people is wanting them to be the best them they can be, and that means calling them out — gently, ideally — if they make a mistake."

Just checking.

And thank you.

"Gladly, Goddess."

She posts the prioritization statement on the website, and then sends quiet-wings a quick check-in.

Hey there. How's the afternoon going so far?

Better than it could be. 

Selling miracles, huh? Guess there goes Stella's claim to the moral high ground. Invest in goddess stocks today. Preparing for the Divine IPO, valued at $AllTheMoney. Seriously, what are you people thinking? 

We're thinking that we have to engage with the existing economy, because we don't have enough social infrastructure that we can afford to break it, and we need services we can purchase through it. Selling a few miracles that Stella rates morally neutral — due note that we retained her right to refuse any miracle request for any reason, and thus she won't grant anything that goes against her principles and values — pays for utilities at Temple facilities, buys land to build free or cheap housing for people, commissions the design of new material objects for Stella to conjure without copyright worries, pays the authors of media Stella's already conjuring, buys land to build soup kitchens or safe injection sites, and more. Money hires accountants to keep the government from finding ways to declare our donations illegal. If you have a feasible idea for how to pay for all those needs without selling miracles, we would sincerely love to hear it. We don't want to do it this way, but the world runs on incentives, and this is the best idea we have.

Sorry if I got a bit sharp, there. Honestly not a fan of the plan, but I can't think of a better way of engaging with the existing economy.

If you're not a fan, why are you going ahead with this one?

Because we need to be prepared with a plan, and don't expect the world to give us time to think on this subject. People will just keep dying while we waffle about the ideal plan. There's a saying about "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" that I think applies here. If someone comes up with a sufficiently better plan, we'll pivot on a dime to that, but we don't want to lose time to analysis paralysis, y'know?

Just... try not to compromise off a cliff, would you?

This is going to be really, really messy. I can already hear the prayers going up. 

People are offering me money now. They already were before but now they're doing it more. I'm having to refuse a lot of people who are trying to bribe me into things I'd do for free. Naturally now the more unsavory characters are trying to bribe me even harder. It's a really good thing I can filter based on the intent of the prayer, it cuts out a lot of people who are... praying disingenuously, let's put it that way. 

Patricia's not wrong. And we're moving awful fast. 

Still. All we can do is our best. 

I'm scared, though. Already we're compromising with the existing power structures. I don't want to become just another queen with bad advisors. The prayers help; it's easy to see what people really want, this way. But how to fix it is much more complex than just handing out material goods.

I think it's time we slowed down and tried to negotiate a little. I may yet reverse my decision to do commercial miracles, but for now let's try it and see how the incentives work out. 

Any thoughts on how to approach the EU? They've got people praying to me already, and even in a sincere way, wanting to shelter their people from my 'wrath' such as it is. 

I'm doing the obvious things I can in Africa right now - healing people, preventing violence, making sure there's enough food and infrastructure for food, eradicating some of the endemic parasites, dealing with some of the brush wars - you know the drill, pretty much. I don't know the culture well enough to intervene in less obvious ways but I'm doing what I can.