still fixated on the book of poems.

When the meeting is winding down, however, the Body straightens

and in a soft, clear voice audible to all, recites

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

Gideon had been getting slightly distracted from the nerd talk by flipping through the book of poems so Tamerlane could at least read over her shoulder, and she grins up at her at her words. "You aren't alone now," she says, quietly. 

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

   Is a world of sweets and sours;

   Our flowers are merely—flowers,   

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

   Is the sunshine of ours.

She continues, teasingly, before swerving to another poem: 

That holy dream—that holy dream,

  While all the world were chiding,

  Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,

  A lonely spirit guiding.

 

What though that light, thro' storm and night,

  So trembled from afar—

  What could there be more purely bright

  In Truth's day star?

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.

Her smile slips away. Earnestly:

Mother, I firmly do believe—

 I know—for Death who comes for me

 From regions of the blest afar,

 Where there is nothing to deceive,

 Hath left his iron gate ajar.

 And rays of truth you cannot see

 Are flashing thro' Eternity——

 I do believe that Eblis hath

 A snare in every human path—

 Else how, when in the holy grove

 I wandered of the idol, Love,—

 Who daily scents his snowy wings

 With incense of burnt-offerings

 From the most unpolluted things,

 Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

 Above with trellised rays from Heaven

 No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—

 The light'ning of his eagle eye—

 How was it that Ambition crept,

 Unseen, amid the revels there,

 Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

 In the tangles of Love's very hair!

"This was your home, wasn't it - your high estate," she says suddenly. "Porphyrogene - who you were, before you were cast down. You were God." She stands, considers kneeling at Tamerlane's feet - but that feels... Off, somehow. Inappropriate for this moment.

Instead, she reaches for Tamerlane's ghostly arm, and "You are loved," she says, with the same simplicity that Tamerlane first spoke to her with - with a deeper truth, now that she knows her mother. "No matter what they did to you - no matter who assailed you - I love you, and I count any who would harm you as my enemy. I have no ambition but to love."

"You are loved," Ellyn repeats fervently.

But there's no one there.

She breathes out, softly. 

Well, that was both awkward and fascinating. 

"If she was God - if this was her throne - "

" - What happens, when a planet is flipped from thalergy to thanergy? At a fundamental level, what happens to the planet?"

"It... dies?"

"But death isn't just death - it's apopneumatism, the thanergy bloom - the cascade of thanergy after; the transition of a soul into the River. And Resurrection moves in reverse, a thalergetic bloom followed by thalergetic cascade as the soul returns and living cells are created out of dead matter - this occurs during pregnancy and childhood growth as well, it's why necromancers struggle with pregnancy - almost certainly the very process that Lyctorhood exploits, since this draws in ambient energy at both transition points, allowing for an escalating increase in available energy to the necromancer - and pinning the soul before death would naturally reduce the amount of energy required to initiate the Resurrection, as that tether would pull them back to this side of the River - "

"But fliping a planet is a massive energy transfer, the way the Cohort does it takes generations so this isn't particularly noticeable on human time scales - but if you can pin the soul of a human - and the soul is an emergent property of sufficiently complex organisms - can you pin the soul of a planet? The math works such that all theorems can - on paper, theoretically, if you have the skill - be run in reverse - can you run the process of flipping a planet in reverse?"

"Allowing that a planet can be a sufficiently complex organism, which I think is the biggest challenge. There is an argument by analogy to human cells and symbiotic bacteria, but the counter would be that the qualitative differences outweigh this, and the normal process of flipping a planet is simply the slow accumulation of everything living on the planet."

"What else would you call her, though?"

"Admittedly, it makes the most sense with what I've seen of Tamerlane."

"We might also have the wrong framework - it's a good point that we need to keep open minds, here."

"Can we go back to the part where God brought a planet back to life? And maybe also killed it in the first place?"

"Possibly formed a - quasi-Lyctor bond? While She was at it."