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Diena and Aspex married in the spring when she was twenty two and he was twenty four. It was good, auspicious weather, and they liked each other greatly, enough that they both half expected the first child would arrive a little early, as first children sometimes do.
But they were unlucky, and no child came, not that year and not the next and not the next and not the one after that. They consulted a priest, who could only recommend prayer, and say that sometimes it was a curse but sometimes it was the way of things, the will of Heaven even, and they'd just better look out for what Heaven might have intended for them.
In the sixth year of their marriage a travelling preacher came, who said he'd been all the way from the desert lands to the far south, and had gone through Andoran newly liberated from Hell's evil grip, and up the Sellen and through the forests full of horrors.
He was a good, vivid speaker, and he spoke of all kinds of things, but the one that stuck with Diena was that in Andoran the streets were full of abandoned children, because Cheliax had taught men to pledge themselves to no one and women to be whores and not demand a man's pledge, meaning to raise the children for Hell all the better with no example of love or virtue for them to witness. And of course now Andoran was free but the habits of Evil weren't easily broken.
"Well," she said to Aspex, that evening, when they'd given the preacher all the money for his travels and his missions that their village could afford, "that's where our children are, I suppose."
"- hmmmm?"
"They're down in Andoran, with no one to raise them and show them love, and we'd better go and get them."
"Do you think so?" he said. He did of course want children. They were short of hands on the farm, and people teased him, and you were supposed to bring children into a marriage. It was the one thing you could only do in the mortal world. But taking care of someone else's children you could in fact do from Heaven. Dead babies also needed raising.
"Yes," she said. "Why, if we had four born of my body already, I would hear that and weep, for it would seem to me there was nothing to be done, but from my body they have been withheld, and it is clearly because we are supposed to go and get them."
"It's a long way to Andoran," he says doubtfully.
"I doubt it is even as long as the usual making of a child."
"It is a dangerous trip."
"Well, so is the usual making of a child." If you have a priest on hand it's all right but this village is not so big it has a priest all the time, just on circuit, and babies sometimes come unexpectedly.
"I suppose we could pick out some sons who'd be good on the farm, and good warriors."
"And some daughters," says Diena, "to raise the next generation, and to be warriors too if it suits them." Obviously it usually does not suit daughters to be warriors but the goddess herself was a daughter, once, and her parents presumably disappointed, and they fed her and taught her to read and fight and see how that turned out.
"What if we don't like them?"
"Well, sometimes you bear a child and don't like them, it's hardly a problem specific to going to rescue them."
"What if they know nothing of virtue because of the terrible influence of Hell?"
"All children are born knowing nothing of virtue."
"Do you think that you will love them like they are of your body?"
"Of course I will. I do already."
So when the harvest is done they set out overland, to the distant grand city, and from there on a boat, to go to Andoran to rescue their children.