Fourty eight hours since they had set foot on her planet's surface. Fourty eight hours since they had walked under their trees and approuched their temple and been told to wait to see her. They were tired and filthy and stank like recycled water and stale air. Their races were unrecognizable to most of her people, a few of them vaguely resembling normal shape. It was always a point of contention when these people reached the ground. They always came from the sky, they always had. Yet they had no wings and no knowledge of the religion of Animaria. The first ones had confused everyone, because they saw the winged people as sub-dieties themselves. There was an understanding now, after many years, that neither of them was particularly holy. But there was a desire to beleive in the unproven and so both the people who came from the skies and the Animarians kept eachother at a cautious arms length, as if at any moment the other might call down some vengence from the clouds.

These people were not Gods, even if they had come from the terrain of the Gods. The place beyond the skies was holy to Animarians and they would not tread in it, even when offered. To presume they knew so much of the Gods that they could walk freely through their realm was too much for any of their kind. The people from the sky were ignorant and stupid and had an excuse because they didn't know better.

Yet it had been fourty eight hours since they had come asking for her to give them aid and she was still thinking.

The aid they wanted wasn't simply a place to sleep or refuel. It wasn't sanctuary or a chance to research her and her people. Solla was brought, fourty eight hours ago, word of the war that was spreading slowly like a cancer through the stars. The people from the skies who had come down reeking and whimpering were asking for the Animarians to go with them and fight.

Tough choices were part of Solla's obligation and position. She'd been trained to make them, trained to prove them. Argument had become second nature, leadership her first.

But that made it no easier for this to be decided.

To go and help these people against the war would be to break an age old vow that they would not tresspass in the Gods' realm. People wouldn't want to go, they wouldn't like the idea of those who did go. The chances of those going being allowed to return home would probably be slim. Not so much because they would be outcaste or dead...rather because it wouldn't be practicle to allow them home. If there was no deffinitive proof of the Gods beyond the sky, it could bring down the entire belief system Animarians had built their existance around.

The problem wasn't one that could be ignored, though. Although the war was moving slowly, eventually it would reach them at home. Even that wasn't the primary concern. Weighing on Solla's mind was what their own religion had taught them. It was wrong to turn these people away and turn them down, even if they were ignorant. They were asking for warriors, and her people were known for it. They could help.

Solla did not like the choice she was being faced with. They required far too much analysis. To go into space, that possiably meant finding out if there were or weren't Gods. If she went and saw no indication, would it mean she had never really believed? Would it mean all the more that they were there to begin with? Others would feel this same delimia, she was sure. The problem was in her title. It was her responsability to work through this and feel it for all of them and let them rest supremely in her choice.

The hitch was that Solla could find no perfect solution to set her mind at ease.

She could feel her fingertips rough and caloused from the training a month ago with the gauntlets. She could use them now, and the callouses reminded her of her choices. There had been less fighting, and what fighting there was Solla felt was now more fair. Rubbing her fingers against her forehead, she could feel the callouses. She had made the right choice before. She had become an example.

But how seriously did she doubt her own beliefs?

"I have made my choice."

The heads of those who had come from the sky looked up. At least, Solla thought to herself, they knew enough to respect her people. She realized, however, that they were nothing like her at the same time. Aside from their build entirely, they were strange. It was as if they had become thin as paper from their time drinking recycled water and breathing recycled air in space. They thought different and felt different. They weren't looking at this fight as something they had to do for rightousness, they were looking at it as something they had to be afraid of.

Maybe they were right, but that was no way to go into battle, and she knew that.

They were watching her, the people from above. They were watching her with celophane eyes and shaking hands. If her people had looked up to her for answers to their questions, they had never looked so desperate or afraid as those who kneeled on the floor now. Even with her feet on the same level as they, even with the same stone under them, they were looking at her like she was someone who knew more, had more, was more.

But I'm not, Solla mused to herself. Soon I'll be just like you, thin from air and water that don't even remember what they are.

She waved a hand over their heads, waved to the small crowd that had gathered at the temple opening to hear what she had come up with. She waved them inside, waved them closer. They came slowly but obedeiently. On many wrists she could see the glint of the gauntlets she had trained them to use. All around her now were the results of her choices. All around her, even those who had never met her until they had come to her world- all around her were her people.

"The war is a disease in the skies," She started, trying to form her thoughts into words they would all understand and accept. "We have never been able to touch or see what lies beyond the sky- we haven't wanted to. Now we have to understand that the place we see as most holy is under strain and danger. The Gods themselves may be powerless, or they may be testing us. And not just our Gods either," She looked towards the aliens, "Any Gods. This fighting will touch us all, will leave us all full of question and filth. I already feel it touching myself. The best we can do is to fight, as these people have asked us to do.

"I do not ask any of you to go with me, because I know the fear of going where we dared not before. I understand, I feel it too." She looked down and swept at her hair a moment with her hand. The black strands felt soft and clensed, a feeling she told herself to learn now so she could remember it when she had gone with them. "Those who go will not return. We can't leave for such places and expect ourselves to be the same. We would not come back merely changed, we would come back lacking our essential nature.

"Yet we should go."