Eye of the Beholder

Chapter 3.8 The Beholders

Dema knew whereof she spoke. Better than most, certainly.

Cern, especially, knew this about her. And about himself.

Bear and Xayna too realized what she was telling them.

Tengri and Sedna both understood it, but in a less direct way.

But it was Sedna who spoke to it now.

"Dutch saw her first. Thank you, Dutch."

"Huh?"

"You stopped before the mural, as if captivated. It was the link we were all there to find. We didn't know what form it would take. You gave it form."

"You're talking about the goddess."

"That's right. You brought her to us. Summoned her, if you like. You were the first to see her, to look at her image and dwell on it in your mind. I was trying to read cuneiform memoirs. Others were fascinated by other things. But it was her chamber. And you were looking at her. Giving her life."

"Thanks, I think, but I don't really know what you're talking about."

"You saw the mural. Saw it with your eyes. With your drone eyes, actually, but that's unimportant. What is important was that you saw her in your mind. Saw her as others have seen her. You beheld her."

"So you think I brought her here? But I had no idea I was doing that. That I could do that." 

Dema said, "Most of us don't. Even we who do know, or should know, find it easy to forget."

Newt quoted Burns. "To see oursels as ithers see us!" 

Sedna looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.

"I know," he said. "Burns was a Scot, not Welsh. But he was all right for all that."

Sedna rolled her eyes at him.

"To see ourselves as others see us. Burns had it right," said Dema. "Maybe more than he knew. We are spirits, not these bodies we inhabit. Bodies are physical entities, but they are subject to our will. In a limited way. The limits are imposed by all the other spirits that have physical manifestations. Because to be here, we have to agree with them."

"Are you telling me that even in our Q dreams we are limited by these agreements?"

"If that's our choice."

"So we could choose not to agree?" 

"In a limited way. That's what I did with the stone. All I needed was the stone's agreement. Nobody else cared enough to matter."

"And the goddess?"

"She wasn't physical. She's been living in the Q. Who knows for how long. She may have been completely out of touch with reality, in some dream world of her own. 

"But she still had a link to this reality in that image. An old entanglement, you might say. So when you, another spirit, pulled on that link, she responded. 

"To you, Dutch. She responded to you."

Somehow Dutch felt relieved of a longing he didn't know he had.

"We make each other real," he said.