The lease is written. Both parties sign the lease. Ari lets them have the ground floor. The ground floor includes the kitchen, sitting room, three guest rooms and a master bedroom.
The first floor has only four rooms and a small kitchen that was rarely used. Cina and Ai decide to share a room, much to Rilyah's protests.
"You can't stay with a boy." Cina flicks Rilyah's forehead. "He might be thirteen-year-old only, but he's still a 'male'."
"I saw you getting attracted to a 'male' god earlier." Rilyah bars the door to prevent him from entering the room. "I don't trust my Ai's safety with you."
"He looked like a woman!" Cina lets out an exasperated sigh when she makes a face. "Ril, don't you think that you are acting strange? Ai is my little brother."
"Little brother?" She wrinkles her nose in disgust. "If I hadn't seen you eyeing the rain god like that, I would have never found out about your true face."
"I don't like men." Cina raises his head and closes his eyes, resisting the urge to cry. "Spare me! He was beautiful. If you were as half as beautiful as him…"
"What, then?" Rilyah furrows her brows. "No, how could I not be as half as beautiful as that crafty asshole god?"
In the room, Ai looks toward the door with a deep frown. Are they fighting again?
"You are not." Cina tells her with a straightforward voice, "You have a pimple on your left cheek."
"Pimple?" Rilyah touches her cheek and runs to the bathroom to check. Cina rolls his eyes and walks into the room.
"Don't fight anymore." Ai says to him, "Mother might get stressed."
"Why don't you tell her not to pick a fight with me?" Cina scowls at him. "When you were young, you used to fight with me. Now, she fights with me. Why is everyone fighting with me?"
"I was a kid back then." Ai turns his back to him and checks the books on the shelves. "She's still a kid."
"Then, she should fight with another kid!" Cina crosses his arms and huffs, "Why am I a fake twin? I don't want to be her fake twin. Why is she so nice to you when I am her fake twin?"
Ai lets out an exasperated sigh. When will these two gods grow up? He's tired of acting as their guardian.
In another room, Ari is packing her parents' things. Her grandparents and her room are taken by the rain god on the ground floor. When she was young, her parents divorced and remarried. Her father did visit her a few times when she was young. Her father died when she was in high school. She has step-siblings who are busy with their own lives. Where is her mother though? They did stay in contact long ago.
She picks up a diary that she found in the pile of things left behind by her mother. It's a baby diary with her name. As Ari turns the pages, she reads the record that her mother kept about her.
[Ari crawled for the first time today.]
Takayama Ari chuckles. Maybe she should keep a pregnancy diary. The babies are growing fast.
Someone knocks on the door. Ari walks to the door and opens it.
"My master sent this." Ame Onna hands her a salt lamp with a faint glow. "Keep it near your bed."
"It won't harm my babies, would it?" Ari looks into her eyes and asks.
"It won't." Ame Onna assures her gently. "You must take care of your health. This lamp can only provide much, but it can't give everything. I heard that you can do universal magic. Strengthen your body. You need to be strong for childbirth."
After the woman is gone, she takes the salt lamp to her bedside. It is gleaming like a faint crescent moon. She places her hand on it and feels the hunger do down a bit. This shouldn't be enough. How can she reduce her children's sufferings? There must be some way.
"Renasir!" Rilyah storms into the room. "Cina locked himself in the room with Ai."
It seems like she has five children -- three teenagers and two unborn daughters. Ari looks at her. "What happened?"
"I am afraid that he would do something to him, Renasir." Rilyah sits on the floor, grabbing Ari's legs. "Can't you make Ai share his room with me?"
"No." Ari replies in a beat, "Boys are demons. You never know when they attack you, especially the ones who are in their puberties."
"But I want him to attack me." Rilyah snivels.
"He's too young." Ari coughs. "Wait for six years."
"If you give him permission to marry me at sixteen, I only have to wait three years." Rilyah puts her head in Ari's lap. "Please, Renasir. I can't wait anymore."
"Wait for six years." Ari pulls the girl's cheek. "Why are you in a hurry to get married? You should date other boys. Just because Parisa told you that he is going to be your husband, do you have to force yourself?"
"What do you mean?" Rilyah creases her forehead in confusion. "All the prophecies came true."
"Not all of them." Ari has been thinking about it. Deia Parisa is Oracle Parisa's reincarnation. Deia has always seen possibilities. Then, Parisa could have seen possibilities only. So, she chose the possibilities with the highest possible chances and revealed it to the one who could affect the future mostly. "The war between the chosen one and the dark god didn't happen. It was also her prophecy."
And if Parisa could see everything, there wouldn't have been the first war in the first place. Amara could have been stopped before she started the war.
"But Renasir, even if it's only a possibility, it's still a possibility." Rilyah looks up at her. "She saw that I was going to marry Little Ai."
"Is that so?" Ari doesn't talk on the topic anymore. There's a possibility that Adira wouldn't have killed Little Ai or he wouldn't have separated her children from her. When she decided to die in order to erase the corruption in the dark ehr and release the dark heart, she had a firm belief that Adira wouldn't destroy the world for revenge. Why didn't she have the same trust in him?
"I made some mistakes," Ari mumbles. She believed in some prophecies more than Adira. However, she could not take any chances. If Adira had decided to kill Little Ai, she couldn't have done anything because she was not strong enough to protect Little Ai.
Then again, why did Parisa care so much about Little Ai?
Why did she tell those prophecies about Adira to Rilyah? At that time, Ari couldn't think of anything else when she heard that Adira might take her daughters away from him.
And how did she end up in her world? That doesn't make sense at all. She's still pregnant in the body of Ari Takayama while the body of Ari Ashbourne has disappeared.
"What are you thinking about?" Rilyah asks her.
Someone sent her here for sure.
Ari shakes her head at Rilyah and smiles. "It's time to make dinner."
***
The sun is burning at the peak of the day. The air is dry as sandpaper. As far as one could see, there's only golden sand. Adira looks around. He's been travelling for years. The locks of his dark hair are brushing against the sand as he walks in a direction. His eyes are sharp, filled with only coldness.
The magic in this world is nothing compared to Iravan.
To make it worse, his energy is depleted after such a long trip. He doesn't even have enough magic to cast a final spell. Where could she be in this world?
The Dark God saunters on the seemingly unending desert whether it is night or day. After a few weeks, he reaches civilization.