When she looked back at Morpheus, the timid goddess from moments before was gone. In her place stood the one who'd lived when humanity was just learning how to write, just learning how to live. Her eyes were very dark.
"They've taken me from the ones I love. They've taken me away from the ones I serve. You may find I can do a great many things."
They followed the spinning, twisting thread to the elevator, and when they stepped into the small room, the thread slipped in with them. It circled and pulsed around a particular button, which Nanshe mashed with her finger. And then -- movement, the slow descent, the slower halt, the swish of the opening doors.
As the thread proceeded out in front of them, it led to an open room where a few humans sat at tables that looked the same as the next. And past those tables, the thread slid to a set of creatures that were decidedly not human at all. It circled over the heads of those aliens, then dissipated.
Nanshe watched all of this with no expression at all. Then she walked steadily toward the aliens, tightening her fingers around Morpheus' hand. Are you ready? she asked him, without saying a word aloud.