Standing there in place of the bird was a creature of both light and darkness, of both male and female, with four arms and hands, mighty eyes, and the whites of its eyes were blue, and a bright flickering aura surrounded the creature like a flame. Even the little nameless wolves that still sometimes followed and bothered Receiver raced away in terror.

"What are you?" Receiver asked in fear. And it was as if the flame itself spoke, "Shiva, destroyer of worlds, changer of time, dancer, singer, maker of images and delight, lover and loved, all. I will help you combine with your Others. I've always been combined, never severed from my Selves."

You curdle blue our blood,
royal in the bright night
as we melt in a musical furnace
our arms twice around,
warm in love and desire,
quietly wetting our surfaces
to slide up to the
hormone studded body blast
where we stalk suns struck nova
and wax off stumbling wishes
to our fire core.

Through such wholly willing friendships
we want final redemption,
flames to finally cauterize
and sear us into one,
body, blood, and mind.

So we mean to redeem in love,
for the unknown crimes
that must have clove us
once upon a time.

But then love,
life's vested interest,
trips us in the trick
of the living loop
where we go where we came,
and it's the Nameless again.

Shiva embraced him with all four arms, and terrified him with chanting, wild dancing and flashing lightning. Time began to shift backwards. He saw moments of his own past pass by, until he found himself where he was when very young, by a summer field he remembered he once was as a child.

Shiva said, "Here in the Valley of the Passed you will find some of your own past. I'll become again my many Selves, my avatars." With that he dissolved like the crow, but instead of crows he became many ugly and noisy people, and they grunted and swore at him and at each other, quarreling and running every which way. Just when he thought he'd go mad with their mean chatter, they started turning into monkeys, and fled into the trees at the woods they were near, still yammering as they disappeared in the distance.