Fixed by Beth Goobie Page A

however, weren’t his strong point.
    “Peliones is in the Outbacks, isn’t it?” asked Lierin, keying the information laboriously into the laptop. Secretarial skills weren’t her strong point.
    “Yeah,” said Nellie, “but it wasn’t the Outbacks then. Things weren’t divided like they are now. The Great War hadn’t started yet.”
    Phillip drummed his fingers on the open pages of his book, impatient to complete the assignment and head for the gym. “Alrighteeee,” he drawled. “So, She’s born and when She turns seven, Her name gets pulled in the harvest draw—”
    “Wait a minute,” Lierin interrupted. “You forgot Her caste.”
    “Twin Moons,” said Nellie immediately. “She was born during Lulunar.”
    The research assignment was for their history class, or Star Class, as it was commonly called. After some advance reading, Nellie had decided the assigned question , How did the death of the Goddess’s sons lead to the start of the Great War? was more complicated than it seemed. Back in the olden days, before the Goddess was born, the land of Windros, as it was then called, had been peaceful. Sure, there had been rumblings from the rural areas — farmers were always discontented with the decrees that came from the temple administration in the larger cities, not understanding the reasons behind the taxes levied on their products. This was understandable, since Windros’s ten largest cities were grouped in a tight belt around the Funnerbye Sea and known collectively as the Interior. It was also true that for decades the Interior had been in the habit of taking the Outbacks — a wide-ranging area of loosely scattered small cities, towns and farms that surrounded the Interior — for granted. Still, nothing had come of this rural discontent, beyond several minor brawls in the Dorniver area and a temple-burning way out in the sticks. Then the Goddess had been born, and the history of Windros had suddenly grown interesting.
    “Something else we forgot,” said Nellie, getting to her knees and turning to look at the star chart posted over her bed. “Her birth date is in two days — the thirty-third day of Lulunar. Let’s see. The Red Planet is still prominent, and the Blue Susurra constellation is at itspeak.” Her finger traced the alignment of stars on the section of the chart designated to the month of Lulunar. “Stars of good omen for the thirty-third are the Morning Star and the Triad at the base of the Weeping Tree constellation. Stars of bad omen are the Hunter’s Bow, which is just rising over the horizon.”
    “Okay, okay.” Phillip’s toe-tapping went into a rapid spurt as Nellie settled back into her original position. “So the Goddess is born under the constellation of the Blue Susurra or whatever, and then Her name gets pulled in the harvest draw and She ends up in the main temple in” — his finger slid down the page — “the city of Sarrendar. She gets promoted to high priestess, and then one night she’s seduced by a visitor to the temple.”
    “Uh-uh,” said Nellie. “She got raped. And then She got turfed because no one knew the guy who raped Her was actually a God who’d chosen Her to carry His seed.”
    Phillip scanned the page in front of him again, then looked up, shaking his head. “It says right here She recognized Him for what He was and agreed to the whole thing. She even agreed to keep His identity secret.”
    “Okay, so your book says the God raped Her, and Phillip’s says They had a great time,” Lierin said matter-of-factly. “I’ll put in both versions to be safe. What happened next?”
    “Lived in squalor,” said Phillip in a bored monotone. “The slums. Too ashamed to go home, so She became a prostitute.”
    “People sure were weird about sex back then,” muttered Lierin, her fingers plunking away at the keyboard. “Nowadays the priestesses have Pleasure Rooms just like we do.”
    “People are still weird about sex,” said Phillip.