"Hi there," he said to Ishta and Sokitomme who were dancing together.

"Hi," sang Sok. "I hear you are the Messiah now."

"Yep."

"I also hear that you're upset with me for swimming with Ishtar this morning."

"Not so," said Chris, flourishing his flute. "I have rearranged the world so that Ishtar always will be, and always will have been faithful to me. (Even excluding yaks.) She may have wagged her tail at you, but that's all."

"What about you and Shakina?" asked Ishtar.

Chris shrugged. "In fact," he said, "in fact I've come to talk about the grubs in Morocco."

As mermaids will do at such time, passing moments, Ishtar started to groom, to comb her hair (with her fingers). She stopped aghast. "My hair!"

"Oh yes, when I was hum replaying the world just now, it struck me that mermaids don't need hair. It's just a drag in the water. But don't worry. You look great. Well," Chris continued, "what about the grubs and the death of grass and that?"

Sokittoommee shrugged. He supposed Deofilus would stop multiplying and keep the Boo together - somehow. It would all work out. Chris was not satisfied with this and addressed himself to the butterflies and the tree and the Node. In answer the butterflies danced a vision of a tuned in world, with Roaratuni freaking in the high street. A delegation of Tuni fauna would travel with Chris Mango to El Stone and weave their pattern there.

"Could that bring harmony?" Chris asked. In Roaratuni there were two hundred human singers and a million wings. At Hashishmas in El Stone a million souls and billions of wings would amass. What this mass would breed not even the boa-tree could predict. The psychonexus of that much light would create new worlds.

Chris stayed his doubts. Sufi, he left the past and future to themselves and let the light bring him presents.

Next day everyone went into the forest to gather nirvana seeds. Even the monkeys.

Chris exchanged footnotes with Sokittoommee as they walked together in the tree.

Footnote, concerning intergenerational communication amongst the butterflies: the butterflies lived a season, then danced to shed and share their pattern, pass it on to a new generation at the great lek, and in the dawn of the new cycle offered themselves as food for the feast. The generations of Deofilus thus renewed themselves in a manner much like the phoenix. But not this year. This year the butterflies stayed on to dance at El Stone.

Chris, Ishtar, Zak and the Joju gathered at the Node to tune and sync one last time with the boa-tree and the Node before journeying to the world. But how to get four tons of seed, four elephants, a hundred velinules, fourty cellinules and et cetera, a million wings, a yak and a mermaid back to El Stone in time for Hashishmas? Down to the coast and boat? Trek round the fringes?

Zakeri, with Ishtar on his back, set off straight for the desert beneath a cloud of butterflies.