> However, I was thinking about Devera, and I found myself > wondering if perhaps Devera was taking Zerika with her on > jaunts through time to find young Phoenixes to be persuaded > to be relocated into the future, thus rebuilding the House. I tend to think of Devera as an in-joke, rather than a character in her own right. We don't really know anything about her personality or her motiviations. The Demon Goddess might send Devera on an errand like the one described, but then she might as well do it herself as entrust it to a child. To complicate such things, if Zerika has a patron goddes it's probably NOT Verra, so her own Goddess ought to be the one taking care of things like insuring that the House doesn't vanish utterly. Then again, Laszlo worships Verra IIRC, so maybe that's one of the things that he and Zerika have in common. For rebuilding the House, I think a more likely solution may lie in the field of genetics. Some possibilities: 1) Aliera (we'll use her to represent the field of trained geneticists) discovers a way to clone a male Phoenix from DNA; Zerika's or a preserved sample of someone else. Jenoine technology might be involved. Would Aliera WANT to do that? Good question. She backed her father in his bid to destroy the cycle because he was her father. I'd say it's not entirely clear what her feelings would be about restoring it. (Certainly, the metaphysical model of the Cycle in the Paths of the Dead is intact, which implies that SOMETHING will happen to correct the Empire as the incarnation of it.) 1a) Aliera finds the original Jenoine labs and reproduces the experiments that created the first Phoenix. 2) Given what we know of Dragaeran culture outside of the Empire, it seems reasonable to assume that they don't have the program of strict racial purity that you find in the Empire. It's possible, through simple random chance, that a pure or nearly-pure blooded male Phoenix could be born from Elde Island or Greenaire stock. It might be interesting to see how such an occurance played out in the courts when it was was discovered. 3) A male Phoenix is recovered from Elsewhere. Time travel falls into this category, though I'm not really thrilled by the concept. I'd be more receptive to the idea of finding him trapped in another dimension (through some magical mishap, no doubt) using Morrolan's windows. 4) Combine all of the above and stir in some Issola - Vlad and Company find some excuse to travel back to the Jenoine world, where they find that the Jenoine themselves have begun re-creating their old experiments, perhaps in a bid to create a new version of Dragaera with a few more controls built-in. After various adventures and some buckling of swashes, the end result is that Vlad comes home with a Phoenix husband for Zerika,and maybe even a few in-laws to go with him. Of course, I've probably ruined all chance of that story getting published by posting the idea in a public forum, but I suppose that if it's a REALLY good idea that Steve will find a way to write it despite that. ;-)