he saw a shimmering lake

Sighing, Zanza uncovers his eyes.

It's one thing to make, and continually remake, a world wherein your creations can hardly handle the divine knowledge that you've birthed them without developing a pinprick singularity at the crowns of their heads and blowing the whole crucial balance to hell. Such fragile beings, really...

It's quite another to be robbed of even that facility, and have to make do with whoever will be won by your charms firsthand.

Oh, he knows he is vain. There's no denying it. As is Masha. And Masha, though she looks as if she should be fragile, very much is nothing of the sort of being that would shrivel into a Smalnut when faced with the divine.

No, she understands her charge perfectly. Adorn a god, with all the skill a Lapidarist Extraordinaire repeatedly professes to possess. Leave no detail unchecked. Stop at no expense, and find the appropriate personage to foot the bill. All her training, every client of practice, has been leading up to this moment. Her voluble shop talk has been impeccable, each trace of manicured fingers perfectly placed.

It's just that...indeed, lemon quartz looks divine on Masha. On Zanza, it looks like piss.