Mountains blanketed in gold, sleep soundly near the undefined line of the nine gatekeepers of Lucia, capturing any sea-wolfs daring upon the land. These wayfarers end up as prey caught in the nets of maids woven by their mother, Ran. The sisters net the pirates and turn them upside down, shaking them violently to empty their sticky pockets of stolen loot.
They daisy chain the loot from the marshy sea to sister and sister until the ninth one, Islay, unloads the treasure in the land of bishops, where their father Egir plans a grand party for the nobles. He will brew the finest ale for the monks of the new world, a Christianized world of one god that reigns in the warm valley of Eden. Egir offers gold and iron to the Chumash for their help in gathering coastal live oak acorns, sagebrush, and sticky monkey flowers to make the ale. Egir knows not the land but the sea and offers his elves and dwarfs to aid the monks who work night and day at making giant oak barrels to brew the ale.
Egir calls on Thor to deliver stormy seas with lightning bolts toward Eden. He mixes the ingredients into the large barrels and recovers a lightning rod from the mast of a wrecked Franciscan ship and electrifies the ale with his charged rod, mixing and brewing the grog. After work, guarding the seashore, his nine daughters test the brew and chime in. Morro speaks first, “Father, it’s too bitter, it needs more Monkeyflower. Madonna adds, "I like the sagebrush with its fruity aftertaste, I recommend more of that for the finest elixir...father!”
Egir thanks his daughters,
“I appreciate the smooth palate’s, girls! Your mother tastes fish in everything she tries. It helps to have nine opinions!” Speaking of Ran, where is your mother, ladies?”
Suddenly, a wave from the sea rolls over the hills and Ran appears with her mouth wide open, releasing the sea back over the hills like a giant surge in the tides through the marshes and to the ocean. As Ran opens her mouth to speak, a salmon jumps out of her mouth into her net. Egir spears it with his trident and swallows it like a seafood appetizer. Ran turns to her daughter Islay,
“Islay, my prophetic darling, have you shared your latest dream with the monks and Chumash?”
Islay shakes off her green viny coat of grapes, stands tall, and peers across Eden and chants like a seeress from the sea,
“When I close my misty eyes, I see a beautiful garden of green, turned swampy with steam if I were not to share my dream. If our nations dare not speak to share a common ground in a land where oceans awake and get angry with waves that have sound, we must join together, Chumash, Franciscan, and Norse. For if we miss this time to dine in the West in Eden.... tales no more will be told of mountains of gold, plump purple grapes, and coastal live oaks.... no more, will acorns adorn, falcons dive, nor will the vines make fine wines. This land I shall say will be swept up by the sea and become barren and dull.”
Father Francisco thanks Islay for her vision with an important message to the settlers and reassures his position as a Father with a Mission for his people in the land of bishops,
“Our father has delivered us to this land with a message for all! To establish a church in the valley at this post along the golden coast where we may pay reverence to the one GOD who rules all. The GOD of Spain, the Lord of the New World, and the Father of the valley of Eden and land of the nobles.”
Chief Mowak of the Chumash speaks up in his Salinan-English pidgin,
“Islay, we receive your message as gate-keeper of the Water World and gladly accept your gesture like we do mother ocean's sea shells for our culture and trade. Father Francisco, we listen and hear your talk from the Sky World of one nation joined together under one GOD in the sky...with all good purpose we intend to share our trade and goodwill to live together here in the Middle World on the land we stand."
Chief Mowak nods over to one of his daughters, Cheewak who opens up a leather satchel and gives Father Franciscan a beautiful necklace with beads from the grasslands and blue and red shells from the sea. Father Francisco thanks them and promises to teach them the ways of the Christian GOD in the Sky. He further offers jobs of building missions of brick and stone from the earth and proclaims them as holy places of worship to the one true GOD in the sky.
Chief Mowak obliges with open arms and reminds the people of the land that he will have his oldest daughter, Feena whose spirit animal is the mountain lion, watch over the lands of his nation.
That afternoon, the nations join together at the floor of the valley near the river springs that flow through Eden. Each nation and their representatives dine together at Egir’s party and drink of his transformational elixir and anticipate sharing the land with each other and how best to survive and protect this lush garden that lies nestled along the nine sisters, marching toward the sea.