Today's the day.  Today is your eighteenth birthday: your formal coming of age.  Desired or dreaded, sought or fought, it is here.<br/><br/>For weeks, preparations have been underway for the celebration Mother is throwing on behalf of her four younger children.  The party is expected to last for at least a week, with all the logistical nightmares that usually accompany such matters!  And there have been rumors, only in whispers, that there is also another ceremony involved, one not seen since Prince Adnan and Princess Aysel turned eighteen, many years ago.<br/><br/>Your older siblings have not only returned to the palace from their current projects across the Empire, but have been much in evidence.  For Darius and Adnan, this is not at all surprising: socializing is what they do.  For Indira, it is unusual. For Aysel...it's astoundingly out of character.  None of them have had much time for you, but when one of you has attracted their attention for a few moments, they all seem proud and pleased.<br/><br/>Today you are all awakened early.  A small and private breakfast is served.  After that, your daily ablutions are accompanied by tittering and exciteable servants, who wash and groom you thoroughly and dress you in formal robes that arrived earlier this week...specially tailored, resplendent with your personal symbols and colors.  After that, you are summoned to an audience chamber just outside the Great Courtyard...where Mother waits alongside Adnan.<br/><br/>You've seen her look this majestic, this beautiful...but not very often.  She smiles beautifically at each of you, offering maternal hugs as she names you.<br/><br/>"Jacob, my dearest!  Inanna, sweetling!  Danesh...dear boy.  And Zephyr.  It is nearly time.  Adnan will talk you through your part.  For now, I must go preside over the beginning of the ceremonies."<br/><br/>One last smile at Jacob, and she glides out to join her attendants for the beginning procession out to the waiting crowds.  Outside, you can hear the roar of the crowd growing louder as they cheer their beloved Empress.<br/><br/>Adnan grins at you, an easy and confident look.  His robes are as new as yours, but more subdued: you are the center of attention, today.  You and Mother, that is.<br/><br/>"You've heard rumors, of course.  About some secret ceremony, am I right?"<br/><br/>His grin widens, his eyes twinkle.<br/><br/>"They're all<em>true</em>.  Come along.  I'll explain as we go."<br/><br/>He leads you deeper into the palace, past heavily guarded doors to a heavy reinforced portal you've never seen before.<br/><br/>"You know, naturally, that we are royalty.  You also know, having heard it all your lives, that we are partly divine.  The Lion of Heaven favors us so much that he fathered our line in the misty past...<em>if</em>you believe the tales.  What you are about to see is something wonderful...something which is ours and ours alone."<br/><br/>He produces a key from his robes and unlocks the last door, revealing a short corridor and then a stairway spiralling down into darkness.  From somewhere below, you catch some warm and golden glow as if from some fire left untended.  Still leading, Adnan's voice grows both softer and more reverent as you descend.<br/><br/>"Here are your instructions.  On the floor of the cave at the bottom of these stairs, there is a glowing pattern like a great labyrinth set in the living rock.  You are to set foot on it and walk from start to finish.  Do not stop.  Do not step off of the glowing lines.  Do<em>not</em>bleed upon it...this is sacred ground, the very pawprint of the Lion of Heaven.  When you reach the center, which I have no doubt you can all do, rest for a few minutes.  Then imagine yourselves in the Great Circle mosaic in the front courtyard.  Do you understand these instructions?"<br/><br/>As he asks the final question, you come around the last bend in the stairway and see it: the crimson-golden glow has a source, and it is as he says!<br/><br/>"The Lion's Foot is before you, my brothers, my sister.  This is your birthright.  Go and walk."<br/><br/>