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“Oh, she has been blessed with child!” Zekiel beamed as he said it, nary a flinch or pause in his observation as he held the stare of miss Bartha Mardred, mother to the young and rapidly paling girl — her daughter — at her side. Quite the opposite of her child, Bartha’s face seemed to gain quick and dark color in the moments after Zekiel’s assertion.

“That’s not possible.” Bartha’s tone was stiff and clipped. Where a moment ago she had come in concerned for her child’s health, now — when Zekiel might have expected her to be relieved that the girl was not ill — she seemed all the more displeased, if in a less concerned and more coolly enraged fashion.

Zekiel blinked. He opened his mouth—the girl, though, miss Isha who couldn’t have been but fifteen or sixteen summers old, was rapidly shaking her head, tugging at her mother’s sleeve and beginning to babble.

“Let’s—let’s—Mother, please, if we could leave-”

“It’s not possible,” Bartha snapped, turning a dark look on her child for just long enough to freeze over anything Isha might have had to say before turning her attention back to Zekiel. “There must be some cleansing or ritual—she has been sick with fear after the disappearances-”

“It is a wondrous thing, to be chosen by the gods to carry a child,” he said chipperly, “and I am happy to cleanse her for sickness and give Dafiel’s protection, but the gods have me meeting with a dear friend of mine, sir Tacrith, of Pajore. He is a physician, and I think she would do well to meet with him and adjudge the progression of the bab—”

“There is no-”

“Mother, please-”

Both women’s words stilled as Zekiel took the mother’s hands in his, one in each with a contented hum, and then shut his eyes as he began to recite a prayer. It, if nothing else, stalled any immediate further objections in lieu of the bewilderment that replaced them.

A shuffling caught Zekiel’s attention, and he glanced. There, a temple attendant hesitated. She opened her mouth. He glanced—and before a word left her mouth, he beamed.

“Tacrith!”

The mother and daughter in his company looked perhaps equally distressed, if for presumably wholly different reasons. Before either could comment, however, he caught each of their hands and lead both — with only minimal resistance, but likely borne only of respect for his station rather than out of any actual eagerness to follow — towards his friend.

“Madam Bartha Mardred and her daughter come here today blessed,” he said. “And especially so, to be fortunate enough to arrive in time with you. Tacrith, ma’am Mardred’s daughter needs a diagnosis-”

“N-no, I only—i-it’s really not necessary-”

“She has engaged in a ritual of passion with one of the local boys and must know if it has borne fruit.” Zekiel wasn’t actually certain if he’d ever seen a girl grow more pink than this one now. It was quite a sight, all things considered.

The girl looked deeply abashed, anxious, uncertain-

“Oh, I was only testing her,” Zekiel said cheerily. The girl did not look so pleased. “Though I do believe it is so, you needn’t be frightened. The gods have blessed you. If you are not interested in meeting with Tacrith at this time you are welcome to return at a later date for guidance, but forgive me as I did intend to meet with him this afternoon and as he has come no trifling distance to visit with me I do owe my time regardless.”

A look was shared between the pair, after which both departed, each with a posture that suggested there was much to be said between the two of them once they had made it away from public eyes and ears. As they took their leave and disappeared between the church doors, Zekiel turned his attention with nary a dip in his smile onto Tacrith.

“It is wondrous to see you, Tacrith. I hope your leg did not give you too much trouble on the journey? Next I shall have to do the part of traveling.”

“Someone would need to tell her,” Zekiel said, as if in defense of the unvoiced but evident disapproval Tacrith had for his methods—though his smile never dipped.

“I am glad it is not straining you greatly. I would show you around, but…” He eyed his friend’s leg. “Well, perhaps I best just tell you.” Moving over, he sat at the bench to Tacrith’s side. “It is lovely here. Working with the mother priestesses has been a lesson every day, and there is never a shortage to be done. Particularly after…”

The events in Pajore’s square had shaken everyone present, certainly, but the reverberating ripple effect of fear had affected all of Yael’s people, so far as Zekiel had seen. His smile was softer and more weighted with the months of faces he’d seen in the time between, all seeking blessing, salvation, protection—something to help them feel secure in turbulent times. Assured that their gods were looking over them despite all.

“Well,” he said. “Much has happened and the people are…invigorated. Have there been…more injuries or illnesses than is typical?”

“I am glad there are not more actual demons actively upon us for the moment, then,” Zekiel said, his lip curving up at the corner for the ‘blessing’, though after having seen the black creatures swallow one of their own before his eyes it would be madness to deny their existence. He just was not sure what the gods purpose was for them yet. Or what great sin they had committed to earn such a trial.

It would be revealed in time, he trusted. Or not, if the gods didn’t so intend.

“I am well,” he said. “I think I am spending all my days as I should be, speaking with the people from morning until night and giving consul or aid where I can. I think…the greatest trial put before me by the gods now is understanding that sometimes all I can give is consul when it is not in my power to fix more than that. Sometimes I might think myself more useful if I had your skill for mending, but…I know it is not a talent or a task the gods granted me, so I am doing what I may.”

Zekiel glanced to his friend, watching as Tacrith spoke of the balance in their roles, and by the end of it, his eyes were warm, a certain easiness relaxing through the set of his shoulders. Though he was very accustomed to Tacrith’s beliefs by now — or lack thereof as the case may be — it was still refreshing and especially unique and encouraging to hear such things from him, professing, if not faith in their gods, at least an appreciation for the worth of his work.

Though he understood well as anyone that the power to change fate was never in his or anyone’s hands but the gods and he did not expect ever to feel control, it was an enlightening and strange sort of helplessness that he had felt watching one of his brothers be taken into what was difficult to describe as anything other than some unholy abyss.

But what Tacrith said was true, and between their practices, they would do whatever they could—even if that would never be everything. “Yes,” he agreed. “There are many paths to walk in life and we each take our own…and though ours are different we work towards a similar end. I believe the gods have put us here to help. And they must think us capable of great wonders, given what is put before us.”

At Tacrith’s huff, Zekiel felt the bubble up of laughter, and saw no reason to stop it. “They are unpredictable…”

A certain curiosity edged his attention as he eyed his friend then, and after a moment, he asked, “What do you believe? Not in gods...but in what? When you have children, what will you teach them happens to life when it passes from this world?”

Though he had been friends with Tacrith for many years, he didn’t think he had actually asked what the other man believed—Tac had been so busy insisting upon what he didn’t, it had somehow never come up. Yet, now in a time of tested faith, it was a question pushed more to the forefront.

“I think…” Zekiel said after a long moment’s contemplation on what had been shared, “I also believe much of that. It is not taught in those words in the scripture, but there is a unity of life in its harmony from each to the next that we all share in while here, and that by coming together as family and making the generations to come, we choose the makings of creation which pass forward.”

To Zekiel, it was evident that the world ran on a combination of powers, and he personally understood the gods as being a driver of much, guiding the currents of lifeforce. But if one removed from the equation the element of gods, Tacrith still seemed to believe in what came after—the congregation and interwovenness of all that was and would be at least insofar as each life had in some portion an enduring essence. To agree on the outcome and much of the central idea without precisely lining up on the Story of Beginning was a closer alignment of beliefs than he’d thought they had.

“You haven’t rambled,” Zekiel said. “I would always wish to hear all the words you have to share.”