Welcome to Gaia! ::

Zekiel invited near everyone he met to come visit him in Pajore’s temple. It didn’t make any offer less sincere. He thought it a beautiful place—and he certainly loved visits as well. His service to the Sanctum involved travel about Yael at times of course, but the Sanctum was still where he returned always, when all was said and done, and the days that someone he encountered on his travels came to share company even for a short while? Those were always especially good days.

Before he received word of any such visitation on this day, Zekiel had been up to a task he frequented as of late: reading to a small ‘classroom’ of youngling initiates within the temple. They were not old enough yet to attend formal classes or had exhibited ‘issues’ dealing with their classmates in such an environment, and had thus been selected for a smaller, more individual session of early instruction in faith and their role to come. Mostly, he read from small sections of selected scripture and spoke of the gods in conversation at levels the children could engage in.

It helped him concentrate in his reading to have a young audience, and it helped them to have the attention, so such gatherings were not infrequent. Fortunately, the timing on this day was apt, and he couldn’t have requested for better.

Just as he had finished a lesson, closing away his reading material for the day and instructing them — with some hands on aid — in gathering their own things together, a tap came at the varnished threshold of the room they’d taken to. In the doorway, a prentice stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Cleric Zekiel?”

“I am.”

“There’s a young woman…” The boy hesitated, looking uncertain for a moment. Zekiel waited, glancing down only a moment when one of his previous understudies tugged at his coat cuff. After tending to that, he glanced back up, but just as he opened his mouth to inquire, the boy spoke up again. “It isn’t…entirely clear whether or not she was actually asking for you or not. She looked curious, but a bit lost, and I asked if I could help—she said your name, but then apologized and insisted she wasn’t to be a bother among other-”

“Oh! Where is she?” Ze asked. “Has she come to visit?”

“She—the courtyard, near the gates of the outer Sanctum. Were you expecting…?”

Whatever the end to that sentence, the boy appeared to give up midway, as Zekiel — content that the children previously under his care were filing out and understood where they were headed next — was already on his way out the door with a ‘thank you’ and headed down the hall. Zekiel couldn’t have been sure who to expect without any further explanations, but it felt like a good day for a visit of some stripe, and when he spotted Malta, bundled and looking as uncertain and unmistakable as ever, he felt his instinct was confirmed.

Beaming, he wasted no time in closing in to catch her in a hug of greeting, sparing no energy, except that which it took not to barrel her over. “Malta! The day is made more wondrous with you in it,” he said, leaning back to survey her. “Might I help you with anything?”

“Oh, well wondrous then! I am happy to see you also. How have you fared since I last was with you? Have you learned more of Toko? Is he well? Still with you? And the other beasts?”

Malta’s life, from what glimpses of it Zekiel had seen, was a complicated engagement involving a great many creatures—some familiar, others far less so, but regardless fascinating all around. He presumed her to know infinitely more about them than he did, certainly, and it seemed inevitable to conclude that with that much going on, so many living beasts sharing space, there were likely to be stories to fill the interim.

Even his own life—quieter, and typically with less pungent smells involved save for those occasions he got to travel out of town—had stories from time to time, after all.

And Toko was of particular interest. Zekiel had named him, for one, but he and Malta had also ‘found’ the beast together, in a sense, and if he was in fact a beast from the far shore now residing on their island, that was a point of excitement all its own. Admittedly, though, he wasn’t perfectly clear on how long beasts stayed with Malta and the woman she purportedly lived with (whom Zekiel had not yet had occasion to meet), and what purpose they served while they were there, whether that be training, maintaining, sale or butchery.

Clearly he had hit on a pleasing topic so far as Malta was concerned, and this in turn, pleased Zekiel immensely. He listened with rapt intent and genuine curiosity as she spoke about the new strange beast in her barn. Though, Zekiel supposed, he oughtn’t consider the beast a stranger any longer. That particular one at least had a name, and was now part of Malta’s animal family.

A flying part. Or ‘gliding.’

It sounded incredibly intriguing regardless, and he shook his head in answer to the initial question. “I didn’t!” he admitted. “Know he might glide, that is. It is good he has the space there if it pleases him to.” He tipped his head then, listening and imagining new infant beasts bestowing the young woman before him with kisses. His expression mirrored her smile instinctively, and he didn’t think he could imagine much better all around. “I met with a man from the jungles here,” he said when she spoke of Detraeus. “He brought with him a janarim also. Teymaw, he named him, and he was great, strong, and beautiful. I should like to meet Detraeus…if it pleases him to have visitors.”

A limbara, Zekiel had never yet seen up close, though he knew of course that they were actual natives to the land, and therefore it perhaps made more sense for him to see one than a foreign beast such as the janarim. But foreign beasts seemed to make their way here in one fashion or another regardless.

“Of course it is,” he finally answered, coming back to her last question and almost laughing as he said it—not at her, but because she seemed so hopefully and hesitantly happy. He wanted to encourage that. “It means perhaps I must come to see you again myself. I would love to see him glide. Don’t you think it would be wondrous to be able to do so? To watch must at least be almost so exciting since we have no wings of our own.”

“Mm.” Ze nodded, smiling. They were beautiful and dangerous beasts, for certain—and the creation of foreign gods, he was fairly sure, having migrated across with the people from the far shore in small trickles. It was ever interesting and strange to see the effect of the outside drip into Yael, from blonde and blue-eyed boys to fast, hungry creatures with bodies tailored for a more warlike land, to small, buggish gliders. “It’s alright if it wouldn’t please him to meet me yet,” Ze said. “I will imagine him from your description and it will be almost as wondrous until his temper eases if it does.”

He tipped his head then at her question, and beamed.

“It has been a good one!” he said. “I was in the east wing of the temple, with some of our youngest here when you arrived. We were reading and reviewing together some of the things they found difficult to concentrate on in larger classrooms…and then a prentice came who said he had met you, and that you were about asking for me, and the day became more wondrous still. Has yours been good? What brings you to the city?”

“I would love to meet with him on that day,” Zekiel said, smiling. “And I think that they were, though they do not all enjoy to study in the same…ways.” Some put in his care were more attentive than others, but because they were very young and learned differently, he did not concern himself so long as they maintained peace amongst themselves while there. If it interested them to listen, then they would, and if not, well, perhaps next time. “Lasla becomes particularly nervous when there are many others about her, so she much prefers it.”

He glanced to her, though, the barest pinch of confusion crossing his expression at the word ‘master.’

“Who is your master? She must enjoy your company, to have wanted you here with her. I am glad though that you had a moment to visit! It is no inconvenience, and I think it would be wondrous to see you any time it please you. But,” he added, “if you do know much beforehand that you will be coming in the future, you might tell me so that we could plan—there is much to see in the city, have you been before? Oh, but, while you are here…shall I show you the church? Morning service has ended by now I should think, so we would see it empty and be free to look. Or the gardens. Acolyte Fallon tends to them with Miss Keai and others here, and some of the sheltered flowers bloom even in winter.”

He didn’t know how long she had available to stay for, but however much there was, he would make the most of that.

“Lasla is one of the younglings,” Zekiel explained, smiling. It wasn’t infrequent that people repeated the names he used with confusion, unfamiliar with them themselves—in fact, it was quite frequent. Zekiel referred to most everyone he knew by name by name, regardless of whether or not the person he was speaking to knew it. It was still their name, after all, and in this way, whoever he was with could learn of them. To whatever degree this caused confusion, Zekiel didn’t notice. “She has grown almost the width of two fingers since I first saw her,” he said, a spring to the words evident in his excitement.

He wasn’t certain what to make of the middle of it. It was difficult to imagine someone who wouldn’t want Malta’s company, but even if it were true, it at least allowed them this time together, which was wondrous in itself. So, he focussed on the latter portion, eyes warm with their glow as he gave an encouraging nock of his head to indicate the direction before stepping to guide the way.

“Like all those chosen, I was very young when I was first brought before the Sanctum, and among all those young, I was the youngest in my selection,” Zekiel said as they walked. “Some grow up here in the capitol, like Warrek, and they know of what to expect, but I had never been—I had seen only fishing huts and our small village, and by the time I was brought personally to it from Marleya’s home, night had come.” He pointed over the arched peaks of the cathedral’s roofing to the sky above. “The moon was great and white in the sky, and I was taken before the front steps. Sister Mortrem was then twice again my height, and I had thought her a tall and stern woman until I looked upon the church and could not finish looking because there was too much of it to see at once even in all directions. The door, I thought, was larger than Jevan’s hut, and I had not imagined something so large could be built with our hands. I thought that it took so much work to craft just a net or a skiff, it must have been the gods’ aid which allowed such a thing to be.”

Who is Jevan?

In spite of himself, Zekiel flushed, and took the easier question first. “A skiff is a boat,” he said. “They are shallow and flat at their bottom. They are often used to fish, and can be taken to rivers or the sea, if the weather is gentle enough. But not far, as they are small.”

As they made it to the entrance and in, he debated a moment as to how to answer the latter question, before continuing.

“Jevan,” he said, quieter now that they were inside, though — as expected — the hall was mostly empty, service having recently ended and most all having left for lunch or other obligations, “…is the man who sired me. I shared his hut when I was very young, after the gods took my mother and until the Sanctum took me. Many of the homes in our village were small, but Jevan’s was the smallest.”

The service hall for Pajore’s church was the largest on Yael. Though separate in practice from the Sanctum itself — the church being open to the public and the Sanctum private only to those chosen — it was built in conjunction with the Sanctum’s structure and architecture, and designed as one might expect a building meaning to represent the mortal connecting point with the divine. The pews were polished varnish, cleaned every day as ritually as everything else, etched with design and lined by the long carpet down the middle and arrangement of statues in their deities’ likeness and the symbol of faith in prominent display between tall windows.

“I had not seen him in many years until recently.”