The Faithful

Writing prompt from Writing Excuses – Season 01 Episode 27 – World Building: Religion

Develop a religion where people worship something that no one would ever worship in our world. And it can’t be silly.

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The sharp crack of breaking clay against the stones still echoed in the suddenly silent workshop.

Mitra stood limply, her hands trembling, tears welling as she saw the shards of her totem spread around her. She fell to her knees as a gut wrenching sob ripped out of her. The other acolytes stared in horror at her, none daring to break the sepulchral silence. She felt their eyes on her, their sadness and despair washed over her like a tangible wave.

As the moment stretched on, Mitra barely noticed them as they gathered around her and began to pray. Their words were meaningless to her now. Her life was over. The tears finally fell, but she forced herself not to make a sound. She would end her life with dignity. She would not interrupt the mourners as they said goodbye to their friend.

She felt gentle hands on her shoulders and knew that they belonged to master Corvus. He gathered her in his robes and guided her to her feet. Mitra stood slowly, not wanting to end her life, but knowing that she had to. It was the way of the world.

Mitra had been careless. Mitra had been stupid.

Mitra was dead.

The Master led her out of the workshop and towards the Forge. She closed her eyes and didn’t look back once, as much as it pained her. She would never see Romi and Pollu, her friends since childhood, again. The nights they had spent sequestered in prayers and contemplation after being scolded for sneaking out of their dormitories. Bathing in the warm sea that beckoned them away from their studies. Gossiping about boys and other acolytes whom they might pair with at the time of Choosing.

Her parents would be devastated. They had already lost her brother the year before. Samun had been running errands for the Masters. He’d been ambushed by highwaymen and they had taken his totem from him. It would have been a greater kindness to kill him themselves. Her brother’s soul had been lost and had been unable to return to the Lord.

The climb took the better part of the afternoon, master Corvus kept an even pace throughout, walking ahead of her, never looking back. She was dead. He was escorting her spirit and so he recited a steady litany of prayers that guided her way.

Even in death, she was clumsy. She tumbled to the ground more than once, her eyes closed as they should be. Still, it was strange to still feel the pain in her scraped elbows and knees while she was dead. She would have thought that pain would have disappeared. Each time she got up without complaint, though. Dead people don’t speak. If they pretended to be alive, then they were truly damned.

Nobody could live without a totem.

Eventually the gradual climb became more difficult, and she had to struggle to keep up with the Master’s fading voice. If she lagged behind, or if she became lost, her soul would wander the world outside of the Lord’s grace, and she would never be reborn into the land of the living again.

Mitra thought about opening her eyes.

Just once.

A peek would give her an idea of where she should be heading, help her reach her salvation. She almost opened them when she tripped again and bit her tongue. She let out a soft, muffled cry, the tears flowing freely as she tasted blood in her mouth.

Just a quick glance. Just a peek.

She felt iron bands of despair wrapping around her chest. She did not want to be damned. She did not want to lose her way, but she could only hear the Master’s prayers faintly.

Just one look.

She felt her eyes opening, and just as a ray of light blinded her she forced her eyelids shut as hard as she could.

No.

She was better than this. She was strong. She was named for one of the Lord’s wives. Mitra the faithful. Her mother and father had inscribed it into her totem when they placed the clay into her small hands as a baby. She would be faithful to the Lord.

She forced herself to her feet and concentrated on figuring out the direction from where the faint prayers could be heard. She strode purposefully towards it, clearly straying off the path, holding her hands in front of her, feeling leaves and branches catch on her clothes, stumbling, but still moving forward.

A stone turned underneath her foot and she crashed to the ground again, but just as quickly, ignoring the pain that shot up her ankle, she ambled towards the voice, which was growing louder with every step.

She fell dozens of times during her blind dash, ran into several trees that only her outstretched hands protected her from. She could feel cuts and scrapes across her limbs and face, and the warmth of blood across a gash on her neck, but she kept going. The ground kept getting steeper, the air colder. Master Corvus’ voice was so close now that she was sure she would run into him at any moment.

With a jarring crash she pitched forward as she ran into a stone with her knee. The breath was knocked out of her as she slid across the ground, but when she stopped, she couldn’t help but smile. Her hand was resting on a soft robe, and master Corvus’ warm voice seemed to take on a happier tone. The words were the same, but she was sure there was relief in them.

She got up carefully, wincing when she put her weight on her injured knee, but still did not make a sound. The prayers changed from guiding her to the Forge to a hymn about acceptance and rebirth. She’d done it. She’d navigated the way to the Lord’s shrine and now stood at his Forge, the place where he breathed life into clay and bound her immortal spirit to the living world.

Mitra was still crying, even though she was proud of what she’d done. The mad dash following the Master had briefly distracted her from the fact that her life had ended. She wasn’t ready to let go, but had come so far. It would be sacrilegious to turn back once she was standing before the entrance to His domain.

Once again, she felt a gentle touch on her shoulders and she stifled her tears as best she could, squared her shoulders, and let herself be guided into the Forge.

Mitra felt the heat as soon as they began to descend. The sweat from her run and her tears dried instantly and her throat felt parched as she was led into the mountain. Even closed, her eyes stung. After a dozen paces, Master Corvus stopped her and placed a heavy bowl in her hands, then continued to lead her towards the inner sanctum of the Lord’s shrine.

Every echoing step brought greater heat, and Mitra was glad that she hadn’t lost her sandals, frayed as they were. She was sure that the stone they walked upon would scald the soles of her feet if they came in contact with it.

An unpleasant smell began to waft from where they were heading, and she was attacked by dizziness that almost made her drop the bowl, but the reassuring hands on her shoulders gripped her in place until she recovered enough composure to walk straight.

After a while, the echoes subsided and she felt as if a great void had opened around them. They had arrived. The heat was still intense, but from somewhere around her, she heard running water. Also a subtle roar that seemed to come from everywhere at once. She realized that she’d been hearing it for a while, it had just seeped into their surrounding so slowly that until she’d thought about it, she hadn’t picked out what it was.

“You have arrived, child of Grewar.” The Master’s voice was startling, following the silent descent into the shrine.

Mitra couldn’t have spoken even if it had been allowed. Her throat was so dry that she had trouble swallowing. She knelt, feeling a flare of pain at first on her knees, but then a kind of soothing pulsing coursing through her. It was coming from the stone, she knew.

The Lord Grewar’s heartbeat…

She was awed as she realized that she was inside his body, surrounded by his power.

She felt something be poured into the bowl, and she did her best to hold it steady and not spill any of whatever it was. When the pouring stopped, she could smell the musty and earthy aroma of clay.

“You must be reborn, and purged in the heart of the Lord, in order to be remade anew.”

Mitra understood, now. This is how she was able to live again. Her soul, unbound, would roam about aimlessly through the world unless she created a new totem to house it. But the making of each totem was a miracle, a binding of spirit and the flesh of the Lord. Each totem was unique, and could not be remade, so her old totem would return to the earth, return to once again be part of the Lord, and Mitra would cease to exist.

She had already died. She just had to make herself anew.

She placed the bowl down carefully and slid her hands into the soft and shifting mass. She felt the warmth of it through the palms of her hands, as it squeezed between her fingers. At that moment, even though she knew she was dead, she felt as alive as she ever had. She began to sculpt.

At first, it was mostly clumping together and pressing so it would fuse, but after she was satisfied with how the size and weight felt in her hands, she began to slowly trace a totem. She intentionally steered clear of anything that reminded her of her old one. This was a chance to remake herself. To become better than she had been.

Mitra had been a clumsy, frivolous girl. A girl too preoccupied with herself and what others thought. She’d been anxious and uncertain about many things. She let herself be led too often.

That weakness and lack of strength had been why she’d felt the need to constantly remind herself of the good things in her by touching her totem. Taking it out of the safeguarded pouch that hung next to her heart every time she was afraid.

You are brave

, the totem had said to her.

You are Mitra the faithful

. She could still remember how it felt in her hands at night, as she clutched it to ward off nightmares.

You are strong.

She’d never felt particularly strong, or brave, but having the figurine in her hand, feeling her name traced alongside it, had helped her on countless occasions when she would have given up.

Mitra was a clumsy, foolish girl

. She felt a stab of uncertainty, still there.

Mitra died.

Her fingers cramped in her smoothing of the clay. She felt tears well again, but the heat stopped them before they could spring forth.

The heat.

Mitra had died, that was true, but her spirit had managed to reach the Lord’s Forge. She’d fallen and gotten lost, but she had found her way again.

You are brave. You are strong. You are faithful.

Mitra heard the voice of her old totem in her thoughts. Perhaps she wasn’t dead. Perhaps no one ever really dies, if they’re strong enough.

She continued sculpting, the clay was hardening as the moisture was drawn away with each passing breath. She held on to the sense of self that still remained in her and did not think about what she was crafting. She let herself be guided by the feelings inside her, and finished her new totem.

She held it gingerly in both her palms and raised it in front of her face. She did not know how she knew she was allowed now, but she opened her eyes and gasped.

Cupped inside her clay stained hands was a fox.

Crude and somewhat disproportionate, still she recognized it for what it was.

Rasha

, she thought.

That is who I am

.

Without thinking about it, and never taking her eyes off her totem, she balanced it on her left hand and extended her right. Master Corvus placed a small obsidian dagger in her palm.

Swiftly, before the clay dried any further, she wrote her name on the side of the totem. Once she was done, she looked at it wonderingly. In the years to come, as she ascended the ranks of acolytes, she would return here and continue to refine it, but the essence of it, what tied her to the Lord, was ready to be Forged.

Master Corvus’ touch on her shoulder brought her out of her reverie. For the first time she took in where she was. The large caldera that made up the heart of Lord Grewar’s body had a roiling pit of molten fire hundreds of feet below them. They were perched on an outcropping that jutted out from the inner slopes of the volcano.

Clouds of steam rose all around them and from deep fissures on the walls. A shallow pool of water was made from an offshoot of a rushing stream they had stepped over at some point. It was from this pool that the clay was taken, she saw. The body of the Lord, fused with her spirit.

The final step, she knew instinctively, was to seal her totem under the watchful gaze of the Lord’s eye, hundreds of feet above them and faintly seen through the clouds of steam and smoke. She could see the stars in his eye. Night had fallen.

She got up slowly, her body stiff but sure in its movements, and headed to the rim of the outcropping, where an altar extended out over the pit of fire. As she placed her totem upon it gently, she felt searing heat and blisters form on her hand, but she did not snatch it away.

Mitra might have twisted and dropped her totem, but not Rasha.

Rasha gritted her teeth and withdrew her hand slowly. Looking around, she saw Master Corvus nod approvingly at her. He brought forth a heavy woolen cloth soaked in the same water from the spring, which she initially waved off, but he insisted with a smile. She wrapped it around her burned hand and immediately felt the pain recede. They continued to stand and watch as her totem hardened for what seemed like minutes, but were probably hours.

Rasha was thinking about Mitra.

The girl had died well. She had been brave and she had been strong. She had been faithful, to the end.

Once her totem was ready, she withdrew it from the Lord’s gaze and wrapped it in a pouch much like the one Mitra once had. Resha hung the pouch close to her heart, where it belonged, and followed the Master out of the shrine.

It was early morning. Dawn was breaking. Several figures rose from the ground once they exited. Mitra’s parents and her close friends were there, paying their respects as they returned the dead girl’s totem to the Lord through one of the steam vents around the entrance to the shrine.

Rasha walked up to them, smiled.

“Who died?”

Romi and Pollu looked at her, but kept their tongues still. Mitra’s father stepped close to her, gazing into her eyes.

“Our daughter, Mitra, was returned to the Lord.”

Rasha nodded. “Will you miss her?”

Tears shone in their eyes as she met each of their gazes in turn.

Romi spoke. “She is once more with the Lord, we are happy for her, and yet we will miss seeing her.”

Rasha nodded solemnly once more. “She sounds like a wonderful person. I’m sure that if she were here, she would want you to know how much she loved you.”

Mitra’s mother made a move as if to embrace her, but was stopped short by her husband’s arm and Master Corvus’ disapproving glare.

“As your daughter and friend Mitra has returned to the Lord, so have I come forth from Him. My name is Rasha.”

Mitra’s father closed his eyes and swallowed. When he opened them, his gaze was clear once more and he smiled at her.

“Rasha, welcome. We are very pleased to meet you.”

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