On the Value of Faith (1)
There came a point, when one poured drink after drink in the heat of revelry, where it became impossible to grasp what one was even doing. Even habitual drinkers were no exception. Nay, drunkards thrashed all the harder in their intoxication because they could never forget that sensation. Rnier was precisely that sort.
"Ugh... water... water...!"
A throbbing headache pounded in her skull. The familiar feel of her bedroom enveloped her, and with every breath came the stench of alcohol wafting from her gut, mingled with raging thirst. She looked every bit the wreck who had gotten thoroughly plastered the night before—even the neighborhood dogs would know it. She groped for the water pitcher by the bed and gulped it down greedily.
Then a voice spoke.
"Awake at last?"
"Huh? Father?"
Rnier blinked her puffy eyes at Guildmaster Colvin Pterin. Years of experience told her that he only appeared like this when she'd caused some drunken mishap. She rubbed her eyes, trying to recall the previous evening.
What was it? I didn't do anything wrong, did I?
She'd just drunk like any other night. There had been a pretty little girl, so she'd put her to work serving drinks, and the child had been so cheerful it was the most enjoyable tavern gathering in ages.
Come to think of it, I never asked whose daughter she was. What was I thinking?
Rnier asked, "Father, do you happen to know who that girl I was playing with last night was? She was so pretty, you'd surely remember—"
"You damned wretch! You wretch!!!"
Smack!
"Kyaa! Daddy!"
Colvin could hold back no longer and walloped Rnier across the back. The sight of squat, stocky Colvin thrashing his tall, skinny daughter was as heartwarming as any farmer's family.
"I can't live because of you! I can't go on!"
"Daddy! It hurts! It huuuurts!!!"
Rnier felt utterly wronged, beaten while hungover and without even hearing why. Of course, that lasted only until she heard the reason.
"Lord Astirnus's liege?"
"Yes! Do you even grasp what you've done now...?"
"Her?"
"Still haven't sobered up, have you? Fine, let's see someone die today!"
Smack!
"Kyaaaa!!!"
Rnier's screams echoed long through her room.
The temporary lodging procured from the Pterin Guild was immaculate. It was a sunlit second-floor mansion on the main avenue, furnished with pieces the merchant guild had reclaimed from an auction lot. Needless to say, it wasn't the sort of place handed out willy-nilly. The temple might demand it as an extension of their vow of relief, but this was purely the guildmaster's courtesy... nay, closer to atonement.
The moment Lenoir Astirnus entered, he saw Sara gaping in astonishment as she ran her finger along the floor.
"Gasp! My lord! No dust on the floor at all!"
"It seems they just cleaned it."
"No cobwebs on the ceiling! No water stains on the windows!"
Her wide-eyed excitement was endlessly cheerful. Given where she'd lived, it was understandable, but Lenoir worried all the same. For one who would stand at the pinnacle of a church, she showed precious little dignity or refinement.
"This is your home from now on, so grow accustomed to it. Admiration is fine, but do not express it so excessively. And it is past time you rose from the floor."
Lenoir lifted Sara Lorojin by the scruff of her neck. She replied,
"How can you not bat an eye at a place like this, my lord...!"
"You shall soon be the same. Experience accumulates and erects pillars within the soul. Amazement is no different. No matter how stunned you are inside, the day comes when it does not show upon your face."
"So you were surprised, my lord?"
"Gratitude comes closer. Even after I impressed upon him that you bore equal responsibility for my liege's daughter's deeds, he granted us this house—a clear act of his goodwill."
At the mention of the tavern, Sara grinned sheepishly.
"Hehe, I won't follow strangers anymore!"
"That is not all. Levity in dealing with others is forbidden. Can you even imagine the shock your appearance gave him? My sighs have already piled to the heavens. A goddess pouring drinks and fawning like some sycophant—does it not strike you as utterly bizarre?"
"But it was gold coins...!"
Sara rummaged out her coin pouch and spilled it open. Amid the silver gleamed a few gold pieces.
"Money I earned pouring drinks! If I share it with others, you'll praise me, right?"
"...I shall not rank the professions of mortals, but I must make clear that you earning coin by pouring drinks is not proper. Above all, little Sara, you must never say such things outside."
"What things?"
"That you earned money pouring drinks—it leaves room for misunderstanding. Especially for a child not yet fully grown like you."
Sara tilted her head. In her world, "pouring drinks for pay (no backroom extras)" had been the most upright job imaginable. Lenoir swallowed another sigh.
"...We must find you a tutor in refinement at once."
The road ahead was long—longer than he had imagined.
We must establish the church. With that resolve, Lenoir outlined the essentials as three.
"First, a god is needed. That is you, little Sara."
"Yessir! Little Sara reporting for duty!"
"Next, believers. A teaching no one believes is but an echo that cannot prove its truth, for all its existence."
"Got it! Believers!"
"Finally, a space to unite them. That is the temple."
"We're building one?"
"Indeed. Of the church's necessities, we lack only believers."
Sara tilted her head.
"But what about doctrines? Don't churches have all those 'do this' and 'don't do that' rules?"
"That is the most useful question you have asked these past days."
"Ack, did I do good!?"
She sneaked her head under his hand. Sara had learned to earn praise without coin.
Lenoir rested his palm on her round skull and continued.
"Doctrines are mere accessories. A god is already a complete world by her mere existence."
"Hehe... too hard!"
"You know a stone is a stone. But could you explain why it is a stone?"
"Uh..."
"Precisely. A god is a god, needing no further explanation. Yet mortals, perceiving the divine, cannot define it. Being the sort who must persuade others of their reverence, they have no choice but to whisper of the god's greatness through doctrines."
"Hm, I don't get it all, but it sounds pretty necessary just hearing it."
"Worthless. Doctrines are like wrapping paper for their object."
Sara merely blinked. When his hand paused, she rubbed her head against his palm with a scritch-scratch. Her focus was waning.
Lenoir admitted his phrasing was too complex for her. He simplified, repeating a vow he had made many times while living with her.
"Suppose there is a verse: 'The god took pity on hunger and bestowed grace.'"
"Yup!"
"The poor interpret it as daily bread granted. Merchants as fortune in coin, scholars as intellectual triumph."
"Oh, yeah?"
"That is what I mean by wrapping. Authority ever takes the same form, yet twists endlessly by individual."
Sara's eyes blinked innocently. Especially for the Authority of Immaculate Fate, that tendency was pronounced. The goddess Lenoir had served wielded causality—from creation's cause to effect—and thus her miracles shifted form to fit the situation. Though it was one power, even in his era, ways to praise her varied wildly. Some insisted scattering fertilizer on fields as prayer; others, intoning over library tomes before honing scholarship. All interpretations of properly revering her miracles. In the end, it was whatever suited.
"...So we can just make something vague?"
"As long as it stays within bounds, make it as general as possible. So they may prove their faith in daily life, each in their way."
"Hmm... Then why need a temple? Isn't that accessory too?"
"Mortals swiftly forget faith's value amid time's flow. Periodic communal praise breathes life into their fading belief. Seeing others like me who believe, they gain conviction in their own."
A sort of faithful prescription. Simpler, surer to solidify belief—thus temples were indispensable. At any rate, back to essentials.
"There is a demigod in you, and a temple shall rise to serve you. But no believers yet."
"Right!"
"Thus tomorrow, we venture forth to gather them."
Sara's eyes sparkled with resolve, resolute in that moment.
"I get it! Round up nobles to prove our church exists! Show off your awesome authority too!"
"As if. And what is this uncouth 'awesome'? Say 'wondrous' instead."
"Won-drous... Anyway, nobles, right?"
"We go to the slums."
"There first?"
"The easy tasks come first."
More precisely, the high-value ones.
"Know you this? Those deeming themselves wise demand proof for faith. They crave satisfaction in touching truths others cannot."
"Then shouldn't we show our awesome—er, wondrous—selves to them first?"
"Wrong. They fill that craving not with blank-slate novelty, but by denying the existing."
"...Nasty personalities."
"Precisely. That is pride's essence."
So one must give them something to deny.
"The poor sell faith for a loaf of bread. They care not whose it is. If it fills their bellies, truth matters little."
"Hmm..."
"Little Sara, recall the Orin Church that fed you rations. With prayers and faith sold for bread by your slums, they amassed belief, refined it to divinity, and beguiled the proud."
"...Oh."
"The framework differs not."
Divinity: faith etched in souls, gathered and forged to power. In souls of rank, it refines accumulated belief to grace. Thus in modern times, they gathered faith for spirits, forged it to divinity, and called it proof of gods. With spirit divinity enabling so much, even proud nobles oft believed—though differently. Denying the ignorant masses' doctrines, redefining true faith. They strive in piety to deem their way superior. Absurd, yet worship all the same.
Anyhow, Sara already held rank by existence. Slum faith alone would skip deification, granting authority outright. First, bestow bread to buy belief. Once that faith became divinity, then approach nobles.
"...So, we're going to buy bread?"
Sara, quick on uptake but poor with words, summed it up.
Lenoir sighed.
"Yes."
"Miss Selbes said there's cream bread at the big alley bakery...!"
"Very well, let us procure that too."
"Yay!"
Lenoir thought it fortunate she was so sunny.