Devotion

With Flowerbirth and the melting of the snow, the roads opened up and more remote regions once again became accessible. Maea had few personal traditions that did not align with those of everyone else in the Hollowed Grounds, but paying a visit to the Oasis for the first swim of the year and paying her respects at the shrine was one of them. With the colorless hair still damp from the cold dip and a bag slung over a shoulder she approached the nature shrine with reverence. Bowing low before it, the girl set her things aside and began to clear away debris from the area, carrying off branches and stray rocks with her hands; never using the magic she was born with, so as not to cause offense.

"Hail Caido, creator" she mumbled while replacing the old, nearly burned out candles with new ones. "Hail Vie, Rae, Mort, keepers of the world. I greet thee, Ludo, Safrin, Frey. Hear my prayer, and hold Your hands over us. Another year has passed, a new one has begun, and I have come again to pledge my loyalty and pay due respect."

Lighting the candles, Maea brought out offerings she had carried along from home; spring flowers, a loaf of bread, some seeds and other things that represented the season and each deity. Lastly, she put a lantern åt the center of the altar and knealt before it, eyes distant and thoughts free to roam.

"My brother has passed, along with his wife and children. They did not make it through the Long Night, and I was not there with them. I... still don't feel like it's real. Every day I wake up and expect to hear their voices echo through the house, but each morning all I hear is the wind and the rain and bleating sheep. Before, I thought I knew what it was like to be alone, but... I had no idea. Now I know, and it pains me that my family had to die to teach me how blessed I really was."

Here, with only the wind and the forest to hear, she was able to give words to all the grief and troubles. If the gods indeed listened it was not likely a cheerful thing to hear, but Maea had been taught to always be truthful in front of a shrine, so she did not pretend that she was anything but sad and lost and lonely. In this season of hot and rebirth, it was so hard to grieve...

"But good things have happened too. I found friends, I think, and a guild I wish to join. They gather the lore and legends of this world, and have been very kind to me. I will search for a way to cure my sight with them, and maybe, if you will it, a way out of the barrier. I want to change myself when I am with them, become stronger and braver... I ask you, Highest, give me a sign if this is the right course to take. I am your servant, if you would accept me..."

For a moment Maea paused, the sound of her voice fading into silence... and waited. For a sign. A presence. Anything at all,

Birdsong and the choir of life in progress rose into a crescendo of chirps and the whistle of wind through the trees. The air around the abandoned grew warm and pleasantly perfumed as it drifted and wafted.

But for all her kind words, the shrine remained empty. Was it because the gods were merely busy after a horrified LongNight? Were they tending to the dead, and beginning the process of starting life anew?

Or were they intentionally absent, leaving the abandoned to find her own way in the world?

It was impossible to know.