creature of habit
Felka


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#1
 
F E L K A


sensitive material: pregnancy

Darkness had brought a striking cold as a companion. Even within the confines of the Temple, Felka's breath showed as a plume as she whispered in the quiet. Her soft voice echoed dully against the cavernous stone walls of the shrine. She hoped fervently that the outlanders wouldn't hear her. A large group of them had appeared as if from nowhere, and while Felka was, of course, curious about the meaning, if there was one, of their arrival, she preferred to conduct this ritual in private.

Felka always came to the shrine on this day. It was the day her Mama's blood had spread across the beaten dirt floor of their hovel until it matched the boughs of the maple outside the door. Mama's tenth child had been her last child. They had waited to bury her until the babe could rest in her arms. It was also the day that Felka had learned the gods were dead. At least, inside the bubble they were. Maybe outside they were waiting to grant all the prayers that had built up at the edge of the barrier. Maybe one day someone would find a way through the dome, and the gods would shower enough blessings down to make up for all the bleeding Mama's, dying babes, and weeping fathers. Felka wondered if there could ever be enough blessings to ease the pain in her heart.

Still, Mama had loved the gods. She had begged Felka to pray for her, to pray for her son, to pray for the gods themselves even as the blood leaked from her cheeks. Felka supposed the worst that could happen was she had to wait until she found a way through the dome before the gods heard her prayers.

"...and so Rae helped to name the oak and the wolf, the willow and the deer, and all the other plants and animals of the world, even ones which do not live with us now. And they were glad, for they loved their names." Felka finished her whispered recital of the children's story and lapsed into silence. She would say a prayer, but every year she started with one of the stories her mother had used to teach her daughter to read and write. It was her way of remembering them, of honoring her mother when she had no one living to whisper the stories to. She had saved this one, of her favorite god, for the tenth anniversary of her mother's death. Things felt different this year. It was as if an expectant hush had fallen over the entire dome. The Outlander's arrival must be a portent of something. How could they not? Her father had raged that life had no meaning, but Felka knew that couldn't be true. There had to be a reason the gods had locked them in this cage. She had to believe that it was for protection, that there had been something outside that was worse than the starvation of those born within.

"Rae of the forest and field and all the rest, I have come to you again to ask you to remember my Mama and all her babies. There're too many others like them. I need to help the. Please." Felka always prayed to Rae. Vi had proved too impermeant, Mort too intractable. Caido must surely be important to bother with anyone so inconsequential as Felka. Nature contained death, yes, but it also held life. It was in the woods that Felka had found the bits of nourishment that allowed her to survive where her siblings died. All good things in her life had come from the forest in the end. Except for her Mama, and her Mama ahd brought her the gods.



Alistair Valentus
Monster Hunter

Age: 32 | Height: 6' 0 | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#2
Alistair had sat quietly...Not praying, not listening, just sitting. The silence eased him. Temples and shrines, while he held no specific faith to the gods...to any god really. Alistair believed, for better or worse man forged his own path. Everything they would become was carved from a series of choices.

Even still, one could not deny the solace temples provided. It was the solace Alistair craved. The days since arriving had not been kind...in fact it had been darker than any day he could remember. He found himself missing Northhaven and the ignorance he carried within it.

The sound of another entering caused him to peer through his dark curls. He watched the young woman quietly approach and begin to pray. He couldn't help but feel a bit intrusive, but made no motion to reveal himself. He allowed @Felka her peace and prayer.

"Do they listen?" He asked after a long beat, allowing her time to savor her prayer. "The gods you pray to...do they listen? Or is it a matter of faith. Faith, that your words...that someone out there is listening." His tone was soft, a smoky rasp but easy to listen to, as a man who held no intention to startle.
Meriel Iarralei


Age: 30 | Height: 5'6" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship:
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#3
M E R I E L


The temple was beautiful, an strange splash of color in an otherwise barren land. It had weathered the storm beyond its doors, standing strong where so much else seemed to have fallen. What had transpired could have happened centuries ago, and yet, if one didn't look too closely, stepping into the temple felt like stepping back in time. Back to before. Oh, what Meriel wouldn't give to go back to before.

She was an outlander, true enough, with no ties to Caido or its temple. But she had found calm there all the same, balancing on her knees beneath the wide cathedral ceiling, her skirts spread prettily around her. She didn't know much about religion, especially here, but she knew a great deal about praying. She knew about spending hours with her head bowed, careful to look just pious enough without appearing desperate, no matter how loudly her soul cried out for salvation. Appearances were everything, after all, and even she wasn't safe from the rumors at court.

Meriel had found a place along the edges of the room, shrouded in darkness, and had enveloped herself so deeply in prayer that she didn't hear as people came and went. She couldn't pray to the native gods--at least not by name--and so she simply offered her thoughts, her hopes, her desires, sending them all into the ether and hoping desperately that perhaps, even here, even now, she was worthy of being heard. Even in a place that seemed so empty, so godless, so desolate as this.

After a time, the woman leaned back on her heels, flattening the tops of her feet to the ground and silencing a groan as she stretched muscles that had been locked in place for what felt like hours. She climbed daintily to her feet and grimaced into the darkness around her as blood began to flow through her legs once more. When she turned, she was surprised to find that she was no longer alone. A woman about her age appeared to be praying and, rather than listen in on someone else's private affairs, Meriel tried to slip quietly to the back of the room.

The young woman had finished, though, and before Meriel made it very far, a voice rose from the silence that had fallen in the temple. "Do they listen?" She couldn't help herself; she had to know the answer, to know if her prayers were for naught here, just as they were at home. She stopped, lingering, not far from the man who had spoken, her blue eyes trained carefully on the woman.

"talk"


Felka


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#4
 
F E L K A


Felka flinched slightly at the sound of the man's voice. If she had been standing she would have undoubtedly stumbled, but she was safely on her knees. The young woman supposed she had seen the man when she came into the shrine, as well as another person or two, but while telling her story and compsoing her prayer she had totally forgotten his presence. Papa had always wondered how she of all his children stayed alive when she could barely walk in a straight line without tripping over a boulder she had missed because she was examining an interesting lichen. Now strangers had heard her pray aloud, and it was even worse that it had been such a selfless paryer. There was little room for self-scarifice in this world if you wanted to survive.

"Oh! Umm...," Felka exclaimed and then trailed off, hesitating. She wasn't used to speaking with people. Since her father's death, she had fallen out of the habit of speaking every day. There wasn't anyone to talk to after all. Some weeks she might make her way into town to trade medicinal herbs for goods she couldn't forage from the wilds, but she couldn't remember the last time she had spoken to a stranger. Until the massive influx of Outlanders, her curiosity had mostly constrained itself to plants. So she faltered. How could she explain her wild dreams of piled up prayers to these strangers? It was nothing more than a story she had made up to make herself feel better, she was self-aware enough to know that. No one knew why they were constrained in the dome, and no one knew what had happened to the gods. Well, she could only tell them what she knew.

"Mama said they can't hear us cause the New Gods locked us up in this bubble." Felka shrugged and rose to her feet, taking care to watch where she put her feet. Once she was steady, the woman shrugged and spread her hands. "Other folks say it different, I s'pose, but I figure this way we're more trapped than abandoned." Her voice was soft and a little hoarse from disuse. Unsurprisingly for a half-starved girl with no formal education, she was far from well-spoken. Despite that Felka spoke confidently. She had put her faith in this story and this worldview and she would not be shaken from it lightly. "Don't really need faith they exist, though, do I? All I gotta do is look at that damned dome to know there's somethin' in the world I don't understand." People who struggled with uncertainty rarely survived to adulthood in this world.




Alistair Valentus
Monster Hunter

Age: 32 | Height: 6' 0 | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#5
Alistair turned his eyes to Meriel who appeared to have taken a keen interest in the recently budding conversation. Though his focus back to @Felka after she had answered. He glanced down to his gloved hands which just aimlessly fidgeted and hung over his lap. "If they can't here you, and are locked away on the other side...why speak to them, then?"

Faith and gods, old and new made little sense to him...after all he had been through, Devrum, Ashetta, what god...who's existence relied on the faith of followers, would allow people to be tormented, tortured, broken...left to rot? What was the purpose of it all? Had gods truly existed they were not to be worshiped, but condemned.

They must've been creatures consumed by ages of vanity...

"What do you gain from speaking to those who can't help you? You're just a voice lost in the wind. No more relevant that the howl of a wolf."

Alistair stood, pushing himself up from his seat, pausing a moment. As he exchanged a look between the two. "I apologize...I meant no disrespect...suppose there is much I don't understand of this world. It's not my place to question your practice."
Meriel Iarralei


Age: 30 | Height: 5'6" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship:
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#6
M E R I E L


OOC | Y'all I'm so sorry for taking so long... life has been hard lately.

Meriel listened. She was not, generally speaking, one to insert her opinions where they were not asked for. During her time at court, she had been the diplomatic sort, always open to listening, believing in the importance of actually hearing people. It wasn't enough to hear their voice. For true understanding, one had to listen to their words. So here, now, in this temple... she listened.

For a moment, @Felka seemed taken aback by the appearance of the two strangers as she prayed, and Meriel nearly offered a curtsy and went on her way, keen to avoid making the girl uncomfortable. But she knew nothing about this strange land except that it was not her own, and it seemed to her that it would be beneficial to know something about the local deities. Surely her own land's gods had not followed her into this world?

Alistair questioned the girl, and Meriel frowned slightly at his question. She understood him. Truly, she did. But she still disagreed with the implications of his words. Faith was about having something to believe in, having hope that something better was out there. It wasn't just for gratification. Even if these gods didn't answer Felka, the act of praying probably comforted her. She could believe that she would be heard. It didn't matter if it was true. At least, that's how Mere would feel, in Felka's position.

"Prayer isn't always about being heard," she offered on Felka's behalf, stepping closer to the pair. "The act of sending your worries away, the hope that somewhere, someone hears them... even if there is no response, even if you don't know if anyone heard you, you still have that hope. In the darkest of times, hope is what we must cling to to survive."

"talk"




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