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RORY

Rory was not the pious sort.

He acknowledged the existence of his gods—how could he not, when he had stood eye to eye with Ludo at the Festival of Lights? When he had felt the god's touch each year, when the darkness sighed through the lanterns and the ghost of someone's loved and lost ones flickered back into brief life? And Safrin, whom so many had met, and Frey, who had inserted themselves into so many .. well. He could end that sentence in any way, really.

But he was not pious. He was Abandoned. His prayers had never been answered before.

He had not prayed for over a decade, had not set foot in a Shrine for many years. What could they offer him, someone they shunned by default? What could they give him, that he could not find, or make, on his own? And what could he offer them? They did not need him, so he chose to stay away from them.

His heart was a light and flighty thing in his chest as he crossed the invisible line between the Temple and the altar at its back. A chill traveled down his spine.

Everything was always changing, anyway.

Silent and graceful Rory folded himself down on his knees. There was something he had been thinking of, something brought on by the events at the perch earlier during the Long Night. The Spark Bird's appearance had tempered some of his need, but he was loath to forget it entirely.

It wouldn't have made much of a difference under those circumstances, but he thought of Jigano, bleeding in the jaws of a wolf.

There were other times when it could matter.

"Caido," he said first, his voice low and steady. "Mort. Rae. Vi." He paused. He was as afraid of an answer as he was of their silence. "Safrin. Ludo. Frey." What he wanted was perhaps not in the jurisdiction of that particular deity, but it felt rude to exclude him. Rory licked his still-blistered lips, wincing slightly at the touch.

He had nothing to offer but the stars in his soul.

"I need one of you, if you have a moment. There is something I would ask for."

And then he waited.

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.

He had never been answered before, and he would not be now. Was it because of LongNight? Because he was an abandoned? Because he was undeserving? It was impossible to say, but as Rory knelt before the shrine, not even so much as a candle stirred to indicate that any had heard him, or cared.

Praying had always been Maea's go-to comfort during difficult trials. Not so much because it helped - it never did - but for the sense of purpose in a situation where nothing more could be done. Like the LongNight; once the food and fuel had been gathered and all the other precautions taken, what was left to do but to wait? At least while praying she could fool herself into thinking that she still did something, tried to improve the odds just that bit more.

By the time she made it to the shrine this time however, the girl found it occupied. She paused just beyond the alchove and hesitated, tried her best not to listen to the mumbled words of the man as he communed, feeling keenly the intimacy in a moment meant for him alone. Well. Him and the no-show Lords and Ladies, who conveniently seemed to have more pressing matters to tend to elsewhere. The silence was as empty and noncommittal as it always were for her, and the thought that it might be her fault crossed her mind. If she had not come here...

"I'm sorry" she said with quiet voice, a touch of guilt spilling past the otherwise expressionless tone. "I might have scared them off..."

RORY

He listened.

He waited.

And as every time before, the seconds stretched, empty and lifeless. It was only the throb of his pulse, the sound of his even breathing, the oh-so-quiet whisper of candle flame. Rory closed his eyes. The air around him remained empty. There was no surge of power, no murmur of a deity slipping into existence. It was just him and the Shrine.

He opened his eyes. Still nothing. He wanted, so badly, he needed, but all of it was left unanswered. Untouched. Unacknowledged. Through no fault of his own was he left in the dark, to fend for himself, to find his own way, to fight his battles alone

—mortal and useless—

and in anger his mind snaked out and killed

each

candle

until the Shrine was dark. From behind him came a hesitant, quiet voice, apologizing for the blood fault in Rory, and he closed his eyes again, a pained expression on the face he still kept turned from her. It wasn't her fault: it was his flaw. He was an undesirable to the Gods, so they remained silent.

Snuffing out all their offerings probably wouldn't endear him to them any further, and though he looked within, he found nothing with which to spark them back to life. So he sighed, and tilted his head—burns healing upon his neck and the lower half of his face, the worst of it closed, the rest merely glistening and pink as it sat around his lips—and looked at who it was.

To his surprise, he saw that it was Maea. He knew who she was (who didn't?), but they hadn't interacted much. He'd mostly dealt with her brother. "Maea," he said in surprise, his voice mild, his eyes gentle. "It is not you." He said it with such certainty that it obviously meant only one thing: I am Abandoned.

He didn't know what else to say to her, so instead he stood up, and went to one of the lanterns nearby. He grabbed a thin stick and stuck it in the flame, willing the fire to take, to grow, and it flickered as it ate into the wood. With a sigh he returned to the Shrine with it, and set about to lighting all the candles he had put out.

It wasn't their fault.

It was nobody's fault.

It wasn't anything he could fix and it frustrated him.

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Wrapping cold hands about herself, the girl grimaced. Of course he would say that, but the fact remained that she had intruded on a private moment, and... well... no one had ever disproved the idea that the presence of abandoned did not deterr the gods. She stood watching him as he went to light the candles again, considering the way the lights had gone out. Then again... perhaps the fault lay with them both, and neither - only with the arrogant fools of the past who cursed them all with their hybris.

"Well. I just thought... because they never answer me either" she admitted. Quiet feet brough her across the alchove until she stood beside Rory, small and pale and wan in the slowly brightening light. The candles lent a yellowish cast to her skin and hair, like aged ivory or old bones, but for once the gaze she turned towards her neighbor was full of color.

"I almost didn't recognize you, Rory. Thought you would have stayed on the farm as usual." There was a question there, an undercurrent of curiosity that a shy nature could not conceal... But even though she wanted to ask why he had changed his habits, the didn't. He was Noah's friend, not hers. Not really. Sometimes she wondered if they were even that... not that it mattered. A familiar face did not really make you less of a stranger when you never spent time together.

RORY

He tried to call up what he actually knew of Maea, and it was precious little. She lived on the Valair family farm, she was short, she was pale, she was an outcast, and she had always been rather.. well, frosty? avoidant? when he came around. He had never thought about it, had always treated her with politeness, and allowed her her space. He had no reason to go butting into her life.

But there she stood next to him. She was so small, willowy and thin, barely reaching past his shoulders. In the strange lighting of the Temple she was bone-white and ghastly, but candle by candle her skin was given a warm glow, a nearly-human golden tone that he knew was a lie. He almost thought she'd feel like dry parchment if he touched her then.

Images of Jigano swam into his mind: the white fox, the white raven, the white hair .. the honeyed skin. He blinked the images away, letting the dark wicks eat fire once more. "Abandoned," he said, his voice light, the bitterness barely audible, but it was there, snake venom among the syllables.

It surprised him that she spoke with him; it surprised him that she didn't leave him alone once she saw who it was. Her gaze didn't seem like it had lingered on his face and the soon-to-be-scars that pulled uncomfortably on his skin, and what she said was a question, just without the inflection of one. He put his burning stick to the last candle, then held it up in front of his face.

It went out.

He watched the smoke curl lazily from its blackened tip.

"Things are changing," he told the bit of burnt wood. "I don't know what possessed Amalia and I to ride into the Settlement, but.. we did. Something had broken the perch we'd built. We managed to repair it, but got stuck here."

He turned his head to watch her, his blue eyes unreadable. Considering what they had accomplished, he ought to have looked proud, confident, but if anything he looked conflicted. "Turns out it worked, though. But what about you? Why aren't you at home?"

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Pale fingers gripped the bleached fabric of her shirt until the knuckles reddened and whatever breath she'd taken in never seemed to leave her again. He had gone outside!? And not just him, but Amalia too? There was no love between herself and the librarian, but that did not mean Maea could hear they had risked their lives on a foolish project without going cold inside. That they were alive was a miracle; no wonder then that the gods would not reply to Rory. He had already been answered.

"You've spent all your good fortune for the coming year, I'd say" she breathed, finally able to pick out the wounds and scrapes of the man and see them for what they were. "Vi must really love you both if you did that and still stand here... perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to complain about not getting your prayers answered."

Her own reasons for leaving home was far simpler and not nearly as desperately dumb.

"It's too crowded in the house" she said with a shrug. "Lienna has been a grouch this past Leafchange and Noah keeps taking her side in everything... as if her being pregnant would make her more intelligent. I decided to leave them the extra food and space and come here instead... at least I don't have to listen to her nagging about how lucky I am to have a nice brother who won't throw me out."

Ivory lips twisted into a wry smile, but there was hurt in her eyes and something helpless to the cast of her shoulders as she shrugged again.

RORY

Maea's shock was understandable: had the roles been reversed, Rory would likely have done a you did what?!. He was intimately familiar with the dangers of Long Night, that you were not supposed to go outside, no matter what. And guiltily he thought of locking his door against the fox who sneaked into his barn, of thinking him lost to the monsters of the dark, with nothing but the Luxere between him and death...

Yet something as stupid as an object, a monument, a wild and fledgling hope, had had him riding out into the dark.

It was bizarre that none of them, Wessex included, had died.

But Vi? No, Vi had nothing to do with it. Gods had nothing to do with it. The realization left him feeling lonely and desolate as he stood before the Shrine where others were answered. Rory was Abandoned. No God looked after him. He swallowed, then scoffed.

"If I complained, it was all in your head," he said, vaguely annoyed. Complained? He hadn't complained. There was a difference between being frustrated and complaining. Rory knew what he was, and who he was, and what the Gods thought (or didn't) of him. Irrationally, he was angry, angry with them, angry at the barrier, at whatever had caused the Spire to be erected, at.. at three hundred years after the fact still being Abandoned for something his distant ancestor had done.

Or maybe they just hated the smell of magic.

Talking of the Valair family was more mundane. Safer. Less risk of Rory biting anyone's face off. He snorted. "A nice brother who should've picked a nicer wife," he said. Rory liked Noah well enough, and technically he had no issues with Lienna, but the woman had always bothered him in some way and if the way she was treating Maea was anything to go by, well.. his opinions of her certainly didn't improve.

Once, Rory would've thought the bond between sister and brother unbreakable: that was how it had been for most of his life. Family first. Then she had met that dude and everything had gone to shit and now he didn't even know where she was, out in that desolate darkness. He shivered. "At least we're safe here until morning comes again," he offered helplessly. The Spark Bird was seeing to that.

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.

She gave him a sceptical look, thst suggested he had indeed been complaining... but Maea didn't press the issue. The attitude was familiar, one she knew in many of the abandoned who had not rejected the gods outright already. She was not that different either... the only difference was that she generally didn't question that she was unworthy. She prayed and hoped and continued to plead for forgiveness, for a way to atone for the sins of her ancestors... And when no answers came, she bowed her head and kept trying. It was all they could do really.

Shrugging slightly, Maea defended her sister. "She's not all bad... she's wonderful with the kids and great around the farm. I just get on her nerves, because I can't keep up with her pace." Tall, strong, energetic with dark hair and flashing black eyes; the woman was her opposite in pretty much everything. Especially in temperament, because where Maea seemed to lack it, Lienna was all mood all the time. It kept Noah on his toes, for sure.

"Mhm. I never thought I'd ever get to see it... but it looks like miracles happen all over the place lately." She smiled shyly at Rory, and began to withdraw.

"Take care of yourself, Rory. Once Flowerbirth comes, we'll come over for a visit. Noah said he wanted to borrow a horse... seems he has plans for the upper fields after all. No doubt you will get a share of the crops too, if you like."

RORY

Rory still failed to see how he had complained, and the set of his brows said as much as he returned Maea's skeptical look. Snuffing out the candles wasn't a complaint, it was human frustration that he probably needed Gods in order to better himself and that they were very, very unlikely to come to him and help him. So.. frustration galore. No complaints. Complaining implied a sense of entitlement to Rory, and he knew—with every aching fiber of his body—that he was not entitled to an audience.

But he didn't press it. He didn't want to argue semantics with Maea. Instead he absently twirled the thin stick between the pads of his fingers, and watched the slight girl. It was easy to see why someone would be annoyed by something as mundane as her not being able to keep pace, but Rory had worked enough with animals to know that they were not all made equal in that aspect. It seemed a dumb thing to get irritated by. "But that's hardly your fault," he said gently. She was a farm girl; Rory knew she had likely been worked from an early age. Her inability to put on muscle and grow bigger than she had had to have to do with something else.

Probably whatever that also caused her to be so paper-pale, though he really didn't know.

"So it looks," he agreed, oddly baffled and pleased by her smile even though it was obvious she was making up her mind on leaving him alone in the silent shrine. The look he gave her was both gentle and perplexed, then he just gave a small shrug. "You too. And that's fine. See you and Noah later, then." They'd settle eventual payment when he came over.

And that was that.

Rory was alone again.

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.