A Place To Bloom

Other Outcasts

I knelt in the church to pray. Father, thank you for granting us safe passage to Carthia. Though, if I'm being honest, safe passage to a war, I'm not sure the value of that. I don't want to be ungrateful, so thank you. I'm scared. Only today the things I've seen, I don't know how anyone could survive with your enemies lurking in the trees ten feet from you and you can't see them. I pray that you guide my hand, lead me in the direction you would have me go in, that is all I ask. I pray that you watch over my friends and keep them safe.

I opened my eyes for a brief moment. Cracks broke through mortar leaving trails of green algae to seep down the walls of yellow and gray stones with pools of water scattered about the floor. The four-point-triangle of the Deanma hung on one wall, rusted with two brackets pulling from their place and threatening to fall to the floor. Overhead, a vast open window let in a large, leafy vine with tendrils reaching out in the open air.

Father, I'm sorry. I feel... deep down I know that in my own selfishness... my terror, reaching out for some way to weasel out of my duty cost Dune her life. I should have prayed that her survival was a sign that you wanted me to come here instead of the other way around. And for lust. Stupid, stupid lust, lusting after Oasis, lusting after Anyanna, why am I like this? Why can't I control my thoughts? These stupid urges, and look how I've offended Miyani and I only just got here. I want her to know that I'm sorry. I feel like I want to tell her, but I'm afraid to tell her. I'm afraid that if I try to talk to her that would be even more offensive seeing how I've already put her off.

I lifted my head for a moment and stretched my neck out, fighting back tears. To the side was a wooden shelf, atop which was a book of Scripture with black mold spots creeping up along the pages.

I took a deep breath and let it out. I'll leave her alone. Father, if I see her again, give me the strength to look the other way. I should have never noticed her like that in the first place. That's how I screwed things up with Sarina, isn't it? Will she ever forgive me? God, please look after Sarina. Can you introduce her to a man worthy of her love? Someone who deserves her. Someone... not like me.

"Caleb!" Faren's voice called out. He stood beneath the open archway that sufficed for a door with overgrown trees behind him. He hadn't smoked in several days, yet his face still carried a serenity punctuated by his droopy eyelids and easy smile.

Show me your truth, for thine is the honor, the glory... amen.

"I didn't mean to interrupt."

I stood. "I was done."

He looked around, tracing the small room with his eyes. "So this is the Daenma church?"

"Yeah." A large crack in one corner of the ceiling was still dripping water from the rain earlier, and chips of faded paint littered the floor on one side of the room. I set four kren beside the book on the top of the shelf, itself half rotted out with mold up and down the sides.

"What's that for?"

"Tithe."

He stared at the coins for a moment. "No priest, no nothing, not even a drop box. Who are you tithing to?"

I turned around to glance back as we left. "Well... I suppose God will lure someone in here who needs it."

Faren smirked, then turned back. "I could use it..."

I laughed. "Come on, man!"

He smiled and returned to me. "What if your god found you a sack of fresh mortar to fix that roof for four kren, but then some child came in here and took it to buy some cake?"

I shrugged. "Then... I suppose... a child will have the sweet memory of cake to hold them over in dark times."

Outside, a scraggly tree bearing dozens of small yellow globes had reached its branches out to partially block the path from the road—I almost hadn't seen the place for this tree. Elsewhere in the garden, thick tufts of grass and other bushes with woody stems and long, narrow leaves fought with vines for space enough to thrive.