Across the ocean Book 1: On the run

Chapter Four : The Ceremony

When the knights and the soldiers had left for the stable, Lauria had urged her family to hurry on their way. Ceydoren, though not part of the family, was included. The road led them to the center of the village, which was shared by the inn and the parish. After all, wayside villages were built for travellers: innkeepers within the wayside peasantry shared with the local priests the burden of mayorship.

Of all the buildings, the church was the most beautiful. Peasants were not rich, but even so they knew how to compensate by having a collective wealth. If commoners living within towns and cities could expect from the local lord to provide them with a building of worship dedicated to the Kastosian monotheistic God, peasants were most of the time the ones who would raise the necessary funds and resources for the construction of their church. Though the ecclesial institution had a non negligeable amount of wealth accumulated through the centuries, be it through tithing or other sources such as free offerings, they almost never paid for such constructions. From ages past, peasants saw it not as a duty but as a tribute. There was joy in setting aside for such collective fund raising, as it gave them the experience of contributing to a project they could never do individually, a way to demonstrate they could do great things just like anyone else in the world.

Mayen was not what one would have called a pious man, but he was religious nonetheless, as was practically everyone else. He believed in the existence of only one god, whose name was Amenual, but was referred to by titles and never by name. Within the liturgy of the Church, there was three ways to address God : God of Creation, for he created all things; God of Life, for he was the source of life for all that lived; God of his Ancestors, as he was the one who guided the Kastosian people since the beginning of time.

The teachings from the Church were based on the holy book Anaïs—a name which did not sound Kastosian at all—which compiled the works of different religious authors from the two first ages: the Hour of Beginnings and the Hour of Songs and Myths. Despite not knowing how to read, Mayen knew by heart some stories. His favourite was the final battle of the Centenary War, when the joint forces of Kastos and of a long-gone nation known as Babloran trusted not in their numbers but in God for victory against a multitude of the Condemned which spread like sand on the earth.

-"Here we are!" said Rowen as he looked at the church's double door. "Still early, though... Mewen, my boy! Come here."

-"Yes, father?"

-"The hinges on that door look marvelous, more than before, wouldn't you say?"

Unconsciously, everyone directed their attention on the metal fringes of the double door. They were indeed beautiful, spreading further than needed as if the metal became a vine of sort and twisted in swirls here and there. Nothing out of the ordinary, but a father suddenly overwhelmed by emotions could only but remark how everything seemed new.

-"I won't lie, part of me just cannot wait to see you out of the nest for good, taking pride in you becoming a real man: another part of me is afraid. I feel old now, older than I would have ever imagined possible in fact. I thought age came with wrinkles..."

Ceydoren listened with arms crossed, looking in the emptiness of the endless depth of the sky above. He had been married before, but his wife had died, leaving him a widow. Those words spoken by Rowen stirred something in him, questions of what would had and have been different. He was childless although a father he had been.

It was with great futility that Rowen kept his tears as prisoners, for they silently betrayed his composed voice by streaming down.

-"I am scared, but of what I cannot find the words to say. Somehow, this feels to me more like an eloping than a real marriage. You and Feya decided to get married, me and Serdon gave permission. Where is the giving? Where is my... Not control, no." He searched for words while caressing one of the jambs which protruded from the door frame to support a simplistic archivolt. "The right to be concerned, to have a word to say..." Realizing other villagers were heading towards the church, he cut his speech short : "I wish I could have given you instead of agreeing with you, if only as a last incarnation of fatherhood."