The prayer text practically everyone raised in Noilaan knows by heart. As familiar to me as a children’s song. Meaninglessly familiar. But I can tell that there is something new in it for Trystan.

Something revolutionary.

“Please, teach me,” Trystan says to Wyn Juun.

Trystan

I never expected to find religion here. To find that religion could be so much more than I was taught. I thought it was all rigid lines. Who to hate. How to keep from being hated. Hate those with wings. Hate men who love men. Hate shifters. Hate Fae.

Hate and hate and hate.

Or be cast out as an Evil One.

But here, their holy book is not as literal. It’s not full of which colors to avoid. Which clothes you have to wear. Which rigid lines you have to fit into.

The Goddess Vo is symbolic of the ineffable with Her twelve Erthia manifestations—

The elemental manifestations—Air, Water, Fire, Light, Earth.

The journey manifestations—Child, Youth, Pilgrim, Elder.

The Erthia manifestations—Life, Death.

And the central manifestation—Love.

Always, in the center of everything, Love.

As I read, something clicked in me. Something that resonates with this age-old religion, bone-deep. Something that helps me to mourn without becoming lost to it.

It was painful, when almost all the Noi’khin left Vo’s temple. Excruciatingly painful to be rejected in this lifeline that’s been thrown to me. But Wyn Juun welcomed me, and it was enough to dampen the storm inside me and enable me to sit down and take the prayer beads Wyn Juun gave to me in hand. To begin committing to memory the prayers associated with each manifestation of Vo.

These unfamiliar, beautiful prayers awaken something in my heart, even as a storm wreaks havoc inside me. I can feel Vo in this room, feeding strength into me, calming the storm.

Feeding love into me.

I dive into the scripture of the Eastern Realm like I’m a starving man whose soul is finally being nourished. Because there’s nothing in this faith but a door flung open. And there’s nothing in it that casts me out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NOI’KHIN GARDNER

Vothendrile Xanthile

The Wyvernguard
North Wyvernguard Island, Noilaan
Eastern Realm
Sixth Month

Trystan is changing.

He gets up before dawn to meditate with Minyl and Ru Sol. And then, after the dawn service, he spends time speaking privately with Wyn Juun, the old priest embracing Trystan paternally before he leaves and gifting him with new books on the Vo faith. Books that I groaned over having to recite as a child. Fidgeting through meditation. Eager for the service to be over to get to the gathering afterward and its profusion of food.

It fills me with an inexplicable yearning, how Trystan is finding, in my own religion, something that grounds him so powerfully. Because I feel like I’m coming unmoored.

The dreams won’t go away.