"You look sad," the young man said without looking back.
"No." You didn't look at me at all.
Uriel tried his best to get himself into the scriptures and read the goddess's teachings word for word. In the past, doing so would have given him peace of mind. He read the first sentence first, 'Doing good is an end, not a means. The incarnation of the goddess taught thus', these words evoked his deep old memories. What's next? 'O God, please cleanse me from my sins and make me pure', is this the sentence? 'Let me hear the sounds of love and joy'? No, wrong, this is the third paragraph.
When he turned the page, he was shocked to find that the sentence he saw before appeared on a new page. The first sentence belongs to the second chapter, and he had already skipped the first six chapters when he opened the book. The apprentice closed the page in frustration and took out the stack of notes.
"I don't like reading either." The messenger commented.
"I'm studying." Uriel answered calmly. "You have to learn magic, magic, and even writing all over again. Don't forget that I come from a world without mystery."
"Then what's that in your hand?"
"Reading notes." He said angrily. Today’s messenger seems particularly willing to open up the topic and say something unpleasant. If it weren't for the gap between Sauron and his mysteriousness, Uriel would have suspected that he was being impersonated.
"If it's not for me," the young man responded coldly, "then don't point it at me."
As soon as the apprentice lowered his head, he realized that he had taken the receipt backwards again. The heavy tome rested on his knees, as if crushing his bones. He simply threw them all away... Gaia, why should I think about these ridiculous things? The secrets of the church have nothing to do with me.
The most important thing is the trial of fire. He must make up a reason to miss the fatal ceremony. The Nameless Ones are not as cruel as the rumors say. They at least reminded me not to plunge into the trap of the tower. Uriel found that he frequently thought of the Black Knight. This big man who was wanted by the whole of Knox would never come to the church cemetery just to bless an unknown person with protective magic. His appearances and disappearances are full of secrets. At this moment, Uriel suddenly thought that if the Blue Envoy's Windrunner had come ten minutes earlier, he might not have been turned into a real undead by the lord of the starless night.
He has seen corpse eaters controlled by necromancers and killed many of them. In comparison, it seems that the puppet line of the Blue Envoy is not terrible.
"I have encountered a lot of things recently." He admitted to his mentor, "There are so many things that make me confused."
"I know." Joey replied.
"You don't know everything. I feel like I'm in a wonderful vortex, a vortex of time and space. I feel that the future is far away and strange, and the present is chaotic. It seems that everything is contributing to a predetermined result, no matter how I choose, They all pushed me forward leisurely, and finally walked into this tomb."
"This tomb." The messenger expressed doubts.
Uriel continued: "When I stepped into the backyard of the church, the vortex became clearer. I felt that death had been with me, but I had never realized its existence. There are many secrets, many, many more history and the ashes covering it. Some things are happening, but I can't stop them; some things are like bubbles rising to the surface, but I would rather they sink into the deep sea and never see the light of day. After all, what I have seen in my life is There are not as many horrific scenes as there are in this month. I have only been in this world for less than two months, and I feel like I am as overwhelmed as a baby sometimes."
"You are a little tired." The messenger's tone seemed to soften. This is not an illusion. "The Nameless One will not cause any trouble in the City of Floating Clouds." He was assuring him.
A feeling of weakness soothed him, and Uriel felt a sense of relief. At this time, Joey was not like the powerful Sky Realm Commander in the Sky Tower, but like York and Painter, he was a friend he could confide in. Although the messenger looked unchanged, Uriel thought he was accepting what he had to say—I am afraid no one had dared to do this like me before. This is a good sign.
"Destiny allowed me to finally step here and get the clue before." Uriel looked at the stone monument not far away. "Let me face my past."
"I know." The messenger repeated.
Uriel scoffed at his clumsy reassurance. My past is in the outer world, and even the gods don't know my origin. He suspected that although the inner and outer worlds were related, the latter did not receive the attention of the gods. The goddess Gaia in the outer world has never shown any miracles, let alone any holy relics.
At any rate, my destiny had landed at Knox. He wanted to start from the beginning.
"I grew up in the monastery of Gaia. After I grew too old to listen to the tales of evil dragons, Sister Mary began to teach me how to read. Common Tongue and the ancient writings of the Four Leaf City, and even the gods who wrote the scriptures of the goddess's sayings. Words." The memory pulled him, and it was the most inextricable force in the whirlpool. "I wake up every day to the morning bells of the church, and kneel in front of the icon at night to pray for blessings. I light candles for the night watchman, and I also join the choir band. Sometimes Sister Mary will ask me to help her count people and calculate Bill. Because my arithmetic ability is far better than other children." But in the eyes of Mr. Oswald in the tower, it was nothing.
"Life in the yard can sometimes be boring. But many young women will join us every day, and then bring new children. I understood long ago that my home is a public charity house, provided by the goddess for street children. A place to stay. Those girls and their children are constantly rotating in the backyard, no different from the stones in the river. I also know that they are also poor abandoned people, and we were taken in here by the goddess together." He paused.
"I don't see them often because each other's rest time does not overlap. The nuns taught me to read newspapers, recite hymns to the goddess and the most pious prayers, and even asked me to help women iron pure white linen clothes and sheets. ." He couldn't help but think of the last job he found in Yotsuye City. "Sister Mary told me a lot of worldly truths, but she didn't tell the truth about this one thing."
Silence wanders in the secret room. Facing the wordless stone tablet, Uriel was not sure whether he could continue speaking. He has sworn to many people and has never broken his promise so far. However, the fluorescence in the darkness took him back to the night seven years ago, when he got through the fence and wire wall, leaving his oath to the goddess behind.
There is the fragrance of silver lilies and the chirping of insects in the darkness. Is it the flaming moon? Or the Flower Moon? He couldn't remember. The moon was intact and the stars in the night sky were bright. A kid who thought he was nimble escaped from his bedroom, stepped barefoot through the back door and the stone steps next to the ditch, and started his first adventure in life...
…
The church was very noisy during the day, filled with chaotic voices. Manet finally endured the night again and was able to escape the hell of steam.
After dinner, it was time to take care of the baby. Sister Delia could not accompany her, so she had to face the little lion Roma by herself. This girl seems to have no understanding of the world.
"Look at him. His fingers are only a little long." She gently raised the baby's arm, and bursts of milky fragrance wafted from Aiken's body. "Pink. Tiny. His nails are tiny too. He'll have to work on growing them longer."
What's okay? no. "He'll hurt himself," Manet corrected.
"Really? But when I was a kid, everyone expected my claws to get longer. The longer and pointier, the better."
"You are a lion. You hunt with your paws. After weaning, you will most likely have to bite the prey yourself. If Aiken reaches the age where he should eat human food, I must feed him bite by bite until he can use a spoon by himself." This is a thought. It's quite a long process. Originally, she was still a child enjoying the love of her parents, but now she was forced to become an adult. Manai had seen how B'Elanna took care of Daemon, and that sense of triviality and need for constant vigilance could drive her crazy.
What supported my mother in raising Damon and I was love, love for our children, and love for Upton. Mother's love couldn't give me strength now, and she didn't know if her hatred of Bridge could. Manet asked herself, how am I going to feed this child?
Sister Delia said nothing, but she understood. Even Roma understood...this child was not hers, not the descendant of a sinner. The purity of the newborn cannot be tainted by a sinful soul, and she is not Aiken's mother at all. Not every girl in the convent is. What they have to do is to atone their sins here, enjoy the protection of the church, and watch their own flesh and blood being sent to strange families, never to be seen again.
At the end of the day, before I could pour out my feelings for Aiken, the facts followed. The most anxious moment Manet could think of was on the day of delivery and after seeing Christine's transfer letter. When the mass of fetal flesh left her body, panic turned into a sea of blood that drowned her; this emotion was consumed by the long labor, until going home replaced all her longings.
What really shattered the dream was when she talked to Roma and Sister Delea about the man who had given her all this. Manet will never forget his sweet words, his deep affection, and every move he used to deceive her. She hates the trap of love, she also hates the monastery, she hates Abbot Barnsa and the night watchman, she even hates Aiken and her own stupidity.
I won't give myself false hope anymore, she decided. Since I had to send the baby away, I might as well cut off the love I had given him in the first place. This thought grew into a tree of uneasiness in her mind, and Manet found that she couldn't explain what she was thinking.
"I asked Sister Delia, and she said that these children will wait for good families to choose, but that will be when they are about two years old." Roma leaned on the railing, her eyes wandering between Manet and the baby, "You have to take care of He's over two years old. Can humans talk when they're two years old?"
There were no children over the age of two in the monastery. They were either adopted away or driven away like the disabled baby and his mother before... Manet did not dare to overestimate the church's tolerance for sinners like them.
