The World Walkers: Quiar: Mothar: Takara: The Missionary

[k_a_webb]

Posted in return for a poem by Elizabeth Barrette – if you’re interested in a setting rental or character adoption then these will be the sorts of stories you’ll receive. (Email me for more information on the barter system.)

Returning to Mothar was something Takara had once looked forward to, but the longer she spent away from everything she’d grown up with the more she wanted to stay in Larnach. She no longer felt the same connection to the religion she had once preached as the truth, in part thanks to an unexpected meeting with a Moonjumper named Ilta, and going back just reminded Takara how different she felt. It seemed like none of the other missionaries she knew had the same problem, even though she couldn’t help wondering exactly what they kept to themselves, in the same way she did, because she had no one to talk to.

Well, technically, there were plenty of people Takara could talk to, but none she thought would really understand her problem. Until she left Mothar she had been so certain that their understanding of the fae was right and having a chance to talk to someone who had really met the race they worshipped had changed her point of view. Even before she met Ilta Takara had been thinking maybe they were glorifying a race they didn’t really know all that much about. Quiar had been created by Emrys and he was someone she could understand them viewing as a something more than just another person, but the whole race… she wasn’t so sure about that.

It was tempting to start up her own church, focusing on the worship of Emrys. The fae who had created the races were unknown to the Motharans, but it was possible that Ilta might be able to help Takara find out who they were, because she couldn’t keep worshipping the whole race. She knew too much about them and she knew too much about Emrys to not put him on a pedestal above the majority of the rest of his useless race. As far as she was concerned only the fae who had actually accepted responsibility for the choices they had made should be thought of as worth being seen as more than just another race.

The problem was Takara knew the majority of Motharans truly believed what was being preached to them. If she started talking to the wrong people about what she’d learnt there was a chance she might be executed, which wasn’t something she wanted to happen, so she needed to be very careful. Before she went to Larnach she had heard rumours of another missionary being executed for saying something the priest hadn’t liked, even though the missionary was one of the sons of the priest. She shook her head, remembering the long conversation she had with her parents before she left Mothar, where they warned her that she might be affected by the things she’d see, and she’d been so certain then that it wasn’t something that could possibly happen to her.

Back then it had been easy to believe in everything she had been taught. Takara had no reason to think her priest or her parents might be mistaken. Until she left Mothar she’d never met someone who didn’t worship the fae and she hadn’t even visited one of the settlements full of converts before she left. That had changed when she returned, because she wanted to understand why they had made the decision to travel all the way to Mothar in order to follow their religion, and that was where she was headed with her new information. The only person she trusted enough to keep his mouth shut was a cat convert she’d, unexpectedly, become friends with.

As Takara walked into the settlement she felt eyes on her. It wasn’t normal for Motharans and the settlement dwellers to mix, but she thought that was a bad idea. They’d made the choice to leave everything behind because they believed that the religion was worth it and yet they weren’t ever totally accepted as Motharans. She couldn’t help thinking they were more religious than the Motharans who were born with the religion. Especially the priests and priestesses who took over the temples. When she looked at herself, and how much she’d been affected by the time she spent away from what she’d always know, the more she believed the converters should be permitted to leave the settlements after they’d had a chance to settle in.

“Takara,” a recognisable voice called, sounding happy. When she turned she wasn’t surprised to see Kamen there, smiling at her, and she smiled back. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be visiting your parents before coming to see me?”

“I wanted to see someone I could talk to and as much as I love my parents I can’t talk to them.”

“Come on then.” Kamen led the way to the hut he’d lived in ever since he arrived in Mothar and Takara sat down at the kitchen table. “What happened?”

“I met a Moonjumper.” Takara sighed, shaking her head. “I didn’t realise how much meeting someone who had met the fae would affect the way I view the religion I grew up with.”

Kamen nodded, as he boiled some water in a saucepan. “You know why we aren’t accepted by the Motharans, don’t you?”

Surprised by the change of subject she shook her head again. “No, but I did think it was just because my hame was being bigoted. We’re good at that.”

“It’s because we ask questions your priests and priestesses don’t want to answer.” Kamen glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “When I made the decision to convert to your religion my first question was why. Why do you worship the fae? What makes them special? I was happy with the answer I got from the missionary I spoke to about the religion, but when your priest visited us I asked him the same questions. He just looked at me as though I’d brought up something that should never be mentioned before being carried off by his servants. I think it’s my fault he’s never returned.”

“Why do you stay if you never got a satisfactory answer to your question?”

“In the end I realised I didn’t need one. Religion isn’t about someone else’s answers, but your own. I have my own reasons for following the religion, even though I doubt it’s the same religion your priest follows, and I’m happy with them.” As Kamen took the cups of out of one of the cupboards he shrugged. “The problem with growing up with a religion is that you don’t realise you even have questions that need answers and now you’ve gone out into the world things have changed.”

“Other missionaries don’t seem to have the same problem.”

“They have different questions to answer and different answers to find. Religion is too personal for you to compare yourself to other people.” The cups went onto a tray with a teapot and as Kamen carried them over he shook his head. “I doubt they’d be unaffected by a meeting with a Moonjumper, so it’s not a surprise to hear that you need to work things through.”

“I feel like everything I was taught about the fae was a lie. The Moonjumper told me what they were really like and…” It was hard for Takara to find the words to tell Kamen how disappointed she was with everyone who’d simply worshipped the fae because it was what their parents, their grandparents, and the generations that came before had done. “Now a part of me wants to walk away from Mothar entirely, but at the same time I want to change things. I want them all to know what I know, even if they don’t believe me, because they need to know the truth.”

“What did you learn?”

“Almost all the fae chose to hide away in warded settlements after they made the choice to create the Web, because they weren’t comfortable with making the choice even though they felt it was their only option. We worship a race who couldn’t live with the decisions they made.” Takara shook her head. “If we worshipped Emrys I think I’d feel differently. He created Quiar and I can see why people would worship him, as well as the fae who created the races.”

“The other reason I think we haven’t been accepted, although I can’t talk for the other settlements, is because our answers, and the answers of our priest, have led us to seeing things a little differently to the rest of Mothar. Worshipping all the fae never really felt right for me, so we’ve made the decision that we only worship Emrys.”

“How about the race creators?”

“We don’t know who they were, but if we knew and it felt right we might become polytheists. Religion, to me and many of the others in this settlement, is something malleable rather than fixed.”

“Maybe that’s my problem.” Takara shrugged. “The religion I was taught was unchangeable. What the priest said in the temple was the truth and there was no working around it. I need to look at religion the way you do instead, so I can work what I’ve learnt into my beliefs.”

“It does make things easier.” Kamen, after swirling the water in the teapot, poured them both a cup of tea. “Are you planning on going back to Larnach to talk to the Moonjumper again?”

“We did mention meeting up, but I’m not certain when I’ll be returning to Larnach, because there are younger missionaries who are heading to Larnach for their first visit and another group who are close to being ready. It seems as though I’ll need to find something else to do for a few months at least, until I can go back.”

“Have you ever thought about travelling Mothar?”

Takara stared at him. “No.”

“If you want to learn about religion the best thing you can do, if you’re not going back to Larnach for a while, is see how different priests and priestesses teach their followers. You never know what you might find.”

“Would you come with me?”

“I’m not permitted to leave the settlement, but if I could I would. I’d love to see how things work in different parts of Mothar.”

“Knowing that you would be interested gives me a reason to try to convince the priest to let you come with me.” She smiled. “I don’t want to go alone, because I’m so used to travelling with other people and even in my own country I’ll feel much more comfortable if someone is with me.”

“I doubt he’ll agree.”

“He might.” Takara sipped her tea, which was one of Kamen’s special mixes that he knew she loved, and it made her glad she’d returned home for the first time. “Is it possible for settlers to travel between the settlements?”

“It should be, but it isn’t. We’ve had letters from people living in the other settlements and our priestess sent a letter to your priest asking if it was possible for some of the settlers to come here for a visit, but he didn’t think it was a good idea, although he didn’t give us a reason why he didn’t think it was a good idea.” Kamen shrugged, sipping his tea. “Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped here now, because I don’t want to go back to Larnach, even though I do miss my family, and I know I’ll never be accepted as truly Motharan no matter what I do. I’ll always just be a convert and I’m not sure that’s good enough any more.”

“I accept you.”

“You’re different.” Kamen smiled at her. “You came to the settlement to learn about us and that’s something rare.” Sipping his tea again he glanced out of the window. “I haven’t seen the jaguar missionary I came to Mothar with since the day she left me here, with the other converts I travelled with.”

“Did you expect to?”

“When I came here I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I did think I’d be able to connect more with the people of Mothar. Apart from you the only people I’ve spent any real time with are the other converts. I know there’s a whole country out there, even though I haven’t seen any of it in years.” Kamen shook his head. “Almost all the other converts I travelled to Mothar with chose to go back to Larnach, because they knew they’d never be accepted here, and took your religion with them.”

“I’ve never heard of any settlements of Motharan taught Larnarchis, but I don’t know all that much about Larnach. When I go there I travel with my fellow missionaries and we go directly to whichever town the priest has decided we should visit, so we don’t have much of a chance to explore. Then, when I’m returning, I often have converts to bring with me.”

“Have you ever gone to the settlement your converts are living in?”

She shook her head, feeling guilty. “I’m not permitted.” Takara sipped her tea again, feeling an unexpected ball of emotion in her throat as she thought of them. “The priest only let me visit this settlement because I don’t have any coverts living here and he thinks it’s better for us to keep away from anyone we brought here from Larnach.”

“I guess that’s why I’ve never been visited.”

“She might not want to, but I did ask to visit my converts, because I wanted to see how they were getting on. The priest told me it was better for both me and the converts to have a clean break.”

“The more I hear about his rules the more I know he was born on Mothar and has no idea what it’s like to be a convert.” He shook his head. “I wish someone would get him to understand our point of view, because then maybe things would be easier for us.”

“I’m sorry, Kamen. I barely ever get a chance to talk to him. I’m just a missionary. Normally he only converses with the lesser people by letter. The only time I had a chance to talk to him was when I asked about travelling to one of the local settlements. He didn’t really even want to permit me to come here, but he obviously decided to compromise with me.” Takara shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

“It’s possible he thought you might tell people he didn’t want you to tell that you’d been banned from travelling to any of the settlements for no real reason.”

“You might just be right.”

Following the rumours of the priest having his own son executed were rumours of someone wanting to replace him. Nothing came of it, but that didn’t mean it would never happen, and Takara began wondering if that was the reason she was given permission to visit one of the settlements. She kept thinking that the priest didn’t want the Motharans to mix with the Larnachi converts because of the very reason Kamen said: they asked questions the priest wasn’t comfortable with and he didn’t want his followers to ask the same questions.

“Takara…” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Ask the question.”

“I want to learn more about your town and the people you live with, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable by asking the wrong questions.”

“Once I might not have answered your questions. Even though I was questioning my beliefs after I returned from Larnach the first time I didn’t feel betrayed then. All I keep thinking is that they lied to me about the fae, even if that lie is a lie they themselves believe, and there are people I think should have asked more questions about why exactly we worship the fae.”

“The priest?”

“Him, my parents, my grandparents, my fae parents…” Takara shook her head. “They seem to just accept what they were taught and pass it onto the next generation, even though it’s misinformation. As a race the fae don’t deserve our worship.”

“It’s easy to accept the misinformation, Takara, when someone doesn’t know that they should be asking questions. I know it’s hard for you, because you know the truth, but they think that what they were taught is the truth, because they’ve had no one to tell them otherwise. The priest…” Kamen shrugged. “I don’t know so much if he doesn’t know he should be asking questions. I think he doesn’t want to ask the questions because he doesn’t want to hear the answers. It’s so much easier for him to pass on the lessons he was taught, instead of teaching his followers to ask questions.”

“They wouldn’t want to believe the truth if I did tell them what the fae were really like.”

“They’d want to believe that you were lied to by the Moonjumper, because the Moonjumper isn’t Motharan. It’s something that’s easier for them, because it means they can still believe what they were taught by the priest, while not blaming you for the misinformation you were spreading about the race that created the Web and Quiar.”

“It wasn’t the whole race though.”

“We know that. You’re open to questioning the religion you grew up with, while the people you grew up with, who’ve never left Mothar and have never met a Moonjumper, aren’t. They’re happy believing what they believe, no matter how you feel about things, although there will be a few who’ll be happy that you opened their minds, and they’ll begin questioning why in the same way you have.”

“The Moonjumper suggested I write a book: the Truth About the Fae. I can’t help thinking it’s a good idea, even though I’d have to write it under a pseudonym, because I want people to question their beliefs. Maybe the majority of my hame do want to cling onto the misinformation they’ve been taught by the priests and priestesses, but you’re right that there will be a few who want to have their mind opened, and they’re the people I should write it for. It might be of interest to the settlers too.”

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.