Regi's Goddess, chapter 3 (Patreon)

Reread chapters 1 and 2 

Sorry about the long gap, but hopefully I can get back up on this horse now that I've recreated (in part) the lost files

Chapter Three

Dante took a deep breath of fresh air as he stepped out of the ship. Walking around the pirate ship was the only exercise the authorities allowed, so he had indulged at least once a day. After months on the ship, he needed time in the fresh air, and so he’d grown used to Kowri stares every time he left the safety of the hull. Safety. He never thought he’d apply that word to the pirate ship. Worse, his feelings weren’t justified.

Compared to the narrow rockets that travelled between Earth and Mars, the pirate ship was a luxury liner of infinite size. Compared to the Gavd ships, it was a bug upturned on its rounded back, surrounded by coyotes that could snap it up at any time. Dante had no idea why anyone would need such huge ships, but given how territorial Kowri were about their technology, Dante had chosen to keep his questions to himself.

Instead of leading them in a circle around the disabled ship, Regi led them toward the closest temple, a white stone building with a bluish tint. Dante gave him a sidelong look. The last time Dante had approached the temple, a dozen different Kowri had almost broken their necks trying to block the entrance before Dante could do anything as horrifying as step foot in the sacred space. Dante had a friend who was Mormon who felt the same about non-believers going into the temple. Being raised Baptist, Dante didn’t quite understand, but he had been raised to be a polite guest, and he was even more committed to that when the hosts owned heavy weaponry.

“Are we going to the temple?” Dante asked.

Regi pressed the back of his fingers to his temples. Definitely sacrilegious. “Alb has an office near the pronaos.”

“The what?”

“The area in front of the temple where the side walls shield the cobbled pathway,” Regi answered.

“So… entrance?” Dante asked. The translator had provided ‘pronaos’ when Regi’s original word had contained more growling sounds, so Dante assumed the word was English, but Richard had definitely corrupted the translation program. Before he’d taken up a career as a dop-tending slave who taught improvisational shuffleboard, he’d been a history professor. There were times he was the only one who understood the strange vocabulary that came out of the program. Dante had an associates degree in Equine Science, but he had never taken to college or the vocabulary that came with it. He could recognize a healthy coronet band or diagnose Streptococcus equi, but he didn’t have much of a formal education.

“Yes,” Regi said. “Alb’s vocation means that she meets many petitioners, not all of whom are comfortable in the cold weather temple. Even Kowri fear the animals sacred to the cold-weather gods.”

Dante assumed that was another veiled suggestion that his fondness for dops made him strange. Knowing he was as out-of-place among the Kowri as he had been in Texas, he worried. He had to impress two women, and that had never been his forte. He assumed that Alb a’Oba would have more sway because of her age. In his family, even when the men were at their misogynistic best, no one ever contradicted his grandmother.

A large Kowri stood in the shadow of the temple entrance, watching as they veered to one side. This part of the sidewalk was empty—only trees rustling overhead in the lazy wind made any sound. Dante would call it a perfect day, but the stares of the Kowri on the main walk behind him still bored into his back. Luckily the path followed the curve of the temple, giving Dante at least an illusion they were alone. “What exactly does an exalted of writing do?” Dante asked, more to distract himself than out of any curiosity about what an alien priestess might have on her agenda.

“Largely, she writes,” Regi said without an ounce of sarcasm.

Dante blinked, waiting for the follow up joke, but it didn’t come. “I had guessed that much. But on my world there are different forms of writing. A person might make up fiction stories or write about news events.” Dante would remember more genres if he were a reader. But in his defense, his childhood is largely consisted of trying to escape the house, which usually meant on horseback and horseback was not a great place for reading.

“An exalted of Oba might write in any format, but he or she has written so well that the goddess has noticed. However, their most sacred duty comes at death.”

“That sounds vaguely morbid. What can they do at death?” Dante braced himself, half prepared to hear some ending worthy of a horror movie.

“Over the course of a lifetime, the exalted will be sought out by many who wish for their stories to be told. The exalted writes each one, sometimes even using a person's own words as if stepping into that person’s life. Those writings are sacred and kept in close confidence until the exalted dies. Then all of their sacred writings are published and millions of Kowri will have access to life stories that would otherwise pass into obscurity. For the common Kowri who attempt to stay as far away from the gods as they can, that is seen as a form of immortality.”

“Do your people not believe that the soul is immortal?” Dante always felt like something happened after a person died. If not, then the universe put a lot of effort into teaching people only to throw those lessons away at the point of death.

“My people are unsure. Do huumans believe in the afterlife?”

Dante smiled at Regi’s attempt to emulate a Texas drawl every time he said ‘human.’ “Most do. Plenty are unsure, and some are firmly convinced that death is just the end. Mostly I figure I’m not smart enough to know the truth, so I say out of the debate.” Up until Dante had announced his sexual orientation, his agnosticism had been the family scandal. “Are the writings always held in confidence? What if someone describes a murder he committed or wants to commit? What if someone brags about all the plans he’s put in place to kill his wife?”

Regi’s discomfort was clear in his expression. After a long pause, he said, “We must trust the gods to sort such matters.”

Dante didn’t trust that answer when it came out of priests, and he really didn’t when it came from aliens. “You yourself said that the gods are so large that seeing an individual Kowri is like trying to spot a grain of sand.”

“It would be closer to a pebble. After all, the gods can perceive us and our differences just as we can differentiate hues and shapes of pebbles if we focus our attention.”

Dante imagined enormous creatures on their hands and knees, staring down into the world until they could differentiate a Regi shaped pebble from a Dante shaped one. “The gods must have some bad backs,” he muttered before taking a breath. “The gods aren’t going to step in if a Kowri-shaped pebble shares a murder plot. Doesn't that mean that the exalted have an obligation to do it instead?”

“You assume that the gods have no ability to mediate such a conflict, but I assure you, they can. More than one exalted who had taken a story of particular interest was overcome by more bad luck than he or she could survive. At which point, the writings were made public.”

So the god of writing killed her own priests to make stories public. Perhaps Regi thought that made his people sound reasonable, but it didn’t. “What if the gods weren’t looking at that pebble at that exact moment? When do exalteds have an obligation to protect an innocent person if they find out something is going to happen?”

Regi touched his temple. “That is not our way.” The man was too polite to accuse Dante of being an asshole, but he was probably thinking it. However, Dante could not control his own disgust.

“Your way sucks.”

Regi's ears flattened. It was not difficult to interpret that expression. In fact, Dante's horse had leveled that expression on him more than once. And just like when his horse had done it, Dante got the impression he was about to get kicked.

“I don't mean to be disrespectful,” Dante said in his most conciliatory tone. He cursed himself for being so fucking incapable of getting control of his own emotions.

“You are disrespecting the gods,” Regi said in a factual tone that made the condemnation somehow worse.

Dante took a deep breath. “I lost my mother when I was fairly young.” Dante swallowed the emotions that threatened to spill over. He generally refused to talk about his past. At one point, his father had wanted him to trot the family history out for some reporter. His father had learned to regret using Dante in his political machinations.

Regi stopped and openly studied Dante. “I am sorry you had to carry that burden so young. The loss of a parent is a particularly difficult trauma for children to navigate.”

“Yeah, it is.” Dark laughter bubbled up inside, but Dante swallowed it. If he lost is composure, Regi would call Ean, and Dante could not handle that. “But part of my trauma came from the fact that a priest had good reason to suspect my mother was in danger, and he said nothing.”

“What is a priest? That term does not translate.”

Dante swallowed a near hysterical laugh when he considered all the ways he could define that term. He could corrupt the damn translation technology with his most creative invective. The temptation was there. “A priest is a type of exalted, only without the government powers. They take confession, which means people tell them the bad things they've done, and the priest is supposed to help them work through those sins and learn to be a better person. Theoretically.” In practice, Dante suspected confession was people offloading their guilt so they could go out and be assholes again. He would ever express that particular sentiment in front of his grandmother because, like all good Southern men, he was terrified of his grandmother. However, he had lost his ability to forgive some sins.

Regi’s ears rose. “The translation device is not providing a translation I understand.”

Dante snorted. The first time he tried talking to someone, his chosen audience couldn’t understand. That was a perfect metaphor for his life. “The man who killed my mother had gone to confession. He had told the priest that he was angry that my mother had rejected him. He hated that she got to have a husband and two children and success while he had nothing.” The irony was that he had been jealous of an illusion. Dante's home had been anything but the happy nuclear family they projected to the outside world.

“I assume your exalteds have the same prohibition against sharing divine stories.”

“Yeah. But if he had chosen to value life over an obligation to a God who probably doesn't even notice him, my mother would still be alive.” The wound was old, but it still festered like strangles abscesses on a sick horse.

“I feel pity and astonishment.”

Dante didn’t know how to feel about someone who openly admitted to the pity. He could read as much in faces when people realized who he was… who is mother had been. However, few admitted it. Dante focused on the second half. “Why are you amazed?”

“I have never read of any culture whose beliefs are so similar to Kowri. And so, I do understand your anger. In theology classes, we learn that the grand dramas that define our lives are a shadow play for the gods. We are encouraged to trust the gods, but accept that we will never understand them.”

Regi sounded like the series of psychologists he’d visited as a kid. None had cured his anger. It hadn't helped that Dante's father had then built a career out of the sympathy he had garnered. His ‘get tough on crime’ platform was not politically different than most Texas politicians, but others didn't have the specter of a dead wife and pictures of crying children to bolster their campaigns. Sometimes Dante wondered if his mother wouldn’t have been happier if she hadn’t stayed a nurse and lived a smaller life.

He cleared his throat. “You keep talking about how strange it is that humans have religious beliefs. You can't tell me that the entire universe is full of atheists except for Kowri.”

Regi wrinkled his nose. “There are different cultures and theories about the soul and the afterlife. However, a belief in tangible gods is rare, and even when a vernal society does hold such beliefs, when they begin to reach into space and find not the heavens, but science, that belief falters.”

That made sense. Dante’s father raged against the loss of traditional beliefs. “My people are in the faltering stage. Some people believe in God, some people believe in different gods, some people believe that there is some great universal force that we can't understand, and more and more people are starting to believe that we are the only beings to watch over our own lives.”

Regi eased into the shadow of a huge tree with arching branches and red flowers. “Where do you fall?” he asked softly.

Dante had spent his youth railing against religion, which explained his father’s willingness to pay for any activities that kept Dante out of the public’s eye. However, Regi had earned more honesty and respect. “I am firmly and entirely agnostic.”

Regi tilted his head. “That translated as a contradiction. It says that you are unquestioningly, questioning.”

Dante laughed. “That seems like a fair interpretation.”

Regi studied him, his ears fully forward. His ears might not have much range, but they did tend to emote rather effectively.

“I’m not smart enough to understand beings large enough to consider us pebbles, so I admit my ignorance. We don’t want to be late.” Dante gestured toward the curving path. If he had to meet with a woman who seemed like the closest this planet got to a Catholic priest, Dante needed some time without Regi’s knowing gaze on him. He was too sharp and Dante felt like he was fraying at the edges. Given the other woman was an exalted of Iloxot, which sounded vaguely like a judge, he needed to get his emotions under control.

He had a job. He had to convince these people that outsiders deserved respect. In a lifetime of running away from problems, Dante had never felt such an intense urge to flee. However, he didn’t have his horse or a bus pass or any other forms of retreat he’d used in the past. So he had to do the one thing he’d always avoided. He had to push through and fix the shit in front of him.