Shriving
I've jumped on the bandwagon and started writing from prompts, supplied by the denizens of #maelfroth. First off is Shriving, from RuBecSo. Absolutely full of headspace, and contains some minor spoilers regarding King’s Stoke.
Alan wonders what the Highborn do when they’ve committed an unvirtuous act. Moreso than any other nation, he knows they are obsessed with the worth of their actions. So what happens if - when - they slip up? Doesn’t the sin weigh on their souls? Doesn’t Cardinal Jared (he thinks, as the wagon passes another huddle of refugees) feel the tremendous burden of guilt for losing the Suns’ greatest treasure: their home?
Despite the time he’s spent in Highguard, there’s a lot he doesn’t know about how they think and act.
Neither of the two Highborn cardinals he knows seems to give much thought to repentance. Alan can’t imagine Jared going to the wicker man, no matter that he was the one to abandon the chapterhouse. Perhaps he took some other punishment upon himself. The friar wonders: does taking care of the Suns count? and allows himself a wry smile.
The self-assured Asher is a different story. He has witnessed the friar perform a service of shriving - the most fundamental act of penitence - and he had no idea what was going on. He should know (and the thought comes reluctantly to Alan, but he cannot escape it) that you can’t keep your guilt bottled up forever. Should know that the weight of contrition might wreck your mind as well as your soul. Should know that, as the old saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved.
That is what shriving is, pure and simple. Except, of course, that it’s not simple. Neither is it pure.
Alan is supposed to be a Virtuous man, and perhaps he is - he’s done a good deal to further the cause of Loyalty, and has been accepted by at least his own congregation and Assembly. But he’s not certain. Since he was first ordained into the faith, people have been asking him to share their own sins, and he must bear responsibility for what they have done. Besides... he’s committed sins enough against Wisdom, and (he glances up at the woman on the seat of the wagon) many more against Pride. It’s more than one soul, even the supposedly unsullied soul of a friar, can bear. Who does a priest go to for confessing his own sins?
He goes to someone who will - who must - share in others’ guilt not because her soul is pure but because it is damned. Someone who, while she lives, is a danger to herself and others; and when she dies will sink her sins and all those she has taken upon herself forever in the Labyrinth, and perhaps the village will be better for it. And that is her repentance.
Even so he has never dared look on her soul and find out what it really holds. He could, but he never has. He supposes that will change soon enough, when the Solstice comes and he will guide her into the Labyrinth...
He thinks: when is the last time that a Vision was enough to kill?
Alan wonders what the Highborn do when they’ve committed an unvirtuous act. Moreso than any other nation, he knows they are obsessed with the worth of their actions. So what happens if - when - they slip up? Doesn’t the sin weigh on their souls? Doesn’t Cardinal Jared (he thinks, as the wagon passes another huddle of refugees) feel the tremendous burden of guilt for losing the Suns’ greatest treasure: their home?
Despite the time he’s spent in Highguard, there’s a lot he doesn’t know about how they think and act.
Neither of the two Highborn cardinals he knows seems to give much thought to repentance. Alan can’t imagine Jared going to the wicker man, no matter that he was the one to abandon the chapterhouse. Perhaps he took some other punishment upon himself. The friar wonders: does taking care of the Suns count? and allows himself a wry smile.
The self-assured Asher is a different story. He has witnessed the friar perform a service of shriving - the most fundamental act of penitence - and he had no idea what was going on. He should know (and the thought comes reluctantly to Alan, but he cannot escape it) that you can’t keep your guilt bottled up forever. Should know that the weight of contrition might wreck your mind as well as your soul. Should know that, as the old saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved.
That is what shriving is, pure and simple. Except, of course, that it’s not simple. Neither is it pure.
Alan is supposed to be a Virtuous man, and perhaps he is - he’s done a good deal to further the cause of Loyalty, and has been accepted by at least his own congregation and Assembly. But he’s not certain. Since he was first ordained into the faith, people have been asking him to share their own sins, and he must bear responsibility for what they have done. Besides... he’s committed sins enough against Wisdom, and (he glances up at the woman on the seat of the wagon) many more against Pride. It’s more than one soul, even the supposedly unsullied soul of a friar, can bear. Who does a priest go to for confessing his own sins?
He goes to someone who will - who must - share in others’ guilt not because her soul is pure but because it is damned. Someone who, while she lives, is a danger to herself and others; and when she dies will sink her sins and all those she has taken upon herself forever in the Labyrinth, and perhaps the village will be better for it. And that is her repentance.
Even so he has never dared look on her soul and find out what it really holds. He could, but he never has. He supposes that will change soon enough, when the Solstice comes and he will guide her into the Labyrinth...
He thinks: when is the last time that a Vision was enough to kill?