“Plants? You intend to protect your city with plants?”

“Not plants my dear Vaingloth. Thickets.”

“Which are plants are they not?”

“The ones you maybe familiar with? Yes. The ones which I will grow will be a bit more…divine in nature shall we say.”

“Ah, planning ahead. Good. Should you fail to capture your principal target though won’t you be in some additional peril?”

“Oh, it matters not who I can ensnare, any sort of divine energies will serve as the Thicket’s foundation. It’s true supports will be far stronger than the foolish deities we will overthrow.”

– High Accessors Vaingloth and Sasirai comparing notes on their planned domains prior to the Sunfall

So clearly, after the intruder’s departure, I went back to bed, fell instantly asleep and woke refreshed and unbothered in the morning. Also the Holy Tree is a tiny shrub, the Thicket Walls are soft and paper thin, and the Tender Acolytes are very forgiving of people just enjoying a lazy, sleepy morning whenever they feel like.

By the time Mazana’s glow began to rise after the long hours of the night, I wished nothing more than all of that could be true. Wishes, especially impure ones, never come true though. Instead, I was a wreck. A complete and total, sleepless disaster. Summoning every ounce of faith and piety I had, I willed my limbs to lift my dead tired body up and puppeted myself around, being certain to work all the little muscles in my face so that I would look as bright and quietly cheerful as always. 

Mazana’s gifts helped a bit with that. The bump I’d taken to the back of my head hadn’t been anything significant, but I’d healed it anyways just in case it made me flinch at a bad time or something. I didn’t need anyone questioning how I’d hurt my head if it came to light that we’d had an intruder. My healing took a bit of the edge off my fatigue too, but I knew I was going to need to pay that back at some point. Fortunately, I’d been hiding what I was for so long, that being quiet and going through the motions of the faithful so as not to attract attention had become an almost autonomous response.

Hiding my fears had too, which proved to be capable of hiding all the new ones I’d come up with while I spent the long, dark hours driving myself nearly mad with worry.

What if the intruder made good on her promise…no, threat, it definitely wasn’t a promise, promises were things held between people, and I absolutely did not want to see her again.

Which was probably why I had spent hours imagining nothing but that.

Was she going to show up in the prayer chamber again for the morning celebration?

Was she going to show up even earlier in the cleansing chamber? Naked and defenseless was not at all how I wanted to face an adversary, even though I hadn’t exactly been armed and armored when I’d run into her the last time.

She did not interrupt my purification ritual though. 

Nor was she waiting for me in the prayer chamber.

My father was though.

“Blessed morning Jilya,” he said without rising from his obeisance or turning to see that it was me.

“Blessed morning Beloved Father,” I said. Beloved was of course true, since all parents are beloved but I’d wondered for the longest while if he would have preferred a different appellation. Perhaps ‘Dear Father’ or ‘Cherished Father’ or, and this would be sacrilege though I suspected also the most appreciated, “Dad”.

I pushed that thought aside with greater force than usual. I was too tired still to trust myself with dancing anywhere near sacrilege.

It would do you so much good though, my demon said.

She’d been oddly quiet throughout the long night, and to my very great credit I didn’t jump or flinch in the slightest at her renewed presence..

I was thinking, she said. That was an interesting encounter we had last night.

Speaking to a demon was punishable by death. It had to be or the impurity could spread and if our impurity infected the Holy Tree than it would die and so would everyone.

Pfff, we’ve spoken for years now and that overgrown shrub is doing just fine.

That my demon was unimpressed with Holy Mazana spoke to the envy and spite common to all demons.

I suppose the passive aggression is better than those droning, monotonous prayers.

Prayers which I was supposed to be silently offering to Mazana rather than allowing myself to be distracted by the evil I’d been cursed with.

Honestly, she didn’t seem to be evil to me. Distracting, certainly, but if she’d bourne you any malice, she could have done quite a bit of damage and still escaped cleanly I imagine.

That was not a thought I needed to revisit, not after spending so long imagining a variety of different horrible outcomes to my encounter with the graceful catgirl, or worse what might have happened if I hadn’t confronted the intruder.

I also did not need to admit that my demon seemed to be right. She could have been far more violent but she’d chosen to be gentle. When she’d held me, it had been to stop any hostilities between us.

I shuddered at the thought. She’d been close enough to lick me! Well, my palm, which I’d shoved over her mouth. But still. How was Mazana not lighting me on fire for my sins and impurity?

Yes, yes, how indeed?

I redoubled my efforts at prayer which drew an exasperated sigh from my demon. Prayer had held her at bay for years though, and it had kept me pure enough to avoid being thrown beyond the Thicket, so, demonstrably, prayer had a lot going for it.

I could feel my demon’s immense irritation, though, oddly, it didn’t feel like it was directed at me.

I stumbled, mentally, and tried to pick up the prayer I’d been on before I’d allowed myself to be distracted. Maybe it was the fatigue but I wasn’t able to remember where I’d been in it, the memory of words blended together with the thousands of times I’d said them before.

So I started over. No one was going to complain if I spent a little longer on Morning Prayers than normal. It was encouraged that we perform them well, and I’d often given three silent recitations to ensure that. If I only got through two today, no one would notice or even be aware of it.

Not even your overly worshipped shrub.

Her blasphemy shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was such an expected part of my life after all the time I’d been with her that it sort of was?

Helps you not think more about your new friend.

Which, seriously, that was evil. One minute of peace from worrying about the intruder suddenly popping back up to kill me was too much to ask for I guess?

You’re not worried about her popping up to kill you.

All she needed to do was show up and say ‘hi’ to me in front of anyone else, and I was dead, whether she intended to kill me or not.

That’s still not what you’re worried about though.

Before I had a chance to form a proper response to that, my mother entered the payer chamber and tapped my father on the back.

“A special convocation has been called for today,” she whispered to him, loudly enough that Kam, me, and the rest of the family could hear her. “When you are done, tell everyone else.”

“When is the convocation scheduled for?” my father whispered back, again loudly enough for the rest of us to hear.

“Now. They want us to report to the Blueshine Roothall as soon as prayers are done.” My mother sounded agitated though it was hard to tell if that was because we were likely to be late, since we lived at the far end of the Blueshine Roots, or if it was because surprise Convocations rarely were held for anything good.

“No breakfast?” Kam asked at full voice, casting aside the pretense that the whispered conversation had not been intended for us all to hear.

“And no supper if you get called to the Draft early,” my mother said, exposing at least one source of her concern.

A draft call wasn’t usually cause for a special convocation. The troops which guarded Holy Mazana’s root systems from attacks below needed steady replenishment but the steadiness made the replacement drafts somewhat predictable. If the underdwellers had launched a major offensive though?

That wasn’t why they were calling a Convocation.

I knew that and it sent a chill radiating out from my belly.

Probably for the best we weren’t having breakfast.

Or, yeah, definitely for the best! I could claim any sleepiness was from a lack of food! Or I wouldn’t even have to claim it, people would just assume!

I crouched down behind that thought and it sheltered me from my worries about as well as a single blade of grass would have.

They’re not going to catch you. If they knew enough to catch you, they wouldn’t need to call a convocation.

Demons are not supposed to be comforting.

They are not.

So that left me confused and worried.

%#$@!

I couldn’t understand what my demon said, but I knew it wasn’t nice.

“C’mon, let’s not get stuck in the bad seats,” Kam said, committing the blasphemy of nudging me while I was ‘in the middle of prayer’. 

I didn’t bite his foot. I am not a good Sylvan, but I am practiced at being civilized.

In my role of Devout Daughter, I spent another minute ‘finishing up my prayers’. This was by no measure intended to annoy and vex my brother. Annoyance and vexations were merely a happy by-product of keeping up a solid ruse.

“So, early Draft do you think?” he asked as the greater familial unit marched in single file towards the Roothall.

There was no escaping being near him since the two of us were the closest in age among our siblings and cousins. We were probably also the closest in terms of him using me as a shield from his misdeeds coming home to roost, and my feeling a modicum of relief at knowing that of all the people in our family, Kam would never, ever pay enough attention to me to figure out how wrong I was. 

“You’ve got a year still,” I whispered back. I could have ignored him, but that would have led to more questions and more notice from our aunts and uncles. 

“Yeah, but if it’s a big draft they’d take me early right?”

Why he wanted to get drafted early wasn’t a mystery. According to doctrine, those who were called upon to defend Holy Mazana’s depths were given honor and renown for all their days. In Kam’s case however, it was that they were also given first choice of brides and held tremendous social prestige over those who hadn’t served.

He’d shared his visions of his future after his term of service was up, with the only details that changed being exactly which girl had currently caught his fancy that he would pick first (leaving aside the fact that by the time his service was up, they would all have been long since married off) and exactly how many rooms his estate would have (leaving aside the fact that he would likely be given one of the barracks estates an earlier draftee had ‘vacated’ to make his retirement possible).

“If it was that urgent, they would have just drafted you right away,” I said. It wasn’t that I loved to spoil his dreams. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want him to be drafted (though I didn’t, the big idiot deserved better than to die in the service of…)

You’re starting to get it! my demon cheered.

I clamped my jaw shut hard.

I had to be unbelievably tired if I’d put together a thought as blasphemous as that.

A moment later some even more blasphemous words came battering at the back of my teeth when we were stopped and Kam was pulled from our procession.

“Come on, you’re on special duty,” a Tender Acolyte said to him, as they took my big brother away, probably forever.