Verse 12: "Contemplation"

After we finished eating the bread rolls, Vivian stood up and began walking towards the other side of town. I followed. As we walked, I thought about everything that I had learned in the past day.
          Mirra was a force that everyone in this world possessed, and it allowed people to both resist and use magic; the fact that everyone except me had some in them innately probably indicated that you needed to be born in this world to get some. 
          From what Vivian and I had talked about, religion and the church at large used to be much more prominent than it was now.
          I shook my head as I remembered the information that Niels had told me. Now that I had nothing to do except think, my mind couldn’t help lingering on the fact that these people believed in a “Savior from Another World.” At least Vivian didn’t believe in the church’s nonsense. As we passed by a group of children playing with a dog in the streets, a thought came to me. 
          If she didn’t believe in what the church had to say, and she agreed that it was full of liars and hypocrites, why had she spared me back in the chapel? I may not have actually been a priest, but I had claimed to be one. I mulled over the thoughts in my mind as we drew near to the edge of Clearwood.
          “Vivian, why did you back off when back at the chapel I told you that I was a priest?” I asked politely. “You’ve made it clear that you consider the church to be full of ‘liars and hypocrites,’ so I’m curious as to why my pleas held any weight with you.”
          Vivian brushed her long and wavy brown hair over her shoulder as she neared the edge of town. She shifted on her feet.
          “I don’t mean to pry; if you’re uncomfortable with my question, I’ll be glad to abandon it.” I really hoped that she wouldn’t take me up on my offer.
          “Shinko, you’re a very strange priest.” She said after a long silence. “I broke into your church, and after I got into the main sanctuary, you never…” She stopped talking again, but kept walking.
          I raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.
          We stood at the edge of Clearwood, where the road through town from the west met the forest path. A thick canopy of trees was before us, blocking the dimming rays of sunlight and making it seem like it was already midnight underneath their leafy boughs.
          “I never what, Vivian?” I asked politely.
          There was a moment of silence.
          “You never accused me.” She said. “You didn’t say that I was a no-good thief. You didn’t say that I was condemning my soul for robbing from the church. You didn’t even call on your god to rain down judgment. You just asked that I spare your life, and then told me about how and why you were a priest.”
          The two of us stood side-by-side as she spoke. Hearing what she said made me even more confused. Hadn’t I done what a priest would do? 
          “You talked to me like I was a person and not some ‘sinner’ that needed to be taught a lesson in fury.” She said calmly as she looked out towards the trees surrounding Clearwood. “And then, you promised not to report me, and asked me to teach you, and…”
          Her voice cracked momentarily, and she breathed in sharply. I said nothing, doing my best to observe her carefully.
          “I-I’m sorry.” She said after catching her breath. “I’ll make it simple.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply again. “I was being irrational, with the knife. I never, I don’t really–I don’t kill people, understand?” She looked at me, her eyes pleading for me to believe her. 
          I nodded.
          “But I saw you, standing there in the cathedral, and your hair was like; it was like an old priest I used to know who was a liar.” Her expression darkened slightly, but she forced herself to continue. “And I felt like I was back there with him, except now I could make him keep his promise. So I put the knife to your throat.”
          I gestured for her to continue as the light of the sun continued to dim.
          “But you didn’t act like him at all. You didn’t act like any other priest I’ve ever known, really.” She visibly relaxed, then turned to look at me. She smiled, with her brown hair in the breeze behind her, her blue eyes looking down at me slightly. 
         As she smiled at me, I felt my chest grow lighter, and for a moment I was breathless.
        “That’s why I’ve been calling you ‘strange.’ It’s almost like you’re not a priest at all.” She turned to look down the forest path again. “And that’s also why I want to keep following you around. You’re different; it doesn’t seem like there’s a facade with you. You genuinely want to help people, and you’re worried about them. You don’t just say that you’re concerned with my soul; you offer to pray for me, and then offer me a place to stay in the church I tried to rob.”
          She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.
          “I don’t know what ‘holy writ’ you’ve been studying to become the way you are, but if the god you’re indebted to has his priests act like how you’ve been acting, maybe that’s a god I can respect.” She shrugged.
          I smiled and nodded at Vivian, even as I felt a pit grow in my stomach. 
          All those things I'd done, I'd done to save my own skin. Those stories and morals, while nice, weren’t mine. I’d basically been parroting what John told me since the moment I arrived in this world. Another thought occurred to me; everything I’d been doing was stuff that John told me was what churchgoers like him should do at the bare minimum. 
          How had Vivian lived her whole life in a world where the church had no one who was willing to do stuff that even I, an atheist, could do with barely any effort?
          “Vivian, are you saying that, in all your years of being alive, you’ve… never met another priest like me?” I asked, sounding concerned.
          She nodded.
          “Yeah. I already said that.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re the greatest priest I’ve met.”
          But I wasn't.
          Perhaps I should’ve been happy. After all, what she said seemed to prove what I had always believed; that the church was full of liars and hypocrites. 
          However, that didn’t actually make me feel good at all. John had assured me that, while there were some hypocrites and liars in the church, there were also good, true believers. I’d taken it for granted that John had been my friend; that I had somehow managed to find a good, true believer to debate with and poke fun at.
          As I looked at Vivian while we stood at the edge of town, the full weight of what she was saying about me being the ‘greatest priest she knew’ dawned on me.
          “Shinko, are you okay?” Vivian’s voice cut through my mental fog and brought me back to reality.
          “Y-yes. Yes, I’m fine.” I shook my head and looked up at her. “What you said about those other priests you’ve met saddens me greatly. I’m… I’m sorry for the sinful actions they’ve done.”
          Vivian smiled again.
          “Thank you, Shinko; but you’re not them. You don’t need to apologize for anything.”
          But I did.
          “Now, do you want to sleep on the top or the bottom?” She walked into the forest, parallel to the path from Clearwood.
          “What do you mean?"
          “I have a little tree that I use as a makeshift base of operations right around here. It’s got two big branches; one’s a little higher than the other. Which one do you want to sleep on?”
          I briefly thought about what would be considered proper.
          “I’d like to sleep on the top branch, if you don’t mind.”
          “That’s perfectly fine.”
          I kept pace behind her until we reached a short and squat tree. She helped me climb up the tree onto a branch that was very near the top of the forest canopy, and once I was somewhat secure in my position, she climbed down to her own branch a little below me and began to sleep.
           I sat there for nearly an hour, contemplating what Vivian had told me, and the information Niels had given me, until the moon was high in the night sky.
          But no matter what I did, I couldn’t fall asleep.

Edited on 09/29/25