Book 1, Verse 30

I considered commenting on how the last time she’d asked me a ‘question’ it had been an excuse to insult me.

I stopped myself from doing it because it wouldn’t be very priestly to dredge it up during the one time she seemed sincere. I sighed; this disguise wasn’t always easy.

“Ask away.”

She nodded and her ears flicked back and forth.

“Why are you treating me like this?” She asked as the birdsong of the morning stirred around us.

Had I insulted her somehow? I suppose that, in my mind, I was rooting for both her and Vivian during their argument; that could come across as being wishy-washy. I hadn’t said anything to insult her out loud, had I?

“If you’ll pardon me for sounding dense, how have I been treating you that makes you ask the question?”

She sat on the grass outside my tent and licked her lips. Her tongue appeared slightly barbed, like the tongue of an actual cat.

“You’ve been… normal, for lack of a better word.” She said calmly.

What did that mean?

“I mean, you’ve all accepted that I’m here and traveling with you. You haven’t even asked what I’m doing with disguising myself. Sure, Vivian and I don’t get along, but it’s because we disagree on something fundamental.” She put her hand to her chin and exhaled thoughtfully. “I haven't had that happen to me before.”

“What do you mean? Nobody’s ever disagreed with you before? You must be a hit at part-er, festivals.” I corrected myself.

Elisa shook her head.

“No; people disagree with me all the time.” She replied. “The conversation goes like this; I say something, someone disagrees with me, I provide an argument, then they say that I’m wrong because I’m a faunid.”

Oh.

Racism.

I was wondering when I’d run into it. Dad had always made it a point in the fantasy settings he wrote to portray believable struggles in them. I suppose the lack of seeing other races might have been a clue, but in my defense I was in a small town in the middle of the woods. It wasn’t meant to stand as an accurate representation of the percentage of people who lived in the kingdom of Mandl.

The kingdom that was founded by Alexander.

Who claimed he was from another world.

I really needed to ask Niels about that later to–

“Hey, are you even listening?!” Elisa said harshly.

Crap.

“I, er…” I turned red. “No. I lost track of anything you said after ‘because I’m a faunid.’ I’m sorry for my inattentiveness.”

Elisa rolled her eyes.

“Humans.” She shook her head. “Anyway, answer the question; why are you treating me normally?”

I could be blunt about it and say that I forgot about asking her stuff because I didn’t care that much about what she had to say.

Though, as I considered saying that, I remembered that she was the one who had helped save my life from the axebane tree. I supposed I really did care about her staying around.

My hand absently wandered to my chest and traced out where the scars were.

What was it John said? Something about kind words being like honey?

“Ms. Elisa, if I’m being honest, I’ve been inundated with information lately. During my travels with my companions, they’ve been revealing new information about the world to me nearly every day. When you saved my life, I’ll admit that I was thankful to not have died.” I tilted my head side to side. “Maybe I haven’t been grateful enough to you.”

I really hadn’t been. I’d treated her the same way I’d treated Niels and Vivian; not that I disrespected them or anything, but Elisa had helped save my life. I chided myself for not expressing my gratitude to her correctly.

I looked at Elisa, intending to continue, then stopped once I saw her face.

She looked shocked; as if she’d witnessed someone die in front of her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Y-yes! What, why on, who made… Why would you say that?!” She was turning red, though I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment, frustration, or anger.

“Because I don’t think I’ve been grateful enough!” I responded.

Elisa’s tail flicked around excitedly behind her.

“W-what? I just told you about how people don’t like me because of who I am, and your first response is to say, ‘sorry for not being grateful enough.’” She looked flustered and sputtered as she kept speaking. “That’s a complete non sequitur!”

“No it’s not; you pointed out that people have been unfair to you before, and I wanted to apologize for being unfair with regards to how you helped save my life and have been consistently providing pain medication to me.” I said quickly. “It’s a logical connection.”

I heard the sound of one of the other tents shuffling, though I didn’t look around to see which one it was.

Elisa made eye contact with me. Her catlike eyes were somewhat mesmerizing as the pupils went from somewhat wide slits to large round circles.

“I’m… I’m going to go now.” She stood up and walked over to her tent quickly.

I watched curiously as she did so, then sighed.

“What was that about?” I heard Niels’ measured voice as he ran his hand over my tent and walked past me towards the campfire that had gone out during the night.

“She told me that sometimes people don’t respect her because she’s a faunid.” I said plainly.

Niels nodded.

“Why should they?” He sounded slightly confused.

My head whipped around as fast as a rocket.

“What the heck do you mean ‘why should they?’ Because she’s a person and can think just as well as you and I can!” I looked at Niels incredulously. “I mean, you saw how she debated with Vivian! They had a good and meaningful debate!”

Niels didn’t look convinced.

“Elisa resorted to ad hominem aggressiveness really quickly though. Plus, Vivian’s not exactly the smartest person out of the three of us.” He said plainly. “It’s not that impressive.”

Wow, had Niels gotten up and decided that he was going to be a horrible person today?

“Niels, why do you sound like you believe that Elisa is somehow inferior to us; the same question applies to Vivian.” I said, doing my best to sound calm.

Niels raised an eyebrow.

“Because they are? I mean, I’m pretty sure your holy writ even supports the idea. After all, the church is constantly touting the inferiority of faunids.” He said plainly.

My jaw dropped.

“What?” He looked at me strangely.

That explained why Elisa was surprised.

Even in my world, I’d accused John of the same sort of thing multiple times. I racked my brain trying to remember what his response had been. When it came to me, I stood up and looked at Niels squarely.

“Listen, Niels, I don’t know who told you that the church supports the mistreatment of faunids, but they’re wrong; the holy writ emphasizes specifically that the message of salvation is to the world; and last I checked faunids exist in ‘the world.’”

Niels looked at me and his eyes went wide.

“Well, it sounds like you really are a strange priest.” Niels said plainly. “I mean, I always thought that, but this really proves it. When we get to Kuzges, we might have to stop and see if what you said is up to their standards.”

“Whose standards?” I said, though I already knew the answer.

“The church pact enforcers.”

Oh. Not quite what I had been expecting, but close enough.