Prayer

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

I have sinned against my homeland, I have sinned against my wife, I have broken all the covenants of my faith.

I have sinned against Atlantis.

It started off so well. I was invited into the party, I was finally able to hear and understand everyone. We talked about the best way to govern a city and I, naturally, suggested to the good people of Atlantis that they needed a sovereign. There were a few notes of protest, but I was subsequently told that they do have a ceremonial monarch, oddly called the Prince.

I asked if I could meet him; they told me I could not. I assume this was because I was of a lower rank than most of the… not nobility, but whatever passed for the ruling class in a city that supposedly had no need for a monarch, even if, for all intents and purposes, they had one.

I engaged in other types of small talk. There was talk of women and all of the men spent their time debating the aesthetic and intellectual merits of each one. I was not allowed to participate in the discussion.

Marides hadn't spoken to me since I got back to the main hall. He did, however, keep looking at me sternly. Not angrily, no, but it was as if I had something I needed to do and he was waiting for me to do it. I had a thought about asking him, but I was still very wary of the things I could and could not do while I was here. Translation certainly made it easier to speak, but what I was allowed to speak about, or even if I was allowed to speak at all, was just as if not more confusing than before.

He first spoke to me when the servants brought the food. Plates and plates of food that I had seen, and many more I had not. Rainbow coloured fish, a pig-like creature with two heads glistening brown. Marides waited until I could no longer hide my hunger. He approached me with his arms outstretched as if we were going to embrace, we did not.

"Rupert! Have you been enjoying the conversation? Did you discover anything? I hope everybody is treating you well? Have you seen the food? You must eat. Eat!"

"The food does look very nice, but I don't want to impose. I may have a few canopies, but I really don't want to take too much advantage of your already far too gracious hospitality."

Marides give me a hard slap on the shoulder. "Nonsense! Everyone catering for this party is here because they want to be. They are servants true, but they are treated kindly and fairly. I even invite you to go and ask them. They will not lie."

"That may be so, but I feel like so much attention has been put on my physical features. It pains me to admit this as a man, but I'm starting to feel somewhat sensitive about the issue."

"I only do so because you have been apprehensive. You have said that you love Atlantis and that you've dreamt of being here since you were a child, and yet at every opportunity you have had to become involved in its workings, however small, you have rejected. If you do not actually wish to partake in our culture, then, with all due respect, I have trouble understanding why you are here."

"I don't see how eating until I'm sick is appropriate anthropology work."

"Have you done any work since you arrived, truly?"

I suppose he had me there. My Lord, you know that I have always been a meek and timid soul. Even as a child, I had always considered my inability to form meaningful friendships with other boys to be a trial of faith. I had hoped that one day my faith would be rewarded, but adulthood is a funny thing and as with childhood it's just one thing after the other except, maybe, the things are bigger.

I had refused Marides long enough. I took purposeful strides towards the buffet table and took a handful of everything I could see.

My Lord, it was the greatest food I have ever tasted. It was as if it came from heaven itself. The flavours were the flavours that I were used to. Meat tasted like meat, fish tasted liked fish, but it was like it had been magnified—like my tongue, and only my tongue, had entered a higher plane of existence.

Father, I was as giddy as a school boy. I began to chuckle loudly and skip and spin and dance as if my body was twenty years younger. I grabbed people too and began to spin them, around and around they went with me giggling all the while.

Everyone seemed to view me with a great degree of shame, but I didn't care. Whatever this would've done to me, it had made me happy, free for the first time in my life. Such joy entered my heart that I wanted to be friends with the entire world. Even the servants who, despite Marides assertion that they were happy, began to perk up from their rather stooped and forlorn disposition and began to smile at me too. It seemed like nothing could stop me now.

Oh, how I wished to share this with Marides. Yet, as soon as I started eating the food he was gone.

And this, this is where my foolishness caught up with me. The realisation that I am a stupid, useless, incepted little mortal.

The Prince entered and sat down. He hadn't noticed me yet because the hall was rather large; the bloated, sickly green fish waddled in and sat down. I was still doing my merry dance, and did not notice when he began to speak.

"The eyes are always watching! It is here on the feast of Rigiri, the watcher and the devourer that we must purge sin from our ranks."

Everybody in the room gave around applause and I, noticing a new person in the room, wanted ever so much to greet him so I began to dance, foolishly dance through the crowd towards him.

"As you, my loyal subjects know, I've been away on a diplomatic mission to Mu. It was very successful, thank you. More to the point? What do I find when I get back? But a mouse has slipped through the net? Has partake in the fruits of our labour and our culture and not seen fit to prostrate himself before me. I-"

I had reached the front of the room and was still dancing. My Lord, I forgive the for my stupidity for this is how. I will die I can hear it now. It's… it's swimming and snarling, and good God those eyes!

I danced in front of the prince. In blind ecstasy, I grabbed his hands and tried to triwl him around. I know now that he feigned ignorance, but when he said "What is the meaning of this!?" and his gods approached. I knew that I had done wrong.

But I could not stop.

"I'm just trying to have a little bit of fun? What's wrong with that? It's a soirée, isn't it? A shindig? Who are you to stop me from enjoying myself? I'm enjoying your culture, you pig!"

The Prince's soldiers grabbed me. Four pairs of hands clamped me down and pinned me to the floor.

I recognised one of them.

"General Marides, thank you for bringing this to my attention. It seems like an Atlantean will be spared sacrifice this year. You did well alerting me to this ape's existence. You were right to fatten him up too, good move. What a fool! Thinking he can partake in Atlantis and not suffer the consequences. Take him!"

I begged and pleaded with them as they dragged me down the corridor that I had once walked. The beautiful glass corridor, and at the end a giant well.

"Marides, please!" None of the soldiers said anything, but I caught under the breath of Marides. "Flithy ape."

They led me to the hole and forced me to look down into it, it was then that I saw.

The Rigari.

A giant, octopus like creature with one giant eye and a maw of jagged teeth that seemed to smile at me. When it finally opened its eyes and looked at me, it projected into my mind and image of hell. Burning, stabbing, brutalising torture I felt through every part of my body. I tried to turn around and fight the soldiers, I really did, but my Lord am I pathetic.

They pushed me down and I landed with a thud. It's been chipping away at the cave I landed in. The walls are so thin, I can hear it snarling. My flesh is burning. Please, make it stop! It was all a life! Everything has been a lie! The dream, my ambitions, my life.

Oh God, it's coming. The eye… it sees me, it knows me…

I am forsaken.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice.

Rejoice.

And again, I say rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I-