The long table was crowded. Naturally, the headmistress's seat was at the edge of the table. At her side were the older kids, with Metello at her left. Then, the farther it was from Mrs Richardson, the younger the kids were, with both Mrs Masson, the [Housekeeper], and Mrs Sweetsmile, the [Nanny] at the end of the table to help the little ones to eat.

There were thirteen children and, as usual, it was pretty noisy. In the Equality's Orphanage, discipline was not a cardinal value taught as in the Holy Merit Orphanage.

As Mrs Richardson came into view and took her seat, the noise faded a bit.

“Sorry for being a little late. Before we start the meal, I have something to say. This cycle, and for the following cycles, I will not be the one to say the Prayer of Thanks.” Turning to her left toward the future [Acolyte], she added. “Metello will say it for lunch and dinner in the coming months.”

Surprised, the black-haired orphan didn't have a chance to say anything before the youngest of the three bullies, Jack, nine years old, stood up as offended and asked why.

The [Priestess] answered calmly. “He will train to be an [Acolyte], so he needs a little more to show his faith to the gods.”

Metello mumbled for himself.

“It had not been something not to speak of for long.”

The young boy quickly replied, proud of himself.

“I want to be an [Acolyte] too, Madam! I want to say the Prayer of Thanks please!”

“Well, it's a good surprise to see you want to be a god follower Jack. However, I am pretty sure I heard you saying some cycles ago in this same room you'll be an even better [Rogue] than your brother when you'll grow up. I'm a little old but not that much to imagine this kind of thing. Or perhaps, you don't know you can only have one class? Look at you, you're becoming red. Are you getting sick my poor boy ?”

Shameful, he sat back quickly and answered shortly. “No, Madam.”

“If you tell me next month that you still want to say the prayer, we'll see it. But for now, let Metello do it so we can start eating all the good stuff Mrs Masson, Jessie, and Caitlyn made for us.”

Now that she explained it, he remembered that he had to get Prayer of Thanks to level 2 to become a [Acolyte]. He supposed he had to train his blessing more then. He stood up and started to chant. After nine or ten years of saying the prayer twice a cycle, he knew the prayer.

“To all the gods, thank you.

Thank you, Petrus, for the earth beneath our feet.

Thank you, Aqua, for the water we can drink.

Thank you, Aeris, for the air we can breathe.

Thank you, Calor, for the heat in our hearts.

Thank you, Lux, for the beauty in the world.

Thank you, Fulgur, for allowing us to thank the gods.

Thank you, Vegeta, for the plant growth.

Thank you, Anima, for all being healthy.

Thank you, Menta, for clearing our minds.

Thank you, Nihil, for providing space, time, and the system so that all of this is possible.

Thank you, gods and godesses, for being alive.

Thanks!”

Metello felt that the amount of divine power, flowing from his heart to his body before coming back to his heart, was much greater than usual. He was a bit shocked even. If he hadn't been used to saying it for years, he probably would have failed after losing his concentration. Saying the prayer out loud among people was clearly different than only chanting it in his head while following Mrs Richardson.

Then, he sat, and the noise resumed with chatting, laughing, and eating.

“Well done boy.”

“Thank you, Madam.”

Then, Jack's, Carl's and Ben's cheerful voices became louder, starting with the older one, Carl.

“This was the worst Prayer of Thanks I ever heard. I'm sure even baby Anton could do better. Ain't it guys?”

Ben added. “How did you know what I thought Carl? Did you read my mind ?”

And Jack's turn came. “Mind reading is not needed when the truth is so obvious.”

Mrs Richardson spoke once more. “Jack, I thought further about it, and I think you're right. I should let you say the Prayer of Thanks as you wish for it. You will say it for lunch and dinner starting next month.”

Laughing at their once again silenced friend, Ben and Jack mocked him a bit more. “Perhaps we should start calling him saint Jack ?”

“Yes, I think we should.”

“No! I will be a [Rogue] as my brother! I don't wanna to be a prayer teller in a robe! I'll never be a god's follower.”

The headmistress answered with a smirk she couldn't contain more, both at her antics and the boy's use of words. “As you wish Jack, I believe you. But you told me you wanted to be an [Acolyte] a few minutes ago, and I believed you then too. To be sure, you'll say the Prayer of Thanks next month but only for lunches. You'll show us how better than Metello you are. Ben and Carl would say it at dinner in the same month to show us too. For now, stop blabbering nonsense and eat.”

The scene put a smile on Metello's face. In front of him, Jessie had a smile too. In contrast, Carl, Ben, and Jack were arguing to reject the fault on one another. Aside from a little bickering between the twins Marius and Maria about one having taken more beans than the other, the lunch went on noisy and joyful as usual.

Metello had a cooking chore for dinner but nothing before that. He let the dishes washing crew, starring two of the three new prayer boys, clear the table. He went outside with the other kids to sunbathe a bit. He wanted to ask Mrs Richardson if he could use the library to train his prayer, but she had the habit of smoking rolled leaves after eating outside after each meal. He had to wait for a bit.

Next to him, Maria was walking out too, while Jack, Marius, Rob, and Albert ran with a leather ball to play cage ball in the courtyard. The girl whispered to him.

“Will you train your light this afternoon too ?”

“Yes. But It's too small in the broom closet. I'll ask Mrs Richardson if I can do it in the library.”

“OK, I'll come too.”

“What ?”

“I'll come too, I have some books to read.”

“But, you never read after lunch.”

“I want to this cycle.”

Not wanting to argue more as he knew he would lose again, he sat on the bench under the ever sunny sky, a few small patches of high clouds here and there flying all cycle long, almost all year round. The rainy clouds coming from the north were usually pouring so hard on the Windshield Mounts that they were already depleted when they reached Ironholes, on the southern border of these mountains. The rainy days each year could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

“I have a question.”

Maria's voice next to him made him turn away from the sky.

“I won't talk about the [Acolyte] stuff.”

“Don't freak out, sissy. That's not that. I read in a history book this morning something that bothers me. It said that the sun was nearly right up our heads and that we have nearly no shadow near the north pole. They said too that the sun goes down the further we go south. They even explained that this was the reason there is no sun and no light at all in the Everlasting Night. It is so much south that the sun goes under the ground. Is all of that real? Do the sun move like that?”

Metello relaxed at the mention of a familiar question he was asked.

“Oh. The sun thing. I spoke a lot about it with Mrs Richardson some years ago. To be short, yes, that's real. But it's not that the sun moves, it's our point of view that is not the same." He pointed to a tree nearby. "A bit like if you are under the tree or here, you'll have to lift your head or not to see it.”

Waiting a bit, he looked at the pensive little girl. It was a rare sight, and it made him want to tell her another fact about the sun. “What if I told you that there are some [Scholars] saying that, in the distant past, there was an alternation of light and night, with each cycle, all over the world.”

“No! Fucking skeleton balls! You won't trick me like that.” After a few silent seconds, she added. “You're joking right?”

“Haha! I'm not joking. I know it feels unreal. Light coming up and down as if the kingdoms were exiting and entering a tunnel every cycle. The first time I heard about it, I couldn't sleep for a whole cycle.”

“Monsters were forming everywhere when the Everlasting Night came each cycle ?”

“Night would no longer be everlasting, but no. In the story I read, it was said that animals or corpses need to be exposed to the Night for eleven cycles straight to become a monster. That's why eleven is the number of Nox. I asked Mrs Richardson about it, and she told me it was true for the monsters and that for the Sometimes-ending Night, some people think it was the case a long time ago. Perhaps centuries before the two Saint Walls were built. In any case, it's an interesting story.”

“You said it, a long time ago...” After a pause, she asked again. “It's how long ago for the Saint Walls building ?”

“That's 905 years ago zombie-brained. That's the start of the common calendar. That's why we say 905 AW for After the Walls.”

“I knew it, I knew it. You didn't have to call me zombie-brained, you rat mauler.”

“Yes, sorry, sorry.”

It was then that the leather ball hit the bench Maria and Metello were sitting on. It struck the wooden seat strongly, before going under it, bouncing several times noisily, and finally coming out, spinning around hard. He looked up to see Jack's cheerful face when he came to retrieve the ball. Metello knew it was him even before seeing his smile.

“Be more careful next time Jack, please.”

“Yes, sorry Mr god fowoller.”

The apologies were anything but sincere, but hearing the boy say “fowoller” made Metello chuckle. A few moments later, he saw that the headmistress was back inside again, so he stood up to go and talk to her.

“Come Maria. Let's go ask Mrs Richardson if we or I at least can use the library.”

Metello had been granted permission to train his Prayer to Lux in the library. Maria was still arguing to be allowed inside too. Meanwhile, Metello sat alone in the room, for quite a while hopefully.

Maria was a good kid despite her daily use of swear words, but he was used to being alone, or at least in silence, most of the time. These couple of cycles, she had been a bit noisier and a lot stickier than usual. He didn't think about this change as a bad thing, but it was not easy to adapt to it for him. He felt as if they were becoming a bit like friends, not really sure yet. In any case, Metello needed to be alone from time to time, and he was enjoying it now despite the faint noise of the leather ball from outside. He had to focus a bit.

He began to chant. He managed to produce bits of light again. Unfortunately, every time the construct collapsed on itself like earlier. After five tries without much progress, he stopped. He had to think about it one more time.

His cylinder shapes were not really well made. He probably lacked Faith Control, which he supposed was normal at his age. He tried to remember how the Prayer to Lux looked when his headmistress had made it, but he couldn't notice anything new.

Then, he reminded himself of the Prayer to Calor, hoping to get new ideas. He remembered the grain of fire, and little flames growing from the bottom to expand the global mass until it stabilized, the bunch of flames dancing a looping choreography.

“Why did the flames move but not the light ?” Thinking a bit more, he said .“What if it was not static? If there was an invisible movement ?”

He thought about it for several minutes. As he heard Maria was still arguing with the headmistress, he searched in the book on classes he borrowed once more but without success. He was about to resolve himself to wait and ask Mrs Richardson about it when he heard the muffled noise of the leather ball hitting a nearby shutter outside, followed by the angry voice of Mrs Masson. This scene made him visualize again the ball hitting his bench earlier, bouncing and spinning out of the bench's underside before stopping. It gave him an idea.

“Spinning ?”

Metello tried one more time, spinning the divine energy to grow it into the needed shape. The first time he lost control again, but he saw the form he obtained was rounder than before. The second time, it went better. He led the light in circles. The shape grew steadily until a nice 10 cm high and 3 cm thick dim white cylinder, but it didn't stop there. The cylinder was growing more and more. It was almost reaching the ceiling when Metello dismissed it. There was indeed progress.

“I have to make the divine energy expand the radius of the cylinder at some point, and more in the middle if I want to achieve a round shape.”

He went back at it quickly. After several more tries, Metello obtained an unstable roundish shape of dim light. He was happy, but he felt some mental fatigue hit him too. He had never used so much divine energy before.

Metello once measured that a whole Prayer of Status needed 1 point of divine energy. The feeling he got by using divine energy was not really accurate, but he believed his various failed attempts made him spend about once to twice as much energy as Prayer of Status. He requested his short status and looked at it.

Status : Metello Level : 0 Ether : 0 Class : None (none) Stamina 30/30 2/h (regeneration) Divine energy 2,2/39,6 2,6/h (regeneration)

“Wow. I have never been this low on divine energy. No surprise I feel the mental strain.”

For a break, he went to pick the brand new drawing slate, and some chalk to... do the math. He wanted to know how much divine energy it burnt, to be aware if he could try again. But his estimates were too inaccurate to be at use.

As he already had the slate and the chalk in his hands, Metello began to draw. He sketched a nicely made round sphere, curved lines showing it was spinning on itself. A bit below it, he roughed out some fingers, attached to a palm facing up. He was not satisfied with the details of the picture, but he felt it was not that bad of a drawing overall. He looked up from the slate after having finished. He noticed he was still alone.

“Maria had probably not been convincing enough.”

The cycle went on. Maria found the boy again when he went out of the library, and she followed him a lot. It was quickly becoming a habit. Curiously, she didn't much question him, but she put her mouth at work, speaking about everything and nothing.

Sometime later, he helped Mrs Masson and Jessie prepare dinner. He chanted the Prayer of thanks again, and the meal went on as usual. When he requested his status before going to bed, he was pleased to note the amount of divine energy he would have would be enough to train again in the next cycle. It had been a long cycle.