Glitch
#452
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2007
- Messages
- 1,800
Hear my prayer, Lady, and remember me. As an acolyte I tended the most beautiful of your shrines and discovered the secret of its reliquary …
Girl steps back, the better to see how the shrine looks. She’s privileged to be keeper of the oldest and greatest of the shrines to the Lady, especially as she’s the youngest and newest of the acolytes, as some of the other girls continually remind her. So it has to be perfect for the ceremony tomorrow. No, it’s well past midnight, the ceremony today. Which is why she’s here, not still in bed. Sleepless with excitement and worry, she couldn’t remember if she’d cleaned one of the butter lamps, so she dressed hurriedly and rushed across to the temple to check.
She had cleaned the ornate copper lamp. But she cleaned it again, and the others, then spent time rearranging them around the jewelled casket – the reliquary – which, for so long, has had sole pride of place beneath the statue of the Lady. The reliquary itself received special attention from her during the day. Above all else, it has to look perfect.
Opinion is divided in the Acolytes’ Hall as to whether Revered Mother will break the reliquary open to split the precious palm-leaf manuscripts it contains – manuscripts the goddess herself wrote, setting out the rules of the Order. If so, the new reliquary being presented tomorrow – today – will hold half the leaves; if not, the new one will stay empty, so won’t be a reliquary at all, only a decorated box. Girl hopes the old reliquary remains sealed. After so many months caring for it, studying every detail of the finely worked silver with its lapis and gold inserts, its sapphires and emeralds, she wants nothing to spoil its perfection.
But the pottery lamp she brought with her is failing. She makes one final, tiny adjustment to a butter lamp’s position, then – as always before leaving the shrine’s enclosure – she kneels and gazes up at the gilded statue. Every other figure portrays the goddess with six arms, usually with the symbols of her six aspects in her six hands. Only in this statue can Girl see any likeness to the Lady, and with the marble evoking silken robes, its beauty and serenity fill her with ever-renewed wonder.
“Thank you, Lady, for entrusting me with this honour,” she whispers, then offers her usual prayers for the monastery and its people, for Sukhbir and others she loves. Then she rises and steps through the gate in the tall railings that surround the shrine, locks the gate, and drops the key chain over her head.
As she emerges from the temple, the lamp’s flame is no more than a red glow. The night is overcast, with no glint of moon or starlight, but in the distance she sees a momentary pale glimmer, a sense of movement relieving the darkness. It’s only when she’s again undressing for bed that she wonders why anyone else would be out there in the middle of the night.
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Looking forward to September's tale, CC