To,
Damien Oziah,
Second Year Student,
Due to your recent misconduct in the Academic premises, you are to serve a week of community service at the Central Church along with your accomplice, Caleb Amadeus Beirne. Please contact your Religious Studies teacher for further details.
The Secretary,
Eruditus Academy
* * *
"I genuinely can't imagine being your accomplice. That was a horrible choice of words," Nathan said, flipping through the letter again. He'd read it about a thousand times and he still couldn't bring himself to believe it. Community service. At a Church. With a capitalized C.
Caleb didn't answer. He hadn't spoken the entire carriage ride, wasn't moving, wasn't even breathing in Nathan's direction, even though they were sitting right next to each other.
"Fine, be boring," Nathan said, reading over the letter again.
A letter sent for disciplinary issues. What had he come to? He'd never been a particularly outstanding student, sure, but he was never bad. And certainly never bad enough to be sent to mandatory religious community service where he would no doubt be harped on about some kind of twisted, moral propaganda.
Gods, he really, really didn't want to do this. Would it be safe to jump out of a moving carriage?
How fast was it even going? 20 kilometers per hour? And why did it feel like he'd been on this carriage for almost an hour?
Nathan looked out the carriage window. There were two tiny curtains draping across it, which Nathan pushed aside in favour of sticking his hand out and ignoring every traffic safety lesson he had been taught since kindergarten.
The letter nested in the space between himself and Caleb, tucked in his hand. The queen had received it first, and when she had called him to her room again, Nathan had expected to be scolded, but she had just looked sad.
("Son, is there anything you refrain from telling me?"
Nathan hadn't known what she expected him to say other than, "No, mother.")
They passed by several streets, and Nathan couldn't recognize any of them. The wind rushed at his outstretched palm and between his fingers. A nice feeling, sure, but his dry skin did feel like it was going to crack, so Nathan pulled his hand back, letting it rest on the window sill instead.
A colourful little flutter of wings caught his attention as a butterfly alighted right beside his hand on the windowsill, seemingly uncaring of the carriage's speed and rattling.
"Hey, little guy," Nathan said quietly. The butterfly did an open-close of its wings without attempting to fly.
The patterns on its wings were strange— white near the body of the insect, dispersing outward in veins against a black background, and ultimately meeting in a white border on the outer edge of the wings.
"Have you seen a praying mantis anywhere?" Nathan asked the butterfly. He was almost disappointed when it didn't answer.
"Apparently you don't do pest control well-enough." Nathan leaned his head against the wall of the carriage before leaning back at the sheer amount of turbulence the vehicle went through. "If you do see her, can you—"
In one flap of wings, the butterfly was gone.
"—never mind." Nathan sighed, removing his hand from the windowsill and looking over at Caleb again. At some point, Caleb, too, had turned towards his own window.
"Hey," Nathan said, again, for some reason. "You there? You alive?"
Caleb didn't respond, so Nathan tried leaning forward and waving in front of his face. Caleb swatted his hand away. "Do not bother me. I have no interest in conversing with you."
Nathan cocked his head. "Aww, why not?"
Caleb glared. "I do not associate with those who have not yet outgrown imaginary friends."
"Imaginary— What, the butterfly?" Nathan huffed. "I wasn't talking to an imaginary friend. Hell, I wish there was a non zero chance of an insect comprehending and responding to me. But alas! We don't live in an ideal world."
"You are ridiculous," Caleb decided, looking back out the window.
"No, you're ridiculous," Nathan said, watching the wind carry over a little gift and deposit it onto Caleb's head. "I'm not the one with a magenta flower on top of my head."
Caleb startled, rushing to get rid of the flower and missing it by several inches. Nathan snorted, reaching to pick it off, when his arm was rudely cut off by Caleb striking it down.
"Leave. It. Be," he hissed.
Nathan's eyes flicked up at the very vibrant and very pink flower and then back down to Caleb. "You sure, buddy? It's ruining your aesthetic."
Caleb narrowed his eyes.
After enduring another fifteen seconds of Caleb's glaring, Nathan sighed and held his hands up in surrender. "Gods, alright, I won't— I don't even know what you don't want me to do. I won't touch that flower, I guess?"
"You will not lay a hand on me at all."
Nathan raised an eyebrow. "You know, I'm not the one usually going around grabbing people's collars."
Caleb's eyes widened for just a fraction of a second. Then he hmph-ed and very pointedly looked back out the window.
Nathan rolled his eyes. "Hypocrite."
At that impeccable moment, the carriage screeched to a halt. Nathan would have fallen face-first into the seat in front of him if he hadn't grabbed the windowsill. His eyes darted towards Caleb, who looked unruffled as a mannequin, and wondered if inertia just worked differently for different people.
"We've arrived!" the driver called out. Before Nathan could even open his mouth, Caleb flung open the door and walked off.
Nathan sat still for a moment, hands still gripping the windowsill. A sickeningly saccharine odour rushed in from the door Caleb had left open, spreading through the air. It was just a tinge nauseating, and Nathan decided not to breathe too deeply for the time he was here. He didn't want to give himself a migraine.
When he finally exited the carriage, he found a very impatient Caleb waiting to his side with an armload of manuscripts in his hand. They looked strangely familiar, but Nathan couldn't quite figure out where he had seen them before. Hey, wait— were those the Commandments he had to copy for the detention?
Nathan's train of thought was cut off by the driver of the carriage emerging from the back and handing him another shitload of manuscripts. "Um, thank you?"
"Of course, Your Highness." The driver gave him a quick bow. "Please get these to the High Priest."
The driver hadn't even finished his sentence when Caleb began walking away from them. Nathan hastily thanked the man and then followed.
"You couldn't have waited literally ten seconds?"
Caleb didn't even deem him worthy of a response.
"Fine, be like that."
Where were they even headed to? Caleb seemed to know where he was going, so it would probably be fine to just follow him, right?
The path they were following was a wide one, weathered with use. There were flowerbeds along the sides, and the bushes standing among them were trimmed into...hey, wait a minute.
Nathan caught up with Caleb. "Did you model your garden after this one?"
Caleb didn't answer, but his eye twitched, so Nathan assumed he was right. After taking a closer look, he realized not only were the gardens formatted in the exact same way, Caleb had mimicked the exact pattern in which the flowers grew too. They even had the exact same military-type rows. What were all these people preparing their plant armies for?
A few butterflies fluttered over the flowers, and from afar they looked a little similar to the one that had landed on his hand back at the carriage. Their greyscale wings produced a strange effect when paired with the brightly coloured flowers, but Nathan supposed he had no right to judge.
As they continued walking, where they were headed became clear. It was a massive church, built at a staggering height. Several of the windows were made of stained glass depicting scenes that felt vaguely familiar but ones that Nathan wasn't quite sure he knew.
The garden they were walking around gradually got more and more populated as they approached the building by several people that Nathan could only assume were priests by their...impeccable outfits.
Surely, they could have designed better outfits.
Oh, well.
"Good morning!" A voice spoke up from behind. Nathan flinched hard enough to nearly drop all the manuscripts he was caring. Caleb simply turned around, like he'd been expecting it.
Nathan turned back too and was faced with a girl. She looked to be around the same age as Nathan, and she had a too-wide smile plastered across her face. Her black hair was tied into two neat braids and heavily contrasted her pale skin— white as porcelain. Unlike the other priests he'd seen walking around, this girl was adorned with silver jewellery draped around her neck and shoulders. In her hands was a black blade with intricately carved details that were just barely legible.
The girl nodded to both of them. "Caleb, Damien," she said. Nathan blinked. It was strange to hear that name coming out of someone's mouth rather than simply Your Highness. And she hasn't said it like she didn't know she had to address them by title, either. Did that mean she was allowed to not use titles? Or was that just a religion thing? It was a bit surprising, to say the least.
Caleb nodded back, surprising Nathan even further. "Geraldine."
Geraldine turned towards Nathan expectantly. Shit, was he supposed to nod too? What was with all this nodding, anyway?
Nathan nodded. "Geraldine."
"It's nice of you both to join us today." Geraldine beckoned them to follow her as she began walking into the building. "I'll bring you to my room, you can place the manuscripts there. Then we'll have you don the worship robes and clean the floors." She turned towards them. "I hope you won't mind a little manual labour. I didn't know what else to assign you when the Academy asked me for a suitable punishment."
Caleb nodded. Nathan followed suit and nodded, too. Geraldine nodded to herself.
Seriously, what was with all this nodding?
After several dreadfully awkward moments of walking, they finally reached the actual church premises. It was even larger than Nathan had initially scaled it to be, and looked to be about the same size as the royal palace. Which was absolutely insane. Why was the church so big? The ones he knew from back home had been big, sure, but never this massive.
Geraldine halted, then turned towards the two of them. "Please leave your shoes outside," she said, pointing at a shoe rack. "And once you have done so, step forth."
She smiled at them again, that strange smile that was too wide, too trained. "And with that, I welcome you to the Church of Unity, our humble abode."