[Worship] zanarkand. [tw]

[Eik]

The gods have been on his mind. He thinks of them indirectly, the way you would toy with the edge of a ripped seam. He knows why but he is too wary to say it out loud, to wary to think it even, lest the thought flies away, up out of his control. Thoughts left unchecked tend to do that.

(Come close and I will whisper your why: He is afraid.)

But he's found you can think things without thinking them, and feel things without feeling them, and this not feeling haunts him. It darkens his dreams and slowly steals the life from him. So it is not thinking that leads him across the sands of the Mors and to the base of Veneror peak.

As always it feels good to move, to be reminded of his strength, and so he vaults up the mountain at a mighty pace, bounding like a mountain goat up the worn path. As he rises, the air thins and quiet thickens. No sounds but the whistle of the chill air and the clatter of his steps and the thrum of his heartbeat in his ears. He has the sensation that he is staying in the same place and it is the world that is descending, but he shakes the thought away. Pesky thing.

Instead he thinks of his gods and the way he once worshiped them. He never spoke to them, never prayed or lit candles. His people, they worshiped with their bodies and their blood. Fighting, loving, childbirth. Continuing the cycle was how they showed their gratitude for life. Their gods did not have names, but it did not mean that they were not there. Until the day it did.

Where did you go? Is his mantra as he nears the summit. Where did you go...

When he finally stops, his sides heave and his breaths steam into the chilly evening. Before him is the cathedral of gods that are not his, but they are not so unfamiliar. He does not think they are so fond of him, these strange gods, and he cannot say he is particularly swayed by them. For aren't they all just pieces in a circle that spins round and round, and wouldn't life keep spinning without them?

His thoughts drift toward the dangerously sacrilegious and he draws them back in. Again this up and down, this back and forth. On the surface he does not  know why he is here, but deep down, in the place where you know without knowing, feel without feeling, there is a deep-seated sense of rightness- there is no place else he could be.

Where did you go

He looks for his old gods in the names and shapes of the new. A deep sadness comes and goes.

Where did you go

Anger rises in its place, hot rage that he hasn't felt in years. That too comes and goes.

The circle keeps spinning. Oriens, Solis, Vespera, Calligo, they all lie silent and still as the stones of their altars. And before them lies an odd creature, like nothing he's seen before. Long eared and lion tailed. She whispers something and without thinking he steps closer, hoping to catch her words, but the wind carries them away. Perhaps it is for the best.

"Do you speak to the gods?" He asks softly, not wanting to break the sacredness of this place. It is not clear if he is aware of the ambiguity in his question. The only expression on his face is uncertainty. Loathe as he is to bother a stranger in a sacred place, the chatter in his mind is overwhelming and he wonders if in her he mind find reprieve. "Forgive me." 

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@Thaleia lordy sorry this is so long -_- I wrote a solo worship thread and then used most of what I wrote to reply to you instead <3