“I… I’m afraid I must confess not understanding,” muttered Cartalis. “So you require a certain number of individuals in order to complete certain aspects of your prayer service.”
Arenya nodded, rubbing her eyes as she leafed through the book Grandmother had brought her. “Yeah. The Blessing of Awareness and a few others.”
“And if you lack this number, you can proceed but with some aspects skipped.”
“Uh huh.”
“And if you proceed, with some aspects skipped, and then another person arrives such that you now have a sucfficiently large number, you may return to the beginning and do those parts which you could not before, but with some slight aspects changed, and they who arrived to complete the grouping is given a particular honor later.”
Arenya hid a smile. “Seems like you get it to me! What part are you not understanding, then?”
“But why, then,” Cartalis exclaimed, “do the Dragon Sages then proceed to discuss, for several pages, the definition of pants!”
Holding back laughter, Arenya replied, “Well, you can only get the special honor at the end if you’re in a fully human form and wearing pants, right? So they need to make sure that it’s unambiguous what that means.”
Arenya was impressed by how well Cartalis was staying awake. To be sure, the dairy meal they’d eaten before wasn’t one that made Arenya as drowsy as one with meat, but even so, this deep into night, it was getting harder for her to keep her eyes open.
Yet, Cartalis seemed as awake and alert as ever. “To what end need they even discuss such a case? Was this meant to tell us that one wearing a dress couldn’t receive the honor?”
Arenya hrmmed, holding back a yawn. “Well... for a 'group', here, only men generally count." Arenya expected some kind of eye-rolling from Cartalis, but she simply nodded. "And while they knew dress standards would change over time, they assumed no man would wear a dress. So it couldn’t be that…” She scanned the small text at the bottom of the page, hoping to find a commentary. “It says here that nowadays it’s understood to mean that you have to have your legs covered down to below your knees. So you can’t be wearing tiny shorts or something like that the honor. Of course those weren’t really a thing back then either, so they wouldn’t need to warn about that…” Nor would I think to wear them to a service anyway. “They... apparently were worried about people arriving to complete the service without any pants or leg coverings at all.”
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Cartalis looked to be holding back an exasperated sigh. “Was this a common occurrence, for people to arrive to serivces entirely naked?”
“Not naked, they had underwear!” Arenya pointed to another commentary on the following page. “It says that here - if they weren’t at least wearing underwear they wouldn’t be allowed into the room, let alone get the honor.”
“Fine. Was this a common occurrence, for people to arrive to services with only underwear? And mayhaps a shirt?”
Tail wagging of its own accord, Arenya held back a giggle. “Probably not. I doubt it ever really came up.”
The fire in Cartalis’ eyes was like that she used for berating her peers for not working, but somehow more… engaged, was the only word that came to mind for Arenya. “Why then devote so much time to an issue of no relevance?”
“Because that’s what they do! That’s what all of this is. They go back and forth, arguing about anything that they can surmise, no matter its importance, because you never know what might end up mattering eventually.”
“I suppose it at least makes marginally more sense than the last chapter. Your deity attacking the vile demon queen by sending a messenger to remove her tail and almost force her to dance naked in front of the court seems even greater lunacy. Yet even so… You find the Mathemagica intolerable but adore this, of all things?”
Arenya found herself with no rebuttal to that. Instead she merely continued to scan the page. “Oh, here they talk about whether a child with no pants can be given the honor! Apparently that’s… more plausible than an adult…”
They both burst out laughing.
“Okay,” gasped Arenya as she desperately tried to catch her breath, “okay, maybe it can be a little ridiculous at points.”
Cartalis’ wide grin made Arenya almost cry from delight. “But you wouldn’t have it any other way, am I right?”
Arenya nodded, reaching for another piece of cheese. For her first Receiving away from home, getting to spend the night with her closest friend and study the worlds of the Elder Dragon Sages together wasn’t quite the same as being in a group of dozens, but she loved each minute all the same. “That’s right. So, then the Teachers say…”