The sun rose each day on one side of their party and set on the opposite. Even without that guidance, Madrigal knew the way—once they'd left Jian's cave and returned to the wide dirt road that connected Elsinoor with Kesmet, he put on a burst of renewed speed. Jian wanted to ask why they rushed past Kesmet rather than stop for a rest or to renew supplies, but the determined set of her guide's jaw and his hurried stride silenced the query before she could voice it.

Something had happened in Kesmet, that much was clear. What it was, exactly, Jian couldn't hope to guess, but the further they walked on the road south, away from the village of priestesses, the more he seemed to breathe easy.

Not even when they made camp for the night did she bring it up. She and Madrigal would be on the road together for an entire moon cycle—there would be time for her to coax him, if he could be coaxed.

For now, Jian would happily settle for a begrudging respect between them. She could feel Madrigal's impatience; his condescension, even when he held his tongue. He saw her as a weak, fragile child, naive and overconfident. And he also thought her a zealot, that much was clear, even when Jian herself felt at such a loss with her faith that she'd hardly blame Maere if the Creator refused her as an unbeliever, too.

She wanted to tell Madrigal that it wasn't as if she intended to fall on her knees and worship Maere or beg for mercy from an entity who could destroy them as easily as She'd created them. Elsinoor wasn't like Kesmet, with its devout priestesses and fanatical devotion. And Jian had read too many of the old texts to start believing Maere was capable of power yet unseen. But the Creator had given them all life, that much was indisputable, and sustained them with Her plants, and helped them live fulfilling lives through Pathfinding.

"But don't you resent Her telling you what to do?" The topic of Maere seemed to be the only thing Madrigal ever wanted to discuss as they walked. "In Laudonia, we control our own destinies, though we never asked for that. But we had to adapt, when She abandoned us. At least now we have freedom to choose. And your Goddess even chooses partners for people! She shouldn't be telling people who to love. If She gave you a Path where you were partnered with a man you hated, would you be able to accept Her so easily?"

"But Maere never says 'you must marry this person' or 'you must leave this person,'" Jian protested. Not that she'd heard of, anyway. In Elsinoor, there had been a middle-aged man she'd known of who went unpartnered, who had told Jian that as a youth he fancied two different girls. His Pathfinding helped him realize he could never choose between them, so he continued loving both, living in a house of three, raising six children between them. Maere had never forced his hand. Wouldn't an all-knowing Creator dictating his future for him have told him to pick one or the other?

Madrigal scoffed. "If she's implied it, the faithful will make it happen, whether it's what She intended or not."

Jian couldn't voice how she herself had feared such things in the days before her Pathfinding. "But how rare must that be, that no one ever speaks of it? The Elders say that many don't receive the Path they hoped for, but they aren't unhappy with the Path they've been shown. All those girls can't help but hope for a Path where they see a life partner in their future, that's all. Even when less than half of us will see that dream come true."

"Then what if two men want the same woman and don't want to share? What Path would She show them?"

Questions better put to the Creator Herself, Jian thought, rather than a sixteen-year-old girl looking for her own answers! "I don't know. Maybe one of them would see a Path to a different future that'd make him just as happy. After all, we understand there aren't enough men to go around."

"It's the same in Laudonia, but the difference is that everyone has an equal chance."

"How do you mean?"

Madrigal regarded her once again with a look that suggested he thought her hopelessly childish. "Pretend I'm a boy who's just come of marrying age, and there are two women who both like me. I can choose which one I prefer. But if I had been born in your village, I would be sitting around waiting for Maere to tell me which one to marry. How is that fair? What I feel doesn't matter at all."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"That isn't how matchmaking works. They say, in the old texts, that Maere looks into your heart," Jian replied. "She's seen which of the two you'd be happier with, before you even know it for yourself." No one knew for certain if that was true, of course, but the idea seemed easier to accept than one where Maere's matchmaking began and ended with Her alone.

Without warning, the face of the boy in her dream swam back into Jian's memory. Something about him made her chest ache. Could she have been seeing a partner Path, without even knowing it?

Madrigal shook his head. "Completely impossible."

"Then how do you explain the Moment of Clarity?"

"The what?" Madrigal's face scrunched up, as if he'd eaten sour fruit.

"The Moment of Clarity. It's the time in a person's life when they experience, in the waking world, the scene they saw in their Pathfinding vision."

"I've never heard about that."

"It always happens, for as far back as there are records of Pathfinding," Jian said. "The person lives that moment a second time, even if they have to wait years and years for it to happen. What Maere shows us is our future. She already knows it, so by showing it early, we can get there with fewer heartaches. If you know the second girl is the one you'll marry someday, why toy with the feelings of the first? She only helps us see possibilities. The Path can unearth a future we haven't really thought about yet."

For the first time in a discussion about faith, Madrigal didn't have a reply.

"I don't think She decides for us, the way some people believe," Jian said softly. "But I do think She knows the road our lives will take. I think she shows us our Paths to help us accept what will happen, with taking out our frustrations on those around us. And I think She always shows us something we want, even if we don't yet know we want it. Without that guidance, some people would get along fine, as you have. Others, though, would be lost. Look at me—until days ago, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I still don't; not really."

"Bookbinding," he helpfully reminded.

"Maybe I would have been good at that." Jian twisted her skirt in her hands. "And maybe I would have been fine working with textiles, as Mother does. But there's nothing I'm really good at, and there weren't many potential partners for me in the village. My same-age classmates were all girls."

As a man, there would never have been any danger of Madrigal not finding a life partner, maybe with several outings beforehand to help a few single women have children, and settling into a village role doing anything he liked. He didn't understand how things were for the opposite sex. Jian wasn't surprised when he only offered an indifferent shrug. "You might have found someone, or something, if you hadn't been waiting for Maere to tell you first. In Laudonia, the sexes are just as imbalanced, of course. My class was four girls for every boy, and several naris besides that, of course. We even had two naris born with male parts."

"How lucky." In Elsinoor, all the living naris were born looking female. Male parts were incredibly rare. "I suppose you had your choice, then, when you reached marrying age."

"You could say that."

"So then, you chose not to marry? Even with so many girls your age?" In Elsinoor, such a thing was rare, but the Creator still gave Her blessing to those who preferred not to take life partners. She still made sure there were enough children brought to life to sustain the village.

His face closed up unexpectedly. "To the distaste of everyone around me."

Jian wrapped her arms around her knees, staring into the dying fire. "But if it's your choice, as you said, they don't have any right to object, do they?"

Madrigal was silent for a few moments, as if considering his response. "In Laudonia," he said at last, "everything is about coupling. Competition to win the attention of an unmarried man is fierce. For women, it's expected that most will lay with a man to begat children, because they'll never find a life partner. For a man, though, if you don't take a partner, you're not contributing, even if you do lay with women. There are so few of us, that to leave a woman unchosen—or worse, to choose another man—is testament to betrayal. Selfish."

Laudonia sounded awful, yet he still championed its freedom of choice. Jian's head swam just thinking about it. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's terrible that you're made to feel that way."

Madrigal lay back on his bedroll to look up at the stars, and Jian couldn't be sure if he was thinking, or merely concealing his face from her. "Not your fault. And it wasn't always this way, I'm sure. But the more we're obsessed with who will lay with whom, and who will partner with whom, the more disingeuous everyone becomes. It's all about which girls are the prettiest, the most intelligent, and the most dedicated. You don't know who those girls really are, underneath. At some point, I don't even think they do. Every action they've taken, since they were old enough to understand, has been in pursuit of appealing to a man."

"You knew girls like that?"

"In Laudonia, all girls are like that. They can't help it; it's drummed into them since they were small. That's the one thing that makes me think..."

He trailed off. Jian waited, afraid to speak, in case her words disrupted this rare peek into Madrigal's past.

"Makes me think we don't know what we're doing at all," he said at last. "That just maybe things would be better your way. But it's too late for that, now. We're too far gone."