It's perhaps worth mentioning that, while all religions have their idiosyncrasies, Asunism's ways seem to provoke a sense of strangeness akin to panic among those more used to the Avatarine faiths. For instance, all reverends in the Church of the New Circle are men (though they may marry), and all clergy in the Church of the Avatar, both men and women, are expected to be celibate.

"I am Mother Peliom," the priestess said with a warm smile. "Might I ask for your name, Child of Asuna?"

"I'm Vix. Vix Altorelli. And these are my friends from school…"

"I'm pleased to meet all of you. Come. I'll introduce you to my family."

In the faith of my people, temples are almost always run by bond-priests - a married couple who jointly deliver services and who see to the various needs of the community. Many reasons are given for this - for instance, that men and women have slightly different spiritual needs, and those needs are best met by a priest of the same sex. More liberal temples occasionally have same-sex bond-priests, so I'm not clear on how this critique is addressed. More realistically, since most of our congregations are too small to justify full-time clergy, the bond-priest pair can pursue their secular livelihoods without unduly sacrificing their dedication to the temple, since one of them can be there most of the time.

With this requirement in mind, the bond-priest pair almost always lives in a rectory directly adjoining the temple. For the Florian temple we were now visiting, the pair running the Floria temple lived in a modest flat directly upstairs from the temple's entryway - this way, outsiders could visit without trespassing the temple, which would be a slight to Honored Asuna. Also, the tabernacle took up the whole back of the building, floor-to-ceiling, whereas the entrance was just one floor high so a flat could be crammed in above it.

Mother Peliom led us up a cramped staircase, the aroma of savory and spicy cuisine wafting across my nose, the smell of home.

The storm boomed outside, banging an errant shutter and rattling at the windows, raindrops pattering into the windows like crazed locusts. But the inside of the temple was warm and dry, the faint scent of potpourri mingling with that of dinner as we entered the loft's big common room. A big window opened to the tabernacle below, the light of the altar pellucid in the otherwise shadowed expanse. A tasteful floor-table had been situated in front of the window, the places already set.

"Everybody, come greet our guests from the Collegium!"

There were already three people in the loft, a space not much larger than a two-bedroom apartment. Our bond-priests back on Barsoa had a suite half as large as my family's manse, but such profligacy was not in the cards for the bond-priests in Floria. Mother Peliom introduced us to her husband, Father Nesseir, their adult daughter, and their son-in-law. They approached the table at Mother Peliom's and took their places on the host's end of the table, a polished walnut floor table of traditional make. Selenites traditionally eat meals seated upon cushions on the floor. My family had always dined 'Gionian-style' around a trapezoidal ossawood table and tended to by servants.

Father Nesseir stepped forward and acknowledged us with a nod, curiosity alight in his pale gray eyes. He and the priestess were around the same age, perhaps sixty - around the age my nonei and pettu (grandmother and grandfather) were, assuming either was still alive. Their once-dark hair was streaked with silver, though the priest's goatee was still more dark than white.

"Our own little Selenite Shadow," Nesseir said with a chuckle.

"Oh, don't tease her!" Mother Peliom lightly pinched his cheek and chuckled. "Sit down! Everybody please sit down!"

I could only imagine my own nonei having such kind eyes and such a warm laugh - for whatever reason, she'd never come by much when I was young. The bond-priests' daughter, Aldomin was perhaps a decade younger than my own parents - no older than thirty, in any case. Unsurprisingly, all of those present resembled my people, their eyes ranging from smoke-gray to forest-flecked hazel. All of them looked at us expectantly - apprehensively, even. But Priest Nesseir was good at hiding it. "Will you dine with us, my young friends?"

"Thought that's why we were here," Aldo mumbled - not too loud, but Nesseir picked up on it.

"Right you are. Ohrgar, will you ladel out some bowls?"

"Aye, pa," the dark-bearded man said. He caught the priest's look and cleared his throat, switching from Kronojic to Selenite. "I mean, yes father."

"Thank you for inviting us, mother, father," I said, offering a brief bow to each of our hosts. I knelt at one of the unoccupied spots and indicated for the others to do likewise. "It's been a while since I had real Selenite food."

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"Oh? How long have you been in the city, dear?" Peliom asked. She accepted four plates from her son-in-law and whirled about like an experienced server, deftly sliding the four plates balancing generous bowls onto each of our places. She didn't drop a sliver of pepper or spill a drop of sauce.

I sighed, taking in the aroma - stuffed lhotze dumplings in an orange sauce, touf-meal wrapped in grape leaves, and sweet and spicy slow-simmer. A very traditional Selenite meal, indeed, and one I was already salivating over. "Um… its been a bit over two and a half years," I said.

"So young," the daughter, Aldomin, tutted. She patted her belly, and for the first time I noticed that she was visibly pregnant. There was an old but well-maintained crib in the corner of the common room, waiting the days for one of the first true Florian Selenites. "Do you remember much of home?"

"Oh, yes! I was seven and a bit…" I counted on my fingers. "Seven years and twenty-two days when the Lapis-Crowns took my family. I escaped… well sort-of… I got out with help and then got sent to Floria with my friends not so long after."

"The Gionians have done our people a grave injustice - almost as bad as the Kronojis and their mad king," Nesseir grumbled, making a hand gesture that was probably considered rude in Kronoj.

"How's the food, dears?" Peliom asked.

"Ah!" Aldo yelped. He gulped down water and fanned at his tongue, unused to the heat of lakba-peppers. Meanwhile, Mossy was clearly straining to maintain her composure. I shared a look with Mailyn, who shrugged. Of course she could handle her heat.

"The slow-simmer is a bit spicy," Ohrgar warned a bit too late.

In fact, all of it was a bit spicy - a bit spicy. But a bit spicy to a Selenite is very, very spicy to a Gionian, since Gionians don't put more than a hint in their food. For that matter, neither do most Perditans, at least in Floria. It's all seafood with salt and various seasonings, some of them quite strong and distinctive, but none especially spicy.

Apparently, my spice tolerance was ancestral rather than built up over time… I was right at home with the spice. As for Mailyn, I can only imagine that a girl who periodically engulfed herself in magical fire didn't find lakba all that troublesome. It certainly wasn't from her upbringing - the Wext are practically anathema to spice. I shot Aldo a sympathetic look and then demonstrated the proper technique for diluting the slow-simmer's spice: wrap a bit around the base of your fork, spear a dumpling with the tip, and eat them both together for half spice. That was how a real Selenite did it.

"What do you think, Vix?" Mother Peliom asked.

"Smmph…" I blushed at the impropriety and forced myself into Lady Vix mode, swallowing my bite and blotting my lips with my napkin before folding it back onto my lap. "It's very good, Mother Peliom," I said, my voice waxing nostalgic. "It's just like home."

Of course, back home we had a cook, Mrs. Linviella, who was Gionian-Selenite just like us. Thus, only a third of our meals were traditional fare, with the rest either Gionian or whatever Mrs. Linviella thought up with the ingredients at hand. Still, we always had the most traditional of the traditional on the festival days. My eyes went wide. Was it a festival day?

"Is this High Arsale's?" I asked - and, obviously, Aldo snickered because that sounded very much like something else in Perditalog.

"It is," Father Nesseir said levelly. "Perhaps you can lead us through the prayer before dessert?"

That's perhaps another idiosyncrasy of Asunism - we say meal-related prayers like several other faiths, but always after the main meal, generally before dessert. I couldn't tell you why - my suspicion is that, at some point in the distant past, some important person wound up choking over dinner not long after a pre-dinner prayer and, forever after, we have been relegating to delivering our thanks after the iffiest bit of the meal is over…

At some point, I imagine somebody will croak during dessert and we'll have to wait until after that, too… or maybe the tradition's too firmly entrenched by now. I don't know. But I did know the prayer for High Arsale's, along with the prayer for each of the other six holidays. I could even sing the Overture to the Most High for Koh-Eli, though my singing voice has never been better than passable.

I said prayer, we had dessert (abat with cream mangoes), and far sooner than I would have liked, dinner was over. Father Nesseir whispered something to Mother Peliom, and she nodded, beaming from ear to ear.

"I hope you'll join us for worship, Vix," Peliom hummed happily. "It would do wonders for the community, seeing a Collegium student among our number…"

"Um…" I'd just accepted about a dozen extra helpings of flaky, honeyed abat wrapped in butcher's paper to take back and felt a bit odd about turning down such a minor request, but… "I have class until noon every day but Saintsdays." Naturally, the Kronojic Asunists were one of those faiths that hadn't yet adopted to the Saintsday-for-everybody model of the sabbath and still held theirs on Skysday.

"Oh, that's alright," Nesseir said with an avuncular chuckle. "We've got evening services, too. And dinner afterwards."

A hearty, spicy, free Selenite dinner every week? Yes, please! "Yes, please!" I said. "I mean… yes, I can do that!"

"Oh, that's just lovely!" Peliom said with a clap. "Ohrgar, will you be a dear and fetch the carriage for our young friends?"

The priestess's son-in-law took a glance out the west-facing window and sighed. The storm had let up, but it was far from over, small droplets pattering like a thousand tiny footsteps as the worst of the lightning flickered out over Floria Bay. "Yes, mother," he said.

"That's a good lad! And, Vix? I look forward to seeing much more of you! Don't be a stranger!"

"I won't be, Mother Peliom!"

The four of us rode back to the Collegium, the patters of the remaining rain tapping upon the carriage roof. And, as my dinner settled in my belly, I couldn't help but feel that I'd just rekindled a flame that I'd almost forgotten. These were my people and our bonds were stronger than I'd realized. I'd once sworn revenge for a grievous wrong done to an innocent little girl, but over two and a half years, I'd convinced myself that revenge could wait until I was older and stronger…

But my people were here now, and they needed my help, too. I would freely give it for as long as it didn't interfere with becoming a Shadow.