Working for my local temple is great.

First I get to wake up later than when fishing. I can now laze in my futon till first morning bell. I can take my time having breakfast, taking care of Godzilla and leisurely walk to the temple. Not only is the temple requiring me to show up late but it is also not that far from our house.

An other great perk of the job are the meals. Acolytes get quite the nice food. Not as good as full fledged priests but still far better than what commoners can have. The temple has its own cook, a strange old lizardkin woman that is constantly blabbering. If you ever get in the kitchen be ready to hear the same story about some random event that happened years ago. I didn't dare ask her age or question her sanity but in some of her anecdotes she refers to Patiyar as a “young priessst”...

I also got a nice acolyte robe. The fabric is denser than my old tunic but still a bit rough. The colour is a dull brown but the sleeves have a nice deep blue satin edging. The front is crossed like a judo kimono and a large waist belt helps keeps the whole thing together. Definitively an outfit made for someone sitting at a desk, not working in the fields or sailing upon the river.

With the memory of the monster tide still deeply imprinted in my mind, I decided to keep my dagger with me. To hide it I modified its scabbard so it can be fixed like a holster on my left side, under my robe. It doesn't hinder my movements and is still easy enough to grab in a hurry. I doubt I'll need it anytime soon but just knowing I'll have a weapon with me if another tide ever comes helps.

Some nights I'm still awoken by the sight of Yoli getting quartered by the monster lobster thing. And I'm not the only one: when Gel stays over for the night I can see she wakes up at night from the same kind of nightmares I have. When this happens we just silently share our fears, shouldering the bad memories together lightens the weight of it a bit.

* * * * * *

The bad side of work is that until now I got very little time dedicated to learning.

I was expecting that with my blessing they would focus on teaching me as many things as possible and then have me write all my “gifted” knowledge.

But instead I got to perform menial tasks. Acolytes are used as servants for the temple. Since I'm the youngest and by far, I'm burdened with most of the chores: emptying chamber pots, cleaning rooms, dusting, going for groceries or serving tea. Far from what I expected when joining the temple as a scholar apprentice.

There aren't that many people in our small temple. Patiyar is the oldest and the head priest. From what I've heard he was a follower of Jalea in his early years. Quite unusual for a young man to worship her, unless you are a true believer in justice.

There is a handful of senior priests working under his lead. A retired army veteran is the priest of Dard and tasked with the temple's security, there is a young priestess of Fusaad always busy outside with either curing the sick or preserving food. She is the busiest around here. And finally there is a senior priest of Otik tasked with funerals and, if I am to believe what he says, exorcising ghosts and spirits.

This triumvirat has in turn around ten priests under them, covering almost the whole pantheon. Then comes the acolytes. Those are surprisingly few. Mekas is the oldest of us, there are two other acolyte older than 12 and on their definitive path. If Mekas is going for Shinpilo, one teenager girl is going for Fusaad and a young athletic foreigner is worshipping Husnd in a strange mix of family counselling and martial training. Husnd is the god of war after all.

There are then 5 younger acolytes ranging from 11 to 8 springs old and me, the youngest, with my almost 5 springs old...

Aside from my cleaning duties, I spend most of my time sticking with Mekas. Since he intends to dedicate himself to Shinpilo he is both the one that shares the closest mindset with me and the one happiest to teach me things. W make quite the odd pairing, the youngest an the oldest acolyte together, but whatever works...

He is also one of the few who knows about my blessing. I've never confirmed it with him but he is smart enough to connect the dots and had the elegance to not pry further. I suspect he got some instructions about secrecy on the matter from both High priest Patiyar and Majores Nutusi.

The main job of Mekas is to take care of all copying and daily scribes activities of our temple. For a trivial amount of money he is tasked with writing short letters in stead of the illiterate masses. Another Shinpilo follower will be tasked with the reading on the receiving end if needed. This is a basic postal service but more than welcome for those waiting for news of kins from afar. My grandparents got news from my aunt this way.

When doing his scribe duty the teenagers likes to wear a Shinpiloite shawl hiding his face. He takes a more manly voice and tries to act older than he is, impressing the gullible commoners that request his services.

* * * *

Books are made of quite mediocre paper. Not unlike the paper sheets I bought for my offering. Even so those books would be worth their weight in iron coins on the market. The low quality of the paper and of the ink requires for the books to be copied regularly, every hex years or so.

Only the most important books get to be copied: Religious liturgy books of course but also those on specific branch of knowledges used by some of the priests in their daily work like code of laws or clinical records on diseases.

The temple's ledger don't get this kind of treatment, meaning the civil management is quite lacking. Only blades will have enough money to keep up to date a family tree.

I can now understand how the lack of good material weakens the passing of knowledge even more. Many minor information are lost to the deterioration of time. Although some might look minor at the time in the long run it adds up to slow down the rate of progress. I'll have to see how the scholar's association or the astronomers keep their knowledges in the long term. Maybe things gets better with good paper?

All this is coming down to the monopoly on paper that the Beastkin empire has. They have large forests on the other side of the mountain and are keeping the technique secret. There are trade agreements asserting their monopoly and both them and the rulers are making a lot of money out of this trade.

Harvesting wood is a dangerous business. One has to have lumberjacks go into monster infested forests. No one knows how the Beastkins manage to make it profitable.

When I'm done with my duties I always try to find Mekas before the other acolytes can find me and bully me by dumping their chores on me.

He doesn't asks me to perform his duties and I get to watch him writing. He doesn't mind when I ask him to teach me the words he is drawing.

I'm not sure if it is a side effect of the blessing but I believe my memory got better. This is the only thing that feels different for now. I didn't feel the burn around my right eye any more and when I watched my reflection in water I could confirm there was no noticeable mark left.

Now, even without writing down the words he is teaching me, I usually am able to memorize them by the third time they show up. Because he gets to copy texts on various subjects my vocabulary expanded drastically: I'm starting to be able to read common scrolls.

This is still far from what I was expecting. Probably because I still seem too young in the eyes of my superiors. I can abide with that and lay low for some time as long as I can keep learning to read and write. But if Mekas was to get assigned elsewhere things could stall quickly for me so I have to make the most of it right now.

Peterell took my leave quite stoically. When I announced him that I would go work for the temple by the end of the week he just congratulated me and did not try to know how I managed to get in. It is hard to read him so I don't know if he just doesn't care or respects my secrets?

He didn't lack for workforce for long as my position was quickly taken over by someone else. Melodi and Gelcaria took my stead, both were already familiarized with the job, knew how to swim and had a strange knack for attracting preys into their nets.

I even suspect Peterell to be happier to work with his daughter than with me. I'm more surprised that he came to term with working alongside Gelcaria.

I did not forget that as a follower of Amidea he was quite upset with her initially. Between his daughter's plea and the bountiful catches, money talked and was stronger than religious bias in the end.

Of course Balout and Melodi were surprised as to how I managed to afford entry in the temple's ranks. I had to make a lie about hoarding money from work, blood money from grandpa's death and the fact that I was smart. Gelcaria is the only one to truly know what happened but is smart enough to keep her lips sealed. This is our little secret.

* * * * *

I've managed to put up some weight and height in a growth spur since I joined the temple. The better food is the source of it. Our lizard cook, Sansho, took a liking to me.

She is quite easy to read as her scales change colour with her mood.

Her physiology is really different from ours. She is poikilothermic. Meaning she depends on room temperature for her metabolism. Whenever it is cold outside she gets confined in her kitchen, near the oven to stay active. Only when the air is warm enough and the sun hitting on us would she go out. So she has to rely on the acolytes for groceries and so far I've been both diligent and honest with money handling which is what earned me her favours.

“Ssso sssmal, come here and eat thisss you ssscrawny sssthing.” Would she often say, grabbing me to shove some fried bunta down my throat. Her cooking is heavy with foreign spices and the honey-jam thing. When I asked her where she hailed from her scales turned a bright yellow before she muttered something about the southern archipelagos and how she was bought by the temple hexes ago.

When the end of the year festival arrived I couldn't feast with my family. I was instead busy at the temple helping around before each ceremony and with more chores than ever to do because the older acolytes were requested by the senior priests to help them in their ceremonies.

I tried praying at Shinpilo's shrine on daynight. I was eager to learn more about them or get some precisions about what was expected of me. But my prayers weren't answered.

I was a bit sad to not be able to share the end of the year celebration with my family but Sansho made sure to make it up to me by outdoing herself in the kitchen. I do not have a clear understanding of the depth of the temple's coffers but at least I know she has access to more than one delicacy and all the spices one can dream off.

The wealth of the temple got even more concrete when Nutusi gave me a textbook on her first monthly check. So much paper was worth a lot. I was to give it back once filled with “Shinpilo's knowledge” but still, entrusting a kid with so much money was surprising. I wasn't given any deadline. Which sits well by me but is also a bit disappointing, it means they still see me as a child and do not expect much from me yet.

I ripped a few pages out of it. Some were sold back at the bazaar to refill my hoard and the rest I gave them to my squad. They are free to either sell it or use it for writing.

I managed to keep in touch with the three of them. On each 8th day of the week we will find a way to meet up. There I can share whatever I learned during the week. I try to focus on the most useful ideograms to not overload them, plus I believe that at some point my alphabet will prevail. The rest of the time I share what I can about history, geography and sciences. Balout is slowly becoming my best student, especially now that we can dive into physics.

This is both numbers in which he excels AND understanding the world surrounding us. Being able to understand buoyancy or the trajectory of a thrown arrow delighted him more than what a healthy kid his age should be but I'm glad I found someone that can appreciate my knowledge for what it's worth.

During spring I tried to introduce Mekas to the decimal system and the notion of zero.

He didn't get it. “What's the use of writing nothing? It is a waste of good paper?” he blurted.

I tried to explain how in the long run it helps to manipulate great numbers more easily and write them on less space.

I hit the wall of religious belief here. Despite being a worshipper of knowledge he was stumbling on the need to have the “holy hexadecimal numbers”. I could see the fear of heresy in his eyes and only the fact that I am a blessed one from the god he worships saved me from a report.

In the end he brushed away the idea as a kid's nonsense.

I didn't insist, there is no need to antagonize him. I introduced him to alphabet instead.

This was more warmly welcomed. Although he understood the utility of diffusing and reading new words without the need of someone to teach them, he didn't grasp the fact that it was simple to the point that we could teach more people how to read and write.

“What use would a farmer or a smith have for reading? It would just take away our scribing activity.” He rebuked me while mechanically stroking his chin and stubble with his lanky hands.It was quite disturbing to see such feminines hands brushing against his teenager's shadow of a beard. “Plus commoners won't have the time to learn this, nor the money. Who would teach them? Us? At the temple? This makes no sense. I write, they grow crops or smith or whatever, that's how the world is supposed to be.” He concluded.

I tried to introduce the notion of school or at least classes but was laughed at. Those were exclusively for blades and higher up only, who could afford a preceptor not for commoners.

This left me in low spirits. If even a young scholar like him was hermetic to the idea, how would I be able to introduce it to older scholars? Would I be able to leverage my blessing to brute force the notion of universal education in this rigid society? I start to fear the height of the resistance I'll have to face. And this was just for writing and counting. What will it be if I want to implement the metric system or electricity? Or change how they consider stars and such?

But when I meet back with Gel and the others it restores my faith: they are the examples in the flesh that even commoners can grasp my modern notions, ready to break through new horizons.

If the higher ups aren't ready for the change, I'll just have to start from the bottom. The young generation growing around me will prove that our way to do things is just better.