I sigh.

  It was always such a grating experience to have to respond to my own name being called out.

  “Present!”, I yell.

  I look up towards the ceiling above, with my arms crossed, just waiting for time to pass.

  However, my nerves are needlessly tested a second time.

  “Kenos! You know that we don’t allow capes or coats inside the temple during our prayer sessions! Take that thing off and leave it at the entrance.”

  I can barely hear the snickers that ensue around me.

  What are they worth? What do their jeers amount to? I don’t get why people pay them more attention than pebbles on the roadside.

  Georgios gives me a smile with some pity and understanding hidden behind his features. At least this one has some worth that warrants pause.

  Like me, he too knows that what the priestess just said is nothing but a blatant lie. The adults that come in when we are not here for damn sure don’t need to give up their coats. In fact, I would pay some money to see any priestess try to pry their clothes and property off of their backs. I can predict at least some bruises being the result of that interaction.

  Such a double standard. Why can they do it and I am arbitrarily mandated to give up what is mine?

  I leave my cloak at a wooden post near the entrance and I am left in my linen shirt and skirt. In my mind, I say a silent farewell to my short term friend. Knowing the other people in this hall, I won’t be seeing it again after we get out here again. I can’t be everywhere at once.

  I could have kept it, but that would mean just agreeing to not having the same rights as anyone else. The sacrifice was still worth it, in my mind.

  Near this post, further away from the main group is someone that I hadn’t seen in a few days. Someone of about my own age, but quite tall and with a hair as golden as my own was pitch black.

  Despite my usual uncaring attitude, I actually find myself looking at him again for some reason and like always, he looks like he is in a bad mood. For the one moment between where he notices my attention and I walk past him, he absolutely glares daggers at me, but I just ignore the provocation and keep walking.

  Seriously, doesn’t this guy take a single day off to cool off his attitude?

  Maybe as a result of my previous exchange with Seth, I actually do a quick headcount at the number of Vermillions in the group. I count six. Two girls and four boys.

  All except for one of them are surrounded by either just other boys or a mixed group. The one exception is this one small framed girl with a bowl cut and downcast eyes, surrounded by two taller girls.

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  Wasn’t her name Aporia or something? I only talked with her a few times, often being interrupted by one of her friends.

  No, that wasn’t correct. I never talked to her. She talked to me. She always seemed to have some random question for me for some reason.

  As I walk back to my starting point and lean my back against the wall, I notice from the corner of my eye that she is looking at me. I reply by staring hard at her.

  As always, she acts like the shrinking violet I know her to be.

  The two friends notice and reply to me in kind, but honestly, I am so disappointed at how little she has improved herself, that I can’t even be bothered seeing their valueless faces in front of me. It is almost like being in a dark room and someone just blew out the last small candle you could see.

  Georgios starts getting in front of me with his hands raised and trying to diffuse the situation, when we started to feel the hearth shaking.

  We all struggled a bit to keep our balance for a few seconds and dust started falling on us, but just as easily as it had come, the shaking had vanished.

  “See man? You start glaring at each other and things like this are bound to happen”, Georgios joked.

  Ever the reliable optimist he was.

  For the first time since entering the temple, my lips curve upwards, ever so slightly as I look at him.

  “You have been listening to too many stories at the temple”.

  “Sometimes I wonder why you don’t believe them despite all the other evidence in front of us”, he replied.

  “Very well, I can see that we are all here. Please make a line and let us orderly enter the sanctuary”, the priestess said.

  Once we were inside, we all went to our benches of choice. The wood was worn, lacking proper coloring in many spots and creaking a little with our combined weight.

  The temple’s ceiling wasn’t as high as the entrance’s, but it obviously made up for it with the room’s length. All of its seven windows were of a different color. One was bright red, the second was colored in gentle shade of silver, the third was a violent yellow, the fourth was pitch black onyx yet somehow it managed to let some light in, the fifth was a deep turquoise and the sixth was milky white.

  All six of these windows adorned the sides of the temple, evenly space out, meant to represent the greatest idols that we prayed to. These were called the Divine Stars.

  At the exact center of the ceiling, there was a completely normal window. It had no color whatsoever. This was meant to symbolize the unfiltered light and grace of God, unrestrained and undefined, unlike the Divine Stars.

  Finally, the floor itself was actually painted with a pattern. You could still clearly see it despite the fading that time and the attendees had caused it. The floor was painted the color of charcoal and it was littered with dozen of white spheres wider than a grown man’s fist. These acted as the representation of all the stars in the night sky.

  Besides the actual design of the hall, at the front of temple, where the priestess was now standing, there stood a large replica of our religion’s insignia, a shape that resembled a crown made of six different points, all connected in the middle to a long spike that elevated itself above the rest of the crown. Each of the six main points mirrored the colors of the six windows around us and the central pillar was pure white, like fresh snow.

  As for the person herself, the priestess was wearing long flowing blue and white robes, with a light blue veil partially hiding her features. On her neck rested a necklace with the insignia that was a miniature of the one behind her. She was rather tall, not going to lie. She was a head taller than myself, but I knew that I would probably still grow up a bit in the next few years.

  Soon enough, the prayers began.

  We thanked the Divine Stars that protect our world and we thanked God for having made them and for allowing us to exist.

  “We only exist because of the mercy in God’s heart”, she said.

  Well, that was convenient, I guess.

  “The brightest star in the sky of God’s making pleaded for the chance for humanity to be born”, she recited.

  And we all know how much the stories said that it cost him.

  “His divine essence was taken to create all mortalkind. We are as much his children as we are God’s and we all carry in us a spark of the divine”, she declared.

  Too bad almost no one can do anything with it.

  “But God would not accept this without a counterbalance. Our world itself is a test. We must thrive and survive in it so that the heavens may acknowledge the virtue of our Sacred Ancestor”, she told us.

  And so we with nothing must crawl and claw every day. Nice going.

  “God gave us the tools to achieve this mandate. He gives blessings to the select few and lets us have the strength and the ingenuity to move forward. From dense forests filled with danger, Man has carved out civilization and endured.”

  “And so, we pray for that those among us may carry God’s Divine Providence and be blessed by the Stars in the sky and Heaven that He sustains. May we one day return to it as the single Star that was our Ancestor”, she preached.

  And so we prayed. We bowed our heads and recited our thanks and our desires.

  What did I ask for? Simple. The same thing that I always have.

  That all the prayers in my name would get God’s attention.

  So that I could make the Divine Providence of Heaven notice my purest of yearnings.

  So that I might have what the lucky few are given by unfair birthright.

  Unconsciously, the muscles on my face contract and peel backward, revealing the fangs beneath.

  “I pray for nothing that is dazzling in this world to be beyond my reach”.