Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance
After the Trial - Part 6

I was really starting to wonder about Tianamet. She wasn’t talking how I expected a goddess to talk and I knew she was scared, horrified and confused, although she was also brave and strong.

“Eleprin!” a woman shouted, running through the crowd. “Eleprin!”

I recognised her as my mother and said, “Mum!” and broke down in tears.

“What happened?” asked Mum, taking hold of me.

“Lishrashic attacked me again and I think Tianamet rescued me but she didn’t know how to use my powers and all these people got killed and Lishrashic’s car went into the river!”

“Are you all right?”

“I killed all these people! What happened to Breeze and Pardnis?”

“They shouldn’t have let a pedophile out with a police escort that protected him but didn’t protect children from him,” said Tianamet, “or put me in this child’s body. Do you even need me to set up bioregulation on a starship?”

“It’s not your fault,” said Mum, lifting me up, “gods aren’t real, idols are just statues, people just made them up to make us feel good. You’re getting too heavy for this!”

“Yoho’s the only real God!” said Tianamet. “Astrigis is, probably was, real but he wasn’t a god and would be horrified if he knew people would worship him.”

Mum pulled me away from her and stared into my eyes and said, “You don’t have powers, you’re an ordinary girl.”

I think Tianamet was too shocked by that to think of an answer.

“You’re not supposed to talk about people’s powers,” I said, more for Tianamet’s benefit, “but that includes identifying hipsickim because if you identify all the hipsickim, people will know who the psychics are. You shouldn’t identify the magi and magises either.”

Mum gave me a very strange look with tears in her eyes and put me down, “You’re getting too heavy,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

“No, where are Breeze and Pardnis?”

Pardnis was dead, I, we’d killed him. Breeze was probably only alive because she was a magis. I think she used her ring to erase a few memories, you probably know better than me because you were driving most the time. I just decided to let you, I didn’t deserve anything else!

How does that make me feel?

I’ve never really thought about it.

You didn’t want to take somebody else’s body, you were meant to be put into a constructed clone who didn’t have her own mind. You don’t like having me in you like a black cloud.

Well what do you want to do about it?

You want me to understand that it isn’t my fault.

Who’s is it then?

Lishrashic’s, Narvis’s, Iandris’s, whoever made Trulism obsessed with Temple Prostitution. It wasn’t like that when you were alive! But you were a Yohoist! All those people who didn’t help me and protected Lishrashic instead. I suppose they should take some of the blame. Breeze’s for putting you in me but you think she has the excuse of youth, inexperience and being manipulated by the Mechanism. The school board for making it impossible to have trials involving Winemakers in this district. The legal system that allows that sort of nonsense.

Yes I did promise to serve Yoho but you can marry a psychic man can’t you, you’ve done it before!

You’d find it easier if I was driving most the time and you want me to choose the psychic man.

Yes I did see that news article.

Yes I do think you should do something about it.

You think we should do something about it.

What can we do though?

Well I suppose that’s a way to start.

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