milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(OOM:The world changes.)
There was so much to be done but it was agreed that a small rest would make sense. Not a full night's sleep but some time in a proper bed. Sam's leg was hurting again as he opened the door to his room in the Abhorsen's House and found Milliways staring back at him.

Quickly he steps through for fear it won't be there again, the last time he was here feels a lifetime ago and the weight of the Milliways' Dead is strange. He walks towards fire with a small limp as the lights reflect off his new surcoat of the gold royal towers crossed with the Wallmaker's silver trowel.

Once he sits down, he ends up staring into the fire and trying to get his thoughts in order but he's not sure it will work any better here than at the Abhorsen's House.

(OOC: Open until it scrolls. I've missed him.)

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"More than that. I've been close to dying a lot recently and thought about the peace there but it has its dangers. In my time there are necromancers who spend time in Death. And it wasn't my time to die yet, there's a lot to do,"

He's still figuring out all of it but he can do it. Death terrifies him for many reasons and the idea that this boy finds it just unsettling is worrying.

Many things about Silas are, truthfully, worrying. "I hope you get all of them done," he says serenely. "And live a long life."

"I'm trying to. What do you do in France? Are you a student?"

It seems so long ago that Sam was studying at Somersby but it was only in the last year.

"Yes, I am in secondary school," he agrees, nodding. "I live with my--" here, there is the tiniest pause, "--Parents. But I want to go to university, perhaps in Paris. Or in England."

"What do you want to study?"

He won't ask about the pause, parents can be confusing.

"I don't know yet," he says. "Sometimes I think I would like to study theology."

"That's the study of religion?"

The Charter simply is so there's not really a religion of any sort in the Old Kingdom.

"Yes, religion. I am Catholic, but I haven't studied any other religions from the rest of the world."

"What does being Catholic mean?"

"It is a particular kind of religion," he explains. "A very old one, and somewhat more strict than others. It's hard to explain if you don't have a religion yourself. Do you have a God in the Old Kingdom?"

"No, we have the Charter. How is it strict?"

"There are quite a few things our writings are firm on not doing," he says. "Do not kill, do not put any idols before God, things like that. We believe that our God is the supreme power of the universe."

"Why do they matter? The Charter is there and some things aren't good to do like raise the Dead. But otherwise it simply is. How does your God know when you do something wrong?"

"We believe He is omnipotent. And at the end of your life, you are judged according to what you've done, for good or bad."

"What happens is you're bad?"

This sounds strange to Sam and he's met gods here who don't seem to care that much.

"That...is complex. Perhaps I am not the best to explain it," he says. "But there is a passage that's a good summary. I could find it for you."

"A passage from what? There's a rulebook?"

"No, not as such. It's a book of prayers that have been written down so others can say them later."

"Like a spell book or a book explaining the Charter?"

"Yes," he says, nodding. "Like those."

He leans down to a rat and asks for a book of common prayer, and flips through it to the right page, turning it around for Sameth to read the passage.

As he reads, Sam's eyes widen and he goes rather pale,

"Y.your lord will bring back the Dead?"

Silas blinks for a moment when Sam goes so pale, and glances down at the prayer book. "Yes...? We believe that the body dies, but the spirit will be lifted, moved to a place of rest and life."

"But that's not what it says. The resurrection of the dead part is rather clear."

"Not everything in that is literal," he says. "That's why it's difficult to explain."

"Then why would you use a phrase like that, its not one you use lightly."