The Void and the Shadow: The Church

[feotakahari]

The Church of the Branches is not an old religion--less than thirty years, when the Shadow attacked. Its antecedents, one might say, were the farmers and hunters who considered themselves the “stewards” of this region. They kept the fields fertile and the wild animals culled, everything in balance. Then the farmers went farther and farther into debt, and the factories seemed like the best way to save the local economy. Then the factories shut down, but didn’t bother to clean up all the pollution they dumped. People were angry, but they didn’t know what to do. Father Hayes gave them something to work towards.

Father Hayes said the problem wasn’t technology. It was arrogance and ignorance. The factory owners didn’t know how to be stewards of the land, and didn’t think they needed to know. We could rebuild our community, and sustain ourselves on our own, and we could be an example for other communities, too. So we rebuilt the old fort into a new home, and we lived off of God’s bounty.

My mother was the kind of person who would try anything once. She tried being married and having a kid. Then she didn’t want to be married anymore, so she tried raising me solo in an eco-Christian church. Then she didn’t want to raise me anymore, so she up and left. I don’t know or care where she ended up. Father Hayes was the one who raised me, and I’ll never acknowledge any other parent.

I never asked him where he came from. Perhaps that’s odd, in sixteen years of knowing him, but I never felt like it would help. Whatever he did before he came to our town, the guilt stayed with him like an ache in a once-broken limb. I didn’t think there was any way to heal it without breaking the limb all over again.

I did tell him once that whatever he was so guilty for, I forgave him. He thanked me, but he said that wasn’t up to me to judge.