Chapter 1: creativity does not belong here

Circumambulation of deities was a core part of life. The caretaker of the temple, on its lonesome in a shrine that housed an obscure, faded god. One could make a critical exegesis of the stories it wrote— recorded ritual rhythms of day, and those blank ones of night, to which seemed to serve no purpose but daily distractions.

 

It was impossible for the caretaker to have no valence with the outside world, even as isolated as they were, most would think. And they would be true.

 

The Caretaker was a role that was passed down. It had only changed beings once in its life, and the human that was currently in the role had been so for quite a few hundred years, or thousands.

 

What made for this selection process? Strength of character, or powerful of endurance? Maybe it was fate. Fate, or luck, winding threads among barefoot feet, stumbling along with the jerky movements of a rookie puppeteer that meandered in thought, that took the way through the forest instead of choosing a path, and ended up as nothing because of it.

 

Inaki couldn’t know. All they needed to do was stay, care, and persist. Would they ever be released from their duty, was a question they burned on flowering candles and dreams of snowy warmth. Who would dare question the divine?

 

But, Inaki thought as they watched an entranced serpent swallowed into blooming wax, a god that said nothing must as well be dead.

 

They dusted off their sleeves, and stood up, scattering carnations that one by one, settled themselves on the snake and gradually inked themselves into scale and flesh.

 

They watched the snake coil into a pile, now looking very much like a pile of misplaced shrubbery, and left.

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Inaki chewed on a piece of grass, their eyes drooping with absentminded drowsiness. The serpent from before had followed them in, and were now making their lap its new nesting place. They watched the snake yawn, showcasing a mouth of tiny teeth seated in a shockingly pink maw.

 

“Harmless, aren’t you,” They murmured, gently stroking a finger among the snake’s flowers, prompting a warning bite on the offending appendage. They chuckled, gave the snake’s snout a quick boop, and leaned backwards onto the soft temple walls, closing their eyes in anticipation of slumber.

Inaki’s home was one surfeit with nature. Much like how a monk would find littered cigarette butts inside their temple incense bowls, Inaki was no stranger to the revulsion that comes with the blasphemy of a god. Nature didn’t mean nature, it meant people and travellers and the lost wandering in, claiming this place as their own, to make pithy maps that were decipherable to none but themselves.

 

They may have had their own complaints, but Inaki was the chosen one after all. Who would mark out a temple as an attraction to pour blind faith into? 

 

Callously living their lives outside of acceptance, these were people that would laugh at the birth of a child, anger at the flames of a witch, and resent the silence of the skies. Inaki didn’t think of them as worthy or worthless, but the values of saints never made them any better.

 

But Inaki would serve them, as they would.

 

Perhaps it was duty that drove them so, but it was more the difference between that led them to give such service.

 

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