The Grove(126)
The woman showed her the refreshing room, which would have to be shared between her quarters and three others—at least it had a wooden door for true privacy, plus a bathing tub as well as the usual facilities—and the stack of strange, loop-covered fabric that made up the Nightfall version of toweling cloths, then left Saleria to find some rest for the night. The room wasn’t bare-walled; it had been carved in a forest motif, with suncrystals grown in such a way that they formed softly glowing clouds overhead when the control-rune by the door was set for daylight, and became tiny pinpoints of stars when she touched the rune for turning them off.
It was just enough light to see her way out to the corridor, which was lit a little brighter by softly glowing moons set at intervals among the overhead stars. Whoever had grown the crystals had possessed an artisan’s touch. Setting the suncrystals in her bedchamber to be nothing but stars for eight hours, Saleria stripped down to a tunic and undershorts for sleeping clothes. It felt like she was camping in a silhouetted forest, or perhaps in the Grove as it should have been. A comforting thought.
The suncrystals brightening eight hours later woke her from her slumber. Grumbling to herself over how hard the pallets were in the novices’ hall, Saleria slapped her pillow over her head. Voices in the corridor added to the thought she was back in the training temple, until she heard someone laughing and calling out in a foreign language. Eyes popping open, she pulled the pillow from her head and looked around the room.
Convocation! Not the old teaching temple . . . All the Gods and Goddesses are here! Scrambling out of bed, she snatched up her backpack, wrapped a blanket around herself for decency, and hurried to the refreshing room. And had to wait a few minutes until a priestess in an odd red-and-orange-streaked gown came out. The dark-skinned woman smiled at her, bowed with a hand over her chest, and swept the other at the room she had just vacated.
“Thank you so much! Gods bless you,” Saleria told her, slipping inside.
“Ongi etorria,” the woman replied.
Saleria had no idea what that meant, other than that it sounded friendly. Shutting the door, she breathed in the warm, moist air and hurried to make sure there was still enough heat in the spell for the faucets. Plenty of heat, actually. She made a fast bath, grateful to see someone had brought in linen toweling cloths of the kind she was used to, plus jars of soft soap. Trying one of the nubbly cloths spoiled her for the plain-woven ones, though. There was just one clean towel available, with the rest tossed into a laundry bin.
When she emerged, freshly dressed in a proper priest’s gown with her hair braided back out of the way, she met a tabard-clad woman pushing a hovering sled covered in bins and cleaning supplies. The woman greeted her in heavily accented Katani and slipped into the refreshing room to tend to it. Returning to her room, Saleria found a pair of men and a second woman inside, all servants. The men were unbinding a feather-stuffed mattress to lay on top of the stripped bed, while the woman was sweeping the floor. A stack of sheets and nicer-quality blankets than the previous ones waited on the stool, and a chest sat next to it, the lid opened to reveal colorful layers of fabric.
“I’ll take that, milady,” the woman stated, setting aside her broom so she could relieve Saleria of the wool blanket. “Everyone has been donating something for the comfort of all the holy representatives at the Convocation. Your quarters are being made more comfortable by the generosity of the family Michan. Bobran of Michan, his husband Severth, and their two adopted sons, Goffer and Farathan.”
“Ah—his husband?” Saleria asked, blinking.
“Yes, husband, because the government of Nightfall doesn’t care what genders are paired in marriage,” the woman told her. “So long as we’re all productive citizens and good people, we are welcome here.” She eyed the Keeper of the Grove. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Priestess of Katan?”
“Well, no. No,” she stated more firmly. “Kata and Jinga have said that same-gender marriages are acceptable. I was just a little surprised, is all. Please let the family Michan know how much I appreciate their generosity, and their warm welcome. May all the Gods bless them for their kindnesses, including the Patrons of Katan.”
The servant smiled warmly at her. “I will be happy to let them know that, Holiness. Oh, you should have a door within the next two days. We can craft them from wood easily enough, but the latching mechanisms take a little more time. Your name will be written on a card on the door so that you can recognize it, along with your nation, and the symbols for Kata and Jinga, the eight altar tetragrams.”