The Butterfly Effect

It was going to be another slow day at the shop, it seemed, but he didn’t mind. At least he had some company.

“How are your parents doing? Efse’s settling in well, right?”

“Yeah, it’s nice for us all to actually be living together. This was the kind of thing Zadeer had wanted from the beginning…” Kiah shook her head. “We really wouldn’t have been able to do it with you, though.”

Farrar laughed. “Least I could do for my best helper—it wasn’t a problem at all.”

He’d been too busy with what he was working on to realize that a bird had come up to the window. He only processed it when Kiah walked over to accept the letter it had and shoo it away again.

“It says it’s for you,” she remarked. Thankfully, unlike some others, she dutifully gave it to him. “There’s no sender from the looks of it, so it can’t be an order for something…”

He realized that he’d never needed to explain this before—well, explain it convincingly. Before, if he’d been with his father, he’d give some terrible excuse, and if he was with friends or a customer, he’d say there was some other order he had to get to. But Kiah was smart enough not to believe those kinds of excuses and, since she worked under him, she knew exactly how many orders they had.

So he used the one other reasonable thing he could think of. “It must be one of the guys from a study group I’m in. Someone’s wife is probably pregnant or grandmother’s sick or something… Do you think you could run this place on your own until I see what’s up? It should only take a few hours at most.”

“No one’s coming to pick anything up until later today, right? Shouldn’t be too hard.” She shrugged, but there was a hint of skepticism in her tone. She didn’t point anything out, though.

Which was good, because he really wasn’t looking forward to the day he might have to explain it to her.

Farrar grinned and waved. “Alright, I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

…

“What the hell? You guys realize I’ve got a life outside of you, right?”

The other Ravens only momentarily looked up before going back to their work.

“Seriously, I’ve got more important things to do than answering your every whim!”

“Like flirting with the waitress who’s obviously not interested?”

Everyone was laughing, except for Farrar.

“Like going to a dinner that a friend went through a lot of trouble to make for me.”

“So we’re keeping them from stroking your ego,” one of the Ravens reiterated. “You’re cocky enough as it is, we don’t need that head of yours getting any bigger.”

“Weren’t you complaining about that a few days ago?” another asked. “I remember you mentioning one of them having terrible cooking.”

“As it turns out, Zadeer made it all, and he’s a surprisingly good cook,” Farrar defended, only vaguely aware that it wasn’t helping at all. “But that’s not the point! What the hell do you want me for this time?”

They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Dunno,” one of them said. “It was by Boss’s orders. Check his office and see if there’s anything with your name on it.”

Another, rather casually, remarked, “Maybe he’s just making you come in to test your excuses. You’ve got to be able to convincingly step away from things, no matter how important, if you don’t want to get caught.”

“I’m going to get caught because you keep making me do this,” Farrar grumbled as he left for the office.

…

Their ultimate goal was revealing the forgotten truths of the Commandments—that the gods were not as almighty as they were made out to be. Orestis wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t even watching over them anymore. Farrar had never been much of a religious guy to begin with, so when he first heard it, it felt right. Of course he knew what he’d been risking when he decided to join them. But he looked around him, and he saw the things in their world that were based on those lies, and he wanted to be a part of fixing it.

He’d figured anyone actually affected by it would think the same, if they knew. That was before Kiah told him who she was.

Perhaps she wasn’t the most zealous of goblins, nor the most exemplary. But one would be blind to not see someone who feared the gods as much as she revered them, who still every now and again might quote a fitting passage. It was because of what the Commandments taught, of things bent and molded to the whims of mortals, that had led her to be here. Because of what they believed, she or her mother could’ve been killed. Yet it didn’t seem to shake her faith at all.

Eventually, right as the shop was about to close, he worked up the nerve to ask her. Somewhere in the question, he probably showed his own opinions—his disbelief. The way he asked it, for better or worse, proved that he’d been thinking of it for a while.

And when it took her a few moments to answer, he thought he might’ve said something wrong. But when he looked over his shoulder at Kiah, she just had a thoughtful expression.

“It’s about finding out what you believe, among what everyone else is whispering to you,” she said eventually, slowly, considerately. “I know almost by heart every line, every story, they use to justify it. I can’t say if they’re wrong or right—that’s not something any of us will know until we can talk with Vriuh, if then. But I know something for sure: no matter who we are or what we did, we all still go to the same afterlife. Vriuh doesn’t turn people away because of what kind of blood runs through their veins. Orestis told us that every little thing that He created had a purpose, and anything that lived on the lands He created had His blessing. So I don’t think it matters what their teachings say I should be. I’ve done my own searching, and I know where my truth is: Orestis has a plan for me, and I have a place with Vriuh when the time comes.”

Farrar didn’t think he’d ever hoped more that she would never learn who, exactly, were the members of that “study group.”