I watched Jenna leave and turned a curious eye to Rowan when the door closed. “What’s this about?”

  “I was asked to train you as a Harvester,” Rowan began. “You’ve demonstrated sufficient skill at arms that I have little doubt you’d pass the required trial, but Harvesters are not defined solely by their martial skill. We’re supposed to serve as exemplars for our people. For you to go further than you have already, I need to know who you are.”

  The way she stressed ‘who’ made the meaning unmistakable. “I’m not sure how to relate that. My world is quite unlike yours. Are we talking religion? Bedrock beliefs? Principles?”

  Rowan answered with a slight nod as she leaned over and reached under her desk. “Yes. To all of that.”

  “Well, that’s complicated and not a short conversation, depending on the level of detail you need,” I noted.

  Rowan came back up with a pair of glasses and a thick green bottle filled with what looked like a dark liquid. “Start with the root complication, then. If it looks like we’ll be here terribly long, we can pick up the conversation later tonight if needed. I’m just looking for a starting point to gauge how far apart we might be, philosophically.”

  When she filled the cups with what turned out to be a light amber liquid, I took the one she offered. After a cautious sniff that only promised something sweet, I took a tentative sip. Faint and sweet, and not terribly far away from a strawberry wine, narrowing down why the liquid tasted vaguely familiar eluded me for a pair of heartbeats. The sudden low burn that crept into my mouth sealed the memory almost perfectly. “Kain fruit?”

  Rowan’s eyes sparkled as she finished drinking and sat her cup down. “Fermented just enough to keep in storage.”

  Satisfied, I took a long drink, happy to finally wet my dry throat. “Cailleach gave me a few while we were at the Green.”

  “She told me, and the context, too. I’m curious about that, but that conversation can wait. So, what’s the knot snaring your tongue?”

  I gave her request a few long moments of thought. “Well, for one, over here there’s no question that gods exist.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Such is not the case where you come from?”

  I shook my head. “No. You? Your gods walk among you. Now, I’m not vain enough to think I can authoritatively say no God or gods exist, mind you, but we have no tangible evidence of the divine in my world, nothing you can point to as definitive, incontrovertible evidence. In my experience, if someone tells you they talk to God, they’re religious, but if they’re dead serious that God talks to them, they’re either a very specific flavor of religious or they’re outright bugshit nuts.”

  Rowan made a sour face as she reached for her cup. “What a cold, uncaring world you come from.”

  “Actually, it’s not quite that bad. Usually. Depends on the people around you, really. We, generally, provide the warmth you think is missing ourselves. Usually.”

  Rowan’s brow came down slightly. “Were I more suspicious, I’d say that’s a remarkably cagey explanation.”

  “Well, what do you expect? There are more than eight billion people and not a one who can pony up proof whose religion is correct and whose isn’t, but plenty who make the claim theirs, and only theirs, is. That many people, some of them are going to be good people, some of them assholes, and most of the rest between the two. Back home, religions are a reflection of their believers, not something dictated by a divine being you can reach out and touch.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Rowan leaned back, her face filled with disbelief. “Eight? Billion?”

  “Fifty years before I was born, the city I grew up near had a population of a little short of a million. The country I swore to defend? Three hundred and forty million last I checked. All humans, nothing else. No elves, no dwarves— if those even exist here— no magic, none of that.”

  Rowan slowly shook her head.

  “If I’m honest, the fact this place is so different is actually nice. Everything I used to worry about every day might as well not exist. Now I have new, different interesting problems, but not a damn one of them is making sure my mortgage is paid, worrying about my next deployment to some hellhole— Actually, I guess that last part hasn’t really changed, but you get the idea.”

  “What’s a mortgage?”

  I blinked. “Right, so I’m going to guess things here are a lot closer to our medieval era for property rights. Short version, if you want to buy a piece of property, you can go to a bank and get a loan. The property is held as security by the bank until you pay the loan off. That style loan is called a mortgage.”

  “Oh. Interesting concept, I suppose, but I believe we’re getting away from the topic.”

  I offered a conciliatory nod. “We are, sorry. So, uhm—Right, so the second part where things get complicated is that the way I saw the world changed the moment I woke up here. It changed again the moment I realized I wasn’t crazy, that this isn’t all some fever dream, and then it shifted even further when I met Aoibheann. Can you imagine spending your entire life hoping but never being able to prove God exists and one day you wake up in a world not your own and you’re having a conversation, not with your God, but someone else’s?”

  “I can see how that would complicate things,” Rowan noted and reached for her cup. She eyed its contents for a moment, then looked back at me. “Do you want more?”

  “If you don’t mind,” I answered with a nod. “Honestly, and I’m a little ashamed of this even if I think how I got where I did was rational, but I can’t say with my whole heart that I ever really believed. In my heart of hearts, I wanted it to be true. I needed it to be true, and that’s why I couldn’t believe it. In general, the easiest people to lie to are the ones who already wants to believe, and the easiest person to lie to is yourself. Those two together are dangerous.”

  Her eyes focused on me with intense curiosity. “Without contesting either statement, why?”

  Despite its simplicity, the question was just too ambiguous, and through that ambiguity I felt insecurities from my old life whisper uncaring fears to life. “Why what? Why did I need to believe it to be true? Like you said, that would be a cold and uncaring world. The idea of a loving God who, despite all the trials He sets before you, still cares and wants you to grow into the best version of who you could be is not something I can just set aside.

  “Even at the worst points in my life, I believed there was a deeper meaning, a hidden path, a whispered lesson, something that would make those moments have value. The idea of meeting my end to find absolutely nothing mattered—not good, not evil, not anything I did, anything I suffered through, not any of it—that terrifies me. Perhaps it’s childish to cling to a comfort like that, but if that’s the case, then that’s what I am. After all the things that I have seen and done, I thought I could be allowed that one, small comfort.”

  Silence hung in the air. “Unless your comfort is the only factor your world pivots upon, what you describe isn’t childish, it’s clinging to sanity. It’s something we all do, Lord, soldier, or craftsman. I understand. If you could, can you explain why you offered your aid to Aoibheann?”

  “My people fought a war against ourselves to end slavery a century and some change before I was born. We’re taught, quite explicitly, the sorts of conditions that practice created. Moreover, I’ve fought in many, many places. I’ve been to lands where the practice still survives. Call it honor, noble—whatever, I don’t care. The idea of an entire people reduced to that, simply because they don’t have the numbers to prevent it? That’s abhorrent to me. That’s why I offered to help.”

  “And now?”

  “The people I’ve fought alongside, those I’ve come to know better, have only strengthened my resolve. Being around the children in the villa, noisy as they may be, made me feel like I made the right choice, but seeing the people Tomas rescued? There is no other choice, not for me, not without turning my back and spitting on everything I believe. Doing so would be unforgivable.”

  Suddenly wrung out emotionally, it was all I could do to just simply sit there, staring at the cup in front of me. Drained and blunted by the passing emotional wave, I didn’t notice Rowan had placed a hand on mine until she squeezed.

  “Samuel, I cannot speak of the world you came from, but here? Here you have meaning, to me, to my people, to Aoibheann. Go, spend time with your sister, salve your heart with the warmth of family and the kindness of friends. We can talk later of meaning, purpose, and what honor demands of us.”