Turning around, Orb pats his hands against the air and says, "Have a good time with her." Then starts walking away.
Yet she pulls on Orb's hair and says, "I am not talking to the dead, but to you, idiot."
Looking into her eyes with his head bent backwards, Orb says, "I am many things. A lover, a fighter, a soft cushion, but I am not an idiot!"
"No, but today you're my little doggy, so when I say listen, you listen. Or maybe I will just go and have a conversation with your business partners."
Orb quickly moves his eyes all across the room, scanning it, and as his eyes drop on Avram, rubbing the back of a crying adult man, he says, "Really?"
"If you can't take it, don't dish it out."
Orb quickly manifests his wolf ears, hears the man say, "Why was I even born? I should have been killed in the womb!!!"
With a look of disgust, Orb says, "An illness needs to be named after you."
"If only you could be so lucky to have me be that close to you on any level. Now." Elia twirls Orb's body till he is facing her and grabs his hands. "I don't feel like wasting time, so let's get dancing."
They both begin to move on the floor, and Orb, staring at Elia in a blue dress, says, "That's rather fancy; the gloves are also quite soft."
"Thank you, all the citizens chipped in to buy it for me."
Slightly annoyed, Orb says, "You really used everyone's taxes to get that dress."
"Taxes are for the nation, so obviously, beautification would count as a topic of national interest. Besides, I don't want to hear someone wearing an extravagant red coat like that taking to me about overspending."
"Just so you know, Dragoste sent this into my room right before this event started. It's incredibly soft and regal, makes me look and feel like a star."
"He won't call you son."
"hE woN'T cAll YoU SOn!!!! That's how you sound, and besides, I don't wish for that, I just wish for us to be bested of friends."
Pointing past Orb, Elia says, "Then what are all of those things with a don't touch sign connected to them?"
"Obviously, their my gifts to Dragoste. I forgot to give him his letter from Captvant the first time I met him, so as to apologise, I got him a series of gifts."
"Paid for how?"
"With kindness. Because when you help people around the country, they come back to help you. Ilus was able to cook some treats for me and Dragoste to share when this is all over."
"The stinky one?"
"He isn't that stinky to the point where you'd refer to him as that; his cooking is far more intuitive to the kind of person he is."
"Stop being a baby. Lots of people are good cooks, but only he is that stinky. If we are talking about efficiency, referring to him as stinky is the best way to separate him from others."
"He has lost far too much of his life due to that stink, and doesn't deserve to be referred to as that. I don't care if it's more efficient, as he is now, his heart is just recovering, no one needs that. That rudeness is completely unacceptable, or maybe I need to teac-."
Seeing Elia lower her head with a slight bit of sadness, Orb stops speaking as she says, "You're right, it was rude. Despite it being a core characteristic, referring to him like that right now will only make the wounds he has worse. Sorry."
ΦDid she just apologise? No, wait, she has done this before when she insulted Captivant, but she went on to do it again immediately after. So maybe this is a ploy, but her expression doesn't seem like that of a liar. This could be a sore spot, so I need to navigate this carefully to make sure I don't step on an old wound.
"It's okay, you didn't mean to be ru-."
"Don't think I am apologising to you, hound. I don't want the Messiah hearing that I shamed his children."
ΦOrb sighs, "I should've known better. She isn't a cutey like Iancu."
"It's hard for anyone to be cute like Iancu. Though Suzuka might be close."
Turning their heads, they both stare at Iancu and Suzuka, who try and dance with each other through the crowd of people, but their poor coordination leads them to step on one another constantly.
"That embarrassed face on Iancu is delicious, and Suzuka trying not to make him feel self-conscious is equally as scrumptious," Elia says.
"Didn't know you were a fan of Suzuka?"
"She is a perfect balance of cute, kind, and stupid in a ratio similar to Iancu. I can only imagine the amount of fun I will have making fun of her."
"Being bulliable is one of her strong traits. Though I plan on capitalising on that more than anyone else."
"I will kill you," Elia says with a bright smile.
"You threaten murder far too easily for a child of the Messiah."
"Only amongst those who I believe will end up at his side."
"Isn't that a compliment?"
"Oh course it is, those who are far too stupid to even understand their foolishness will 100% end up at the Messiah's side."
Orb drops his head in sadness, but then quickly turns over towards the man crying, and says, "Wait, isn't the man you made cry Käärid the leader of the Cursed Sea Church?"
"Yes, and so?"
"Isn't that blasphemous for you?"
"I was just getting revenge for that sermon that was preached in the Cursed Sky Church by Globėja; apparently, all three of the bishops of the three churches agreed on that beforehand. So I have given all of them an intellectual taking too."
"You really don't have to take it seriously in such a way. The main purpose of religion is to make people better themselves. It doesn't serve a purpose in breaking people down."
Orb, looking directly at Elia, sees what can only be called a face of utter disgust. With a blush, he looks away and says, "Are you really going to keep looking at me like that?"
Controlling herself, she says, "Orb, do you know how many people are religious in the world?"
"I don't have the exact numbers, but I believe, in across all the continents, it's around 98% or something of that matter, according to Elliot. I believe most are some brand of follower of the Church of the Messiah? With the 2nd biggest being the Church of Lux, and the rest being regional churches following some religion that claims legitimacy through the Messiah in some form, that are usually controlled by their individual states more than Cordum."
"Correct, but let me ask you a question. How many of those people are religious?"
"I don't really think you should get to qualify what it truly means to be religious."
"Let me rephrase that question then. How many people do you think go either out of habit, or go culturally? So to put it simply, if they were to end up in Avesta tomorrow, how many of them would throw away their religion?"
"Far more intriguing a discussion. Truthfully, if 99% of people in a place do something, and build their society with it as a core part, simply being around them will make it how to integrate into that community if you don't do it as well. It's basic group psychology that most definitely plays a part in their choices. But that's a nearly impossible question to answer. You'd essentially have to find a series of other countries that have different interactions with religion and study the differences."
"Also correct. Yet it's an important idea that will be grappled with as time goes on. The more society advances, the more options will be given to people, and when said options are given, you get to understand more and more about humanity. What's that old saying again? Ahh, yes, money is the source of all evil! An over dramatic statement, money simply presents people with options that many don't have, and it's only once you have the option to do something is your fibre as a human being is truly tested."
"I agree with that, yet I struggle to see how this fits into your original idea. Are you saying that one day humans will reach a point where they will be given the choice to abandon the Messiah or not?"
"Yes, and when they do, I can assure you that number will drop dramatically, and that's why your mentality disgusts me. Because it means you view religion as useless."
"I never said it was useless. I can think of it kind of like a training wheel in sort of a sense. The Messiah speaks of the ability of restraint in a certain sense. The ability to deny oneself. For primitive societies, this would have been an important idea. When you live without interacting with others to the degree we do today, you can go unchallenged in your behaviour and thinking. Someone who is born strong into a village of 20 people might believe violence and fear are appropriate ways to control others, and from the day they are born till they die, they might never be proven wrong. The Messiah presents a greater heavenly power, suggesting to those lesser ones that restraint should be practised, and that through your spirit you can control your body."
"So you don't believe the Messiah exists? To my knowledge, you have told Atalanta things to the contrary."
Sighing, Orb says, "Maybe or not? I run into some contradiction at the very idea of its existence at times. If I see someone suffering, I feel like my mind will break unless I help them at the time, yet there is supposedly someone with far more power and strength than me who couldn't do such things? Especially when a large amount of the historical documents surrounding it are basically missing, especially since during King Charles's era, there was a large amount of syncretism for the sake of not allowing any fighting between the newly liberated humans to occur.
Of course, maybe the Messiah might exist. It could've just been a person who helped others long ago, whose story was manipulated for the sake of an agenda by others. With the power of spirit energy, something like that feels rather feasible. I like the idea of an all-powerful protector who aims for good in the world above all else. Yet if he is all-powerful, why even bother with this in the first place? I have made efforts to try to understand. Maybe the reason the evil and horrors are allowed to persist is so we can understand the world without the interference of God and our own limited nature. As a way for us to truly see the gravity of our imperfection once left to ourselves, a way to give context to what our lives would be like without the eternal protector.
Yet our limited nature is by design? By definition, couldn't we have been designed to simply be perfect without the need for God? If not, then he power falls under question. If so, then I do not see the point of all these frustrations. To understand good, we need to have evil, but can you not just make a world with only one? I am supposed to not be able to understand his grand plan because he is so much greater than I, yet when I ask for a paradoxical phenomenon to take place, I am asking too much.
It all feels pointless. It feels like existence is embedded with these rules, yet they barely make sense if the person who is trying to save us from the evil of these rules is the one who made them up. The existence of life on its own is paradoxical, yet I don't claim it to be intentional, just that the planet we call Theophila, or its godless name Humigenesis, came into existence in this state. Yet if there is someone who intentionally made the world this way, I feel like that person must be flawed, in powers, in knowledge, in empathy; they can't be a supreme God."