Canticle

We pick up right where the demo left off: barely asleep in our cell when a muscular, white-haired stranger covered in floral tattoos pins us down in the dark. His name is Paon, he was sent by a wise woman in the forest who apparently dreamed about us, and he wants us to meet him on Light Day to take us to her. He knows about the sisters, he's not Verdish, and whoever carved that Sahilian symbol above Brother Arty's body got it wrong... which Paon absolutely did not. We file that information away and agree to the meeting.

Morning arrives immediately, courtesy of Father Maxim and his mouse-riding-on-shoulder energy, who marches us all out to the stables before dawn. Our job this term: keep Bucky the bull happy, clean, and in the mood. We use our freshly scribed canticle to animate a broom and do the sweeping ourselves while Rahen massages Bucky's neck for an hour straight. It's as homoerotic as it sounds. Father Maxim is impressed, Bucky is content, and we collect our first silver.

We visit Brother Arty's old cell and hit actual gold: a hidden compartment behind a loose tile containing a letter from a mysterious 'far away friend' who arranged to meet Arty at the priory under a pretense of shared theories, with instructions to burn the letter and pretend not to know each other. Someone did not burn the letter. We also find a medical note confirming Arty was prescribed blue pimpernel for melancholy, which complicates the poisoning theory considerably. We pocket both the letter and a suspicious book called 'The Fourth Lucant March.'

We then decide to tell Father Orson everything: the intruder, the visions, the sisters, the obstruction. He listens without skepticism, tells us to be discreet, and says he will investigate further. He also very gently acknowledges that we saw him getting his Peter wet in the alley the day before and implies that certain liberties are... available at this priory. We clock that immediately. The alternative (staying silent) gets us dismissed from his office with a lecture about wasting his time, so, yes, telling was correct.

Illumination class takes us out to the pasture for the golden hour with Father Aki, who is tall, dramatic, and emotionally devastating to Kieran's very competent sunset painting ('what is it for?'). Rahen accidentally produces crayon-stickfigure genius and gets a kiss on the forehead for it. We have feelings about this. At dinner we sit with Rahen and Saurin, share the investigation details, and let them theorize alongside us. Saurin's cold logic points to someone targeting the novices to sabotage the incantation, and he delivers this conclusion with zero affect. The evening ends with us and Rahen geeking out over archenometry in the parlor until compline, gaining both a skill point and a much warmer relationship status with him. We sleep, dream-free, for the first time.