A Tale of Two Founders

The story of how the founders of Star Sight met and formed the belief system.

A Tale of Two Founders

Eliza was having a bad day. She had been having a bad day for three years of living in the PA era - Post Apocalypse. She was supposed to be experiencing everything life had to offer in your 30's: promotions, travel, possible marriage and kids (never mind that only the promotion had been in her foreseeable future), and instead she was trying to figure out what it meant to be successful in a new world that operated so differently from the last one!

As if matters couldn't get any worse, she tripped on the uneven path, falling hard on her knee with a cry that embarrassed her. Too late to hope no one saw as someone was suddenly crouching in front of her, blocking out the sunlight. "Yikes, that was a tumble," said a man, making the situation even worse. "Here, let me help you."

She looked up to see a friendly face close to her age, the man's sparkling blue eyes and nice smile making up for his bald head. To her surprise, he did indeed help her, assisting her the few yards to a small, yet growing temple she had only been vaguely aware of until then. When the Daiyoists cared for her sprained knee, praying and fussing over her, she couldn't help but attach herself to them emotionally, and she quickly joined the burgeoning spiritual movement.

Months later, things had grown stale, but she still clung to her beliefs because they got her through the day. She thought of them again as she turned her face to the east, awaiting the beginning of the morning prayer and Daiyo's daily appearance. A sudden breeze came down then, and a whisper on the wind with it.

Shocked, she opened her eyes, craning her neck to look up where the last stars were fading away before Daiyo's usual rise. As sure as she knew she was standing on the green earth, she suddenly knew they were crying out for help to her, as she was too afraid to do the day Jeremy knelt in the dirt to help her anyway.

The elderly Sun Prophet suddenly lifted her arms to begin her morning prayer and Eliza tried to concentrate even as the other voices grew louder. The stars had something to say about Daiyo, too, and it wasn't nice... The golden light spreading out between the trees suddenly seemed sinister and she could no longer keep her eyes shut for the prayer. It was lucky it was short because she didn't think she could spend another second there when it ended.

Whirling around with a purpose, Eliza marched away from the community garden with a firm destination in mind...

Mapleton had been riper for hoodwinks and long cons, it turned out. Katrina had been thinking this for at least half the time she'd been living in Willowmoor, and that hadn't been a year. If she was honest with herself, it had been gnawing at the back of her mind even before then when she failed to successfully start her fortune telling business on the first try. When it failed the second time after she added her prized tarot cards, she nearly despaired. How would she make a living and survive if she couldn't rely on one of her two skills: trickery and pagan knowledge?!

By helping Bartholomew maintain the museum-slash-library, of course, because even that was better than one of the many, many, many dirty jobs in Willowmoor. There hadn't really been any jobs for the masses in Mapleton, which was odd when she dwelled on it too long, but at least most people had been plagued with the free time she needed to make a buck off them. Well, "make a buck" was a saying from the Before Times...she traded them for jewelry and nice items of clothing and other trinkets that caught her eye. She liked pretty, sparkling things, so that was her currency in a world without one.

She wasn't happy, though, as she grumbled to herself one day while dusting the bookshelves, occasionally pausing to shift one so that Bartholomew would obsess over straightening them all out again later. It wasn't cruel if he needed something to occupy his time, she thought to herself...

A woman suddenly entered, probably around her own age, though she looked a little older while Katrina prided herself on looking younger (she hoped anyway...it was hard to judge such things objectively). Her eyes narrowed as she watched the woman flutter over to a shelf, then another, then another before suddenly spinning to Katrina to exclaim, "I need a book on the night sky!"

Katrina blinked. It was a crazy person to be certain. "What kind of books on the night sky?" She asked in a bored voice. "Astronomy, astrology--"

"Anything! I-I heard them speaking to me before I could greet Daiyo this morning. I have to know what they were saying!"

The woman seemed harried. It was likely she was a native, which meant she had suffered through the harrowing journey across the continent to find this place of safety. Katrina had heard plenty of the tales, so she thought it likely the woman was suffering from paranoid delusions thanks to her PTSD. It was sad, and it caused her to feel a twinge of guilt as she thought of a way to grab the coattails of this popular religion for her own share of the pie. "Okay," she said abruptly, moving to a familiar shelf she had perused for her own pleasure plenty of times, "I can point you to a sacred text I found that lists the names of their gods."

The woman gave a great gasp, her eyes widening alarmingly as she rushed over to accept the astrology book Katrina had pulled off the shelf for her. It was a heavy tome and complicated. Apparently Bartholomew had selected it for that reason when he'd had the opportunity in Mapleton's library a year ago. Katrina wasn't surprised when the woman's brow furrowed as she flipped through the pages of dense charts. "Oh, their language is hard to understand."

Could she have given her a better segue! Katrina had to fight hard against her grin as she chirped, "Well, I can read it if you ever need a translator!"

Eliza's relief was palpable, and she felt a certain lightness in her bones and throughout her skin when she strolled carefully along the dirt path after leaving the library. There was still one more thing she had to do, and her encounter with Katrina had only bolstered her toward completing it.

Thus, she approached the temple of the Daiyoists, requesting an emergency audience with the Sun Prophet on the merit that she'd had a revelation. She had heard from Jeremy himself - one of Joan's righthand helpers - that such requests had been granted before. As always, his words were reliable to a fault, the follower returning to beckon her into the dimly lit building.

The Sun Prophet received her in the garden out back, though, where it was as bright as the sunshiny day. Daiyo was firmly in control, and that gave Eliza pause. The stars had said what they said, though, and she must bring the message to the Sun Prophet in case she had not heard it.

Eliza shuddered to think if she had.

"Hello," said Joan, eyebrow raised as she considered her. "They said it was an emergency. Is everything okay? Is your family alright?"

Oh, but she did love the Sun Prophet! It was more difficult now, so Eliza took a deep breath and said what she came to say: "I heard the stars crying out this morning. They said, 'There are more of us. Daiyo is not the only one and that is not his true name.'"

She came to the Sun Prophet hoping for the best, but she wasn't surprised when Joan frowned, saying sharply, "The sun's already been given one silly name. Don't go spreading another around. Was that really the emergency? For Daiyo's sake..." She sighed. "Maybe you should take a week off from prayers and temple. It seems to be doing certain things to your head."

Joan sent her away after that, and she felt the impact of what she'd done slam into her like a sun flare from Daiyo. She had just been issued a rare ban from the temple and public sunrise prayers. It was one of the least issued rebukes from the Sun Prophet.

She was officially one of the downfallen; the kiss of death for any Daiyoist.

Back at the library, Katrina happily plotted out the origin stories for her pantheon of new gods and goddesses - named for the zodiac - humming to herself as she considered the ways she could use a crazy religious person and simple astrology to her benefit.