Glory-Be (Shaye)

I have so much to pray for. For five children morganti lost, for Reed morganti lost, for nearly 30 deaths in the party, for those subjugated and abused by the possessed Tree of Life priests and the Riverkin and everyone hunted by fey and everyone torn apart by undead and everyone taken by a Boot or an Ear and on and on and on and on. I’ve prayed my knuckles numb tonight and it still isn’t enough. I’ve prayed to the Tree of Life more tonight than I have in the last 5 years. Perhaps I should take up worship again. It still isn’t enough. Why, oh why, do you have such dominion over my home? Why did they raise me in such a place of death? That’s why I must pray to you tonight, selfish as it may be. I don’t know what you intend with me, but I know I am weak. All these people taken into a wrongness, bent against their will or turned towards their darkest, oldest desires, and I cannot be next. I won’t let myself be next. He hasn’t visited in a long time, and I am afraid that soon I will grow porous. Please, please, please let me stay strong. Please do not let me fall victim to the things that control and bind. Please do not take me yourself, please do not use me. I cannot lose myself. I cannot lose my own heart. Let me light a thousand candles and let me never sleep again and let me do what you would will me do, if only I get to remain on the path I’ve crawled and the path I’ve walked and the path I’ve followed every day since I came to Syenon. I don’t know if I should shun you or beg of you, I don’t know who to pray to, I don’t know who wants me to stay the course. But I survived All Hallows, and I remained myself. Please let me keep it that way. And please, please, please, don’t let anyone take my daughter either. Please. I know she is inviting the crawling things to her, or maybe they seek her out and she doesn’t know how to fight them off. She is doing something dangerous, and I know what that kind of danger brings. But you can’t let her be taken. You can’t let them take her mind, or her body, or her soul, you can’t let them take any part of her. I’ll make her eat Compassion's fruits again and again and again and I would do what it takes and I will do what it takes and if you ask it of me I will do it, if only you can keep her from the crawling things. It’s not much of a prayer, I know, but right now I cannot find new words of praise or thanks. You know my name and so do I. Tonight, of all nights, of grief and chaos and torture and you and you and always you, will you ask of me more veneration than my one and only name?