no one tells you this, but the feast is the most important part of the choice. the elders are watching every potential initiate like yourself, to see at which table you will sit. whom you will sit with, whom you will talk to, what you will say. you have chosen to sit with us, the skeptics. this makes the elders nervous, as the more questions are asked, the more the veil gets lifted and we learn the objective truth. that is the mission of the skeptics, to find out the truth of padora. when bazhekevel spoke to the ancients on the mountain, he reiterated three times in his recital: “do not believe simply what you perceive, for in the shadows lurk truths beyond your reckoning.” that is from chapter eight. from chapter thirteen, “always question the man who tells you a truth,” and from chapter twenty-eight, “even the great goddess padora questions the breath she takes in, for why would an immortal being desire to breathe?” thus from these passages alone were the skeptics born, and protected by scripture.
the inhalers and exhalers both wish us gone, as when we unravel the great mysteries of life, we endanger the religion and mythos of padorism itself. it is much like being born and then one day, being told your father and mother were figments of your imagination. this, i believe, is the hope of the inner sanctum of skeptics–to denounce padorism entirely. those of us on the fringes are not as adamant, and i myself only wish to discover more of how the world works by studying it, rather than blindly assuming everything is padora’s gift. her gift is in the intricacies that we must study to understand. the tree, for instance, is a great gift by padora. it brings us fuel for fire and wood for homes. yet did you know that inside the tree are tiny cells which, put together, create a tree? i just learned this a couple of weeks ago in one of our lessons. skeptic gyorg of the first path has this enormous machine, a series of mirrors and lenses, and when you look through it you can see the world up close, very close. it’s fascinating. and when you become a skeptic and look back at the rest of the tersusi people, you realize … we’re all skeptics. we’re all searching for the truth. some get stuck searching within themselves. we call those people “inhalers.”
anyway, you’re about to be accosted by some exhaler thugs so i suggest you keep an open mind. nice to meet you.
